This Jacked-Up Video Game Murder Scene Would Never Fly Today

Don’t ask me why I wound up googling this cutscene from Phantasmagoria over the weekend, but I did, and I watched it, and good lord. It’s even worse than I remembered!

Go ahead and watch it. (Viewer beware: It is NSFW and also INTENSE and NASTY.) Now ask yourself: It may have made it into a game in 1995, but would a scene like this pass muster in a modern-day video game? No, I have to think. It would not.

We see a lot of awful violence in games these days; torture and decapitation and throat-stabbing are de rigueur. But somewhere between intense eyeball trauma and murder by force-feeding, gaming has drawn a line.

I’m all for freedom of expression, but you know, maybe it’s okay if we give the censors this one.

Originally written and published by Kirk Hamilton at Kotaku. Click here to read the original story.