Times Online have posted an interview with Rockstar Games Vice President Dan Houser. Almost immediately the banning of Manhunt 2 is brought up, marking one of the few times where one of the Houser’s actually addresses the issue.

Manhunt 2 was not a good situation. When a game gets banned, it means we’re not doing our first job, of making the investors back their money.

A pretty grim, if not factual, comment to make, but there is more:

Look, video games are a popular and easy enemy. It’s all part and parcel of doing something that’s not been done before. One of the things that’s always been exciting is the feeling of being in at the birth of a new medium, but of course the history of technology-driven art from the printing press onwards has been of people fighting against that stuff.

It feels at last like we’re moving on from that debate. The audience is getting past 30 so it all becomes a bit silly. That’s not to say that all games are for all people; we’ve never said that. GTA has always been rated 18 and we’ve always been very happy with that.

Nevertheless, we do get frustrated when video games are singled out and movies are given a free pass. Manhunt 2 was banned in the same week that Saw was released. The arguments become quite ludicrous quite quickly when people argue that games are somehow more dangerous than full-motion video.

Within Rockstar, sometimes we feel that some of our games get singled out and held up as pariahs. All we want to do is tell a story with rounded characters. Like GoodFellas, which is a key film for us, our rounded characters happen to be criminals.

I’m not sure there is anything to take away from these comments beyond Rockstar was also bummed out about what happened to Manhunt 2.

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If you head over to Direct2Drive right now and pre-order Manhunt 2 for PC you can pick up the original Manhunt free of charge, this deal might be limited to pre-orders only so if you were planning on getting Manhunt 2 after hearing what's different about the AO version maybe you should reconcider just in case, this is also a different link from the one posted before so make sure you click the link above.

Direct2Drive have also stated that it's only people within the United States, Canada, and Mexico that are able to take advantage of this offer so if you live outside those areas you won't be able to purchase Manhunt 2 for download at all. Whether the game or this offer will come to D2D for the rest of us remains unknown at this point.

Also in case you were wondering Take Two/Rockstar have not issued any kind of press release so it looks like we won't get anymore details about the game until November 6th.

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Direct2drive have added details of Manhunt 2 for the PC. The game will be released via the site on November 6, 2009 and weighs in at 3.66 GB. As spotted on the ESRB website this version will be rated Adults Only, the only problem is Rockstar have not released any details regarding what has been changed. Here are the all important PC specs taken from the site.

- Operating System: Windows XP (Home and Professional), SP1 or higher plus DirectX 9.0c / Windows Vista
- Processor: Intel Pentium 4 (1.7+ GHz), AMD Athlon 1800+
- Memory: 512MB XP / 1GB Vista, 3.8GB Hard Drive Space
- Video Card: DirectX 9.0c Shader 2.0 Supported, 128 MB, Nvidia 6200 or Better, ATI Radeon x300 or Better
- Sound Card: DirectX 9.0 Compliant
- Peripherals: Keyboard and Mouse Required

We will try and put in word with Rockstar to get an idea of what we can expect on November 6, but given that they have declined to comment before and have not answered many other media requests about this release, I don't expect an answer. I'm guessing they will have a press release out at the start of the week with more details.

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Today marks the worldwide release of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, available exclusively on the Xbox 360. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City combines both “The Lost and Damned” and “The Ballad of Gay Tony” on a single 360 DVD and doesn’t require a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV in order to be played.

If you don’t believe in the whole “patience is a virtue” nonsense, and have all ready downloaded “The Lost and Damned”, then you can purchase “The Ballad of Gay Tony” through Xbox Live in just a few short hours.

- IGN US – 9.2/10
- IGN UK – 9.2/10
- Video Games Daily/Kikizo – 9/10
- Eurogamer – 8/10
- 1UP – A-
- CVG - 9.1/10
- Team Xbox - 9.8/10

Rockstar have also posted details of an Xbox Live multiplayer event, kicking off on Friday the 30th and ending on Sunday November the 1st where you can play against members of Rockstar North. If you do manage to get a game with one of the developers, make sure to hound them about the future of the Manhunt series.

PlayStation 3 owners shouldn't give up hope of seeing the content make its way over to Sony's black box just yet, PS3Center is reporting that Rockstar representatives let slip of it possibly making its way over somewhere down the line.

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