Last week we went and saw The Time Traveler's Wife. I actually quite enjoyed the film, and as recommended by 'Sars' in a previous entry's comment, i do agree that it was a great take on time travel. Basically it goes that even if you could time-travel for whatever reason, you can't change anything because what you're living already happened or was going to happen, and if you're experiencing it then it's happened or will happen and there's nothing you can do to change it.

Speaking of changing things, this past week Left 4 Dead 2 was released. The big news in this country was that originally it was refused classification and thus effectively banned. In the end an extremely censored version of the game was resubmitted and classified, and was released here.

The big problem was that the nature of the game was so toned down, in my opinion it made it almost unplayable as a 2009 game. The level of violence and realism in the censored version was more akin to a 1997 Nintendo64 game. See the differences here (keep in mind the 'people' attacking the character are zombies).

Now let me say straight up: I concede that the level of gore in this game merits a rating higher than MA15+, BUT i do not believe at all that the level of violence and gore is that excessive that a free-minded adult living in this country shouldn't be able to legally buy and play it. Again I say, this country needs an 18+ classification for games like almost every other developed country already has. See this previous entry for my already expressed views on this.

Anyway, back to it: like most other sensibly minded adults, there was no way I was going to pay money for that ridiculous censored version (which I half blame the developer (Valve) for actually submitting for classification). One of the points in my previous entry on the 18+ debate was that "Banning is futile anyway", and this game has proved it.

Myself, like countless thousands of others, have relatively easily found a way to legitimately purchase the uncensored version of the game, and I have been playing it for the past few days. What good is it that people are effectively (and very easily) bypassing the Australian classification system for a reasonably produced game? *sigh* I could go on for hours...

Anywho, my thoughts on the game itself: i think it's a bit much for Valve to release this a new game. I don't think there is much to merit a full release (at a 'new game' price). It very much feels like L4D v1.5 than L4D2. I think releasing it as DLC (downloadable content) and charging ~US$30 would have been more appropriate.

Nevertheless, it is still quite enjoyable, and should be good to alternate between that and TF2 when a bit bored.