Manhunt 2

Maybe your stance would change if you had played the original Manhunt. In Manhunt you play a convicted murdered who gets the lethal injection. Only, he wakes up in an abandoned warehouse. See, there is this snuff movie director who has arranged to free you. All you have to do in return is to brutally murder the guards he has placed for you, and he will record the footage to sell to the sick freaks who get off on that kind of stuff.

And that is pretty much the game. Sneak around, find a person, and then get close enough to them to trigger the FMV of your kill.

Now, I am all for artistic freedom, but would the game really have been any different without the cinematics? I am fairly confident that it would have been derided as a Tenchu or Metal Gear Solid clone, which it IS. And, it is a basic, average one.

My problem with Manhunt is the same problem that the ESRB and the BBFC have, which is a problem of the game lacking a moral centre. If you were just a regular guy who had been kidnapped, then maybe the game would have purpose, and would have escaped the ban. They are not censoring based on content, they are censoring based on setting.

Here's a question? What if Rockstar were to make a game where you play a paedophile, and you manipulate things in order to get yourself alone with a small child? I am willing to bet you would be in total agreement of a ban on that game, and yet you are ready to defend something just as indefensible. It is not time for the industry to grow some balls. It is time for us gamers to do it. I can honestly think of no reason to reccomend Manhunt, and we as gamers should not just bleat about "They are picking on games again" every time something like this happens. There is a world of difference between 'mature', 'adult', and 'not for kids', and it seems to me that a lot of "adult" gamers have a long way to go before they really can call themselves "mature."

Cheekylee, trying to compare Manhunt to a hypothetical pedophile game is a TERRIBLE comparison.

Pedophilia is really, really, really taboo in our society because it's sexually preying on innocent children. Manhunt is about murdering guards, who are trying to kill you as well, and a twist that the footage will be used for a weird fetish is added for shock value. Your main problem with the game is that you play a murderer so he doesn't deserve to kill for his survival (or something). I haven't played Manhunt but the enemies don't exactly look like squeaky clean, innocent bystanders.

My point being in a pedophile game, you'd be a very evil man exacting depraved sexual acts on innocent children. In Manhunt you bludgeon and kill some evil looking dudes and we're to assuming eventually some game world weirdos are going to masturbate to it. Additionally, animated forms of child sex are illegal in the US where as ultra violence and gore in electronic and digital mediums is not.

The Manhunt games are just shock action games. It's no different than an ultra gorey movie. The reason movies get censored is usually due to the studio wanting a lower rating so they can make more money. The only difference is eventually you get an unrated DVD version.

But that's my point. Why is one disgraceful human act any different to another? How come we can plumb one set of depths, yet leave another one untouched? Surely we should not be glorifying ANY negative aspects of the world?

See, you have drawn a line. You are stating that it is ok to show some things in a game, but not others. What the ESRB and BBFC are doing is exactly the same thing. The only difference is where the line is placed. You are quite happy with cold-blooded murder, the two rating bodies are not. You would rightly be up in arms about a paedophilia game, and yet you seemingly have no problem with the rape games that already exist.

I'm not getting at you. I was the same. This rating is what has gotten me to thinking about it.

Developers and players alike need to show a sense of responsibility here, as well as prove their maturity. Instead of crying over spilt milk, we would be much better off accepting the decision. That way, we can turn around and say "See? We don't need any external body telling us what is and isn't fit to publish. What we have already is perfectly adequate." Then, hopefully, they will just let us get on with it.

I can honestly say that my life is unaffected by the withdrawal of Manhunt 2. It would have been unaffected by the release of the game, too. But, I don't know if I can honestly say the same for everybody else. Games do not turn people into violent psychopaths, but they do put potential psychopaths in contact with emotional triggers. The whole world knows that there are just some people that you wouldn't give a gun to. Why are there apparently no people that you shouldn't let virtually strangle someone?

The temptation to defend our hobby is great, but our reaction is often just as much of an over-reaction as our 'enemies' are. We have to think smarter, and pick our battles more carefully. Because, this game is extremely hard to defend. Some things are just not right, regardless if they are in books, movies, on TV, or in video games. Cold-blooded remorseless murder is one of those things.