Sorry to bring the topic up again, seeing as we were only just talking about it last night, but it looks like our censorhip laws have struck again.

This time, feeling the full force of the blow is PS3 and Xbox 360 sci-fi shooter Dark Sector, which was due for release in March of this year. The third-person title sees gamers stepping into the shoes of a black ops agent trapped in a quarantined town. Think it's simple? The character has been infected with a nerve agent which gives him superhuman abilities and mutations - and must fight off guards and other mutants. Apparently, the role features some pretty nasty, high-impact violence, including some particularly vicious finishing moves that can be performed on various enemies.


Sales and product manager for local game distributors AFA Interactive - Adam Zweck - is quoted as saying:

"Obviously we're disappointed ... We feel there is justification for an appeal. However, we're exploring several avenues at the moment to see what we can do to get the game on Australian shelves."

The game dropped its PC development back in late 2006, stating at the time that "Everything you know about Dark Sector is probably wrong". Unfortunately, we thought we knew we'd be getting a new next-gen shooterr in a month or so. Turns out that was wrong, too.

This is the latest in a long line of games to be refused classification Down Under - last year saw Soldier of Fortune: Pay Back needing to be edited and resubmitted before it finally acquired an MA15+ rating, and our need for edited titles has allegedly prevented Rockstar games from being easily available via Steam. Even this month, we were denied the release of Ninja Gaiden: Black over Xbox Originals, as the original had been effectively banned in this country.

So - if you wanted to play the new one from Digital Extremes (the developers behind Unreal Tournament 2003) - sorry, you're outta luck.