A slight irregularity in age rating..

[Makeshift Koala]

Ok.. so I noticed something very peculiar whilst playing borderlands. I blasted some bandit in the face and watched his head comically/violently explode in a rather gory manner. I then thought 'I don't think this game quite deserves the 18 rating it achieved'.
At this moment my mind moved to Mass Effect 2. Which achieved an 18 age rating, but featured much less violence/bad language than borderlands. And ME2 didn't have the alien side boob like ME1 had so that couldn't of been what pushed it into 18 rating.
This then lead me to Assassins Creed 2 (Also 1 but 2 is the focus here) which only got a 16 age rating, but featured one memorable counter-attack that is earned when Ezio's spear has been broken in half and as a counter, he impales the attacker with both parts of spear. This is just a small example of the violence in this game (I feel like I'm starting to sound like one of those 'video games are corrupting our children's mind's' coot's so I'll ease up on it) but it still only achieves a 16 age rating when ME2, which features no impaling, gets an 18 age rating.

I don't particularly see much discussion in this topic but I just wanted people to notice this.

Also: I live in Ireland, in case country takes a factor in things.

 

[Drakmeire]

I thought Zelda ocarina of time and Wind Waker should have been rated teen since there is a little blood in ocarina of time (jabbu jabbu's belly and Ganondorf's death cough as well as final blow, and even a few times when you are hit) and I guess Wind Waker would have had an E+10 if that existed at the time due to link killing Ganondorf by ramming a sword though his skull from 20 feet in the air.

and there is really no reason for Halo to be rated M, maybe if it was teen it wouldn't have sold as well... hmmm.

and does anyone remember that one magazine ad for that RPG from the late 90's that was rated E but was a picture of a guy getting his skin melted off?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Heck, even Assassin's Creed doesn't seem all that violent to me. When the ESRB was young, it took a lot to get an M rating. Mortal Kombat was the gold standard. I can't remember playing anything in recent years that compares to the gore in the games from Mortal Kombat II to Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Heck, today's ultra violent shooters are pretty tame even compared to Doom.

Regardless, the ratings system has always been oddly set up. I don't know how it works with the PEGI system, but the people at the ESRB don't even play the game, so they have to base the rating off of about 5 minutes of footage. It results in weird things like Zone of the Enders getting an M rating, when it should have been T at the highest, and Metal Gear Solid for the Game Boy Color getting an E, when it really deserved a T.

 

[Penguinness]

In England, ME2 is a 15.. guess they just put balls in a hat and pick them out.

I've mentioned this before not too long ago.. but Perfect Dark 64 is basically Goldeneye, but received an 18 rating whereas Goldeneye 64 got a 15. I guess dino/alien type creatures are too scary for a 15 year old.

 

[Wayneguard]

Similar to the assault weapons ban in the united states, the regulation of content in videogames is crafted by people who, quite literally, have no clue what they're doing. I'm not sure if Ireland has laws regulating game content or if it is a voluntary rating system like in the US but regardless, the results are always asinine because government bureaucrats (or in the case of the ESRB in the US, private ratings board members) do not play games and have no intention of approaching the issue of violent content's behavioral effects on children rationally.

 

[LightOfDarkness]

Rating of video games should be done by a complete playthrough, not just 5min of footage. Reviewers have enough time to do so BEFORE it comes out, so the people at ESRB and other rating systems have basically no exuces except for wearing a sandwich board saying "I have no fucking idea what I am doing"

 

[BlindMessiah94]

It's the same in any industry with ratings - movies, comics, whatever. They are all just randomly appointed by some board of people. I wouldn't take the ratings too seriously.