Rule of Rose
November 27th, 2006
Whenever someone says that a movie or a game should be banned my gut reaction is always against it. I don’t like a society that can’t deal with the darker side because parents are unable to police what their children watch or play.
The PS2 game Rule of Rose is raising quite the commotion though amongst parent groups, has been banned in the UK and created a lot of controversy in Poland.
Rule of Rose is a psychological horror game that revolves around a 19 year old girl (for some reason before I read her age I thought she was a lot younger) Jennifer who is sent to an orphanage after her parents die. The orphanage is run by a little hierarchical group called the Red Crayon Aristocrats. The young girls who make up this group are, from what I can ascertain from the preview the most twisted set of young female bullies since Heathers!
The gameplay is driven by you controlling Jennifer who is in turn controlled by the Red Crayon Aristocrats as she runs around looking for objects to please the Aristocrats and secretly trying to get away.
Now I haven’t played the game so I’m only going off what i have read and the preview I watched online so I’m not going to tell you that the game itself is disturbing but that trailer was plenty disturbing!
Now this is the tricky part - an R rating says that people under 18 can play the game (I believe in the UK it was given a rating of over 16). The reality of that though is there will be a number of children playing this game because some parents don’t care what their kids play. So is the answer banning a disturbing video game?
If it were a movie rated R I wouldn’t even blink and say you can’t ban it. As long as we’re not talking snuff films or child pornography then each to their own. However what made me sit and think when I read about this was sensations I myself have felt whilst playing a game.
A film is a detached medium that you observe and definitely get caught up in but you don’t have any choice or the illusion of choice at the least. You are watching a story unfold and you don’t get to decide what a character does in the movie.
A video game you direct and experience the central character. If the character is required to kill something or steal etc then you are the one who is directing the character to do it. You don’t generally have a choice that you can apply your morals to in the majority of games - do I kill that baddie or do we sit down and try to sort out our differences.
I like a good violent game like the next gamer, the punisher is one of my favourite games right now but are there just some places you don’t go in a video game? Someone said that this game won’t frighten you so much as disturb.
Children being sadistic and violent - I read of sexual undertones in Rule of Rose however I can’t say I’ve seen any indication of this first hand. Is this a image that shouldn’t be made into a game?
If you ban this though where do you stop?
I haven’t any answers for you on this one!
Take a look at the game’s website and tell me what you think - is it really that bad or just an effective horror game!
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I blame all this on uptight parents who have no influence over their children. It seems whenever these people catch their kids doing something they don’t approve of their first move is call for an outright world ban instead of dealing with the problem on their own. I say it’s not my problem you can’t control your kid, please stay out of my life.
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It seems that the UK lately has been getting into all sorts of people’s business lately. I know several UK bloggers and the stuff I hear about is disturbing. Oh, and I agree with Becca
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You see that’s what I was thinking immediately - this is a game I just wouldn’t play but I find it very hard to get behind banning something. I get really angry in stores when staff sell rated games to underage kids. Then I get even angrier at parents who take no interest in what their kids do or are into.
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I adore this game. I own it and though it has its flaws with the fighting system, I still am glad I’ve played it.*Warning, Spoilers somehat!*
Its nice to play a game that is a little different and challenging. I’ve seen plenty of Children with the latest grand theft auto game (I’m not saying its a bad game,in fact I like it but personally I think its more explicitly violent than RoR) and no one stops them.
I think part of the reason people have so much problem with this game as it has “children” in the main roles and they don’t like to think that their children are capable of making up their own minds. Also one of the main three girls has a crush on another girl, something I think scares adults into thinking that this will either make their children homosexual or that the scenes surrounding this will be smutty.
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As a person who has played and beaten the game I just have to say this, some people are completely CRAZY. The game isn’t that bad. Sure it has some blood from when you kill the little imp-like mosters. And yes they do somewhat torture poor Jennifer, but poking her with a rat tied on a stick and putting her in a bag with bugs in it isn’t half as bad as people make it out to be. Have you seen some of the movies out lately? Hostel by any chance? Now THAT is torture. Why wasn’t that banned? I can tell you why, people, especially old people who haven’t played a video game in their life are, for lack of a better word, dumb. Homosexuality? Honestly I didn’t see anything sexual. Sure one of the girls loves the another girl. But is that really so bad? All the girl did is write her a (appropriate) letter, but the girl who fed it to a goat. In the scene when on girl sucks the blood off of another girls finger was weird, yes, weird. But it’s supposed to get your attention. There is a reason that scene was a trailor. Ok maybe the game is a little messed up (I just remembered some other things, the dog eing tied up, the acid barffing mermaid, and such). But come on people, don’t express your opinion until you actualy play. Besides, slapping a banned title on it makes it more irrisistable.
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Hi Miranda - I think you’re making some good and interesting points and since writing this (quite a while now) I’ve firmly come down on the side of this isn’t my cup of tea but there is no way I would tolerate it being banned.
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