Gruesome new horror game already banned in Japan

The Callisto Protocol has been refused a rating in Japan and therefore its release has been completely cancelled in the country - but that won't stop gamers from finding a work-around.

Will got the chance to play The Callisto Protocol in a recent preview and the level of gore is something that has stuck with him. That and the "poop room." The biophages are truly terrifying, a painful patchwork of corpse and alien, lunging and swiping onwards thanks to an incessant drive to spread the disease to fresh and healthy hosts. Yummy. It's not an easy game either, testing the player's skill and knowledge of when to attack and when to retreat before the encounter ends in a sticky way.

Check out our helpful handbook to this horror here, featuring the five things we learned from our time with the game:

The Computer Entertainment Ratings Organisation, Japan's board that decides what rating video games will receive in the country, has flat out refused to rate The Callisto Protocol. The country has a very low tolerance for explicit violence and gore, and given that developer Striking Distance has soaked the game in those two things, this isn't totally surprising.

The Last of Us Part II was censored for its use of dismemberment as a game mechanic and the nudity seen in its sex scene was also cut. And, the part where the player must retrieve a key out of the throat of a beheaded body in Resident Evil 7 was changed in the "Grotesque" Japanese version of the game so that the dead body still has a head.

This decision doesn't give Striking Distance a lot of time to change the game for Japanese gamers, but it's not all bad news. Those in Japan who pre-ordered The Callisto Protocol will receive refunds (thanks IGN Japan) and console versions of the game are not region-locked, so that they are able to circumvent the refusal of a rating to play the upcoming horror.