Games with an intelligent plot, clever gameplay and well drawn characters that require at least some life experience to appreciate.

Also a violent game certainly isn't automatically mature. Postal 2 for example is one of the most childish and silly games ever.

These days, Mature rating is ironic because M rated games are usually the most immature.

Blood/Gore does not equal Mature.

I think the E (or was it T) rated ICO and SotC are the two most mature games.

I'd say L.A. Noire, Heavy Rain, BioShock, Catherine, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mafia II, Metal Gear Solid 3, Half-Life 2, Singularity and Yakuza 4 are the most mature games I've played in terms of story, tone, choice vs. consequence, ideologies and things of that nature.

Usually what passes as maturity in games these days isn't mature at all. Sex and profanity and excessive blood & guts in games is usually craved by teenagers who think they need that stuff to feel mature.

A 'real' mature game is one with a story that simulates the adult mind in ways that children do not yet have enough life experience to comprehend.

It's not the gore that makes a game mature-oriented.

Mature games make you think about something spesific that you may normally overlook just like any other medium (theatre, movies, books etc). Let it be a question about life and death, or something which makes you question the way you live, or something that sensitizes you to the illusions surrounding us. They're thought-provoking games which allow our minds to wander within fiction and reality, thus expanding our imagination with a wider point of view.

Bioshock, for example, makes you question ethics and allows you to think about what would happen if you forcefully try to change the nature of mankind and how would the conventional understanding of social hierarchy be affected by it from the first moment you see Andrew Ryan's statue with the inscription "No gods or kings, only man" on it. Deus Ex makes you think about transhumanism and makes you wonder what would the consequences of trying to alter the way human organims work be. Metal Gear Solid makes you think if politics always work the way you think it does and if your conception of "enemy" and "ally" is unquestionably right. Heavy Rain makes you think if the past traumas can justify the bad things a person does and if it is the nature of the person or a psychological disorder which stems from the hard times a person has been through that makes him or her behave that way, which is in fact a basic "nature vs nurture" question. And you get the gist, examples go on like that.

What I find interesting is that I used to play every kind of game as a child, whether it was a mindless entertainment or a momentary comedy. But I don't have as much time as I used to have now so I solely play games with a good stroyline, and I seem to enjoy those kind of video games only as I grow older.

I Love mature games! A shame that so little of them are there..