Australia Refuses to Sell Hotline Miami 2 Due to Violence

Australia has been pulling the ban hammer out and using it pretty frequently this past year and now it seems Hotline Miami 2 is its next target.

It turns out that Target Australia taking Grand Theft Auto 5 off its shelves wasn't going to stop there. Australia is known for not being very lenient with its video game releases and now the game in question is Hotline Miami 2. This time, Australia decided not to even let it reach retail stores -- instead, it decided to refuse giving it a classification (game rating), Kotaku reports. The game was given an RC label, which stands for "Refused Classification," which prohibits it from being sold throughout Australia.

Get ready for a wall of text from Kotaku Australia that describes exactly why the game was rated RC:

In the sequence of game play footage titled Midnight Animal, the protagonist character bursts into what appears to be a movie set and explicitly kills 4 people, who collapse to the floor in a pool of copious blood, often accompanied by blood splatter. After stomping on the head of a fifth male character, he strikes a female character wearing red underwear. She is knocked to the floor and is viewed lying face down in a pool of copious blood. The male character is viewed with his pants halfway down, partially exposing his buttocks. He is viewed pinning the female down by the arms and lying on top of her thrusting, implicitly raping her (either rear entry or anally) while her legs are viewed kicking as she struggles beneath him. This visual depiction of implied sexual violence is emphasised by it being mid-screen, with a red backdrop pulsating and the remainder of the screen being surrounded by black.

At least it seems as though Australia had a good reason to take Hotline Miami 2 off its shelves, but it's definitely unfortunate since the country was supposedly getting more lenient with what it was letting through. For us, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number will launch sometime within the next few months for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PS Vita.