Manhunt 2 The Horror...TheHorror

What is the correct way to react when the videogame you've been diligently scrutinizing for 15 hours is denied a certificate by the BBFC, effectively preventing it from being released in the UK? This is the problem Rockstar is currently wrestling with. A mere three weeks before the sequel to Manhunt is due to hit shelves, the game has been placed on hiatus, and will very likely be placed back into development to satiate the demands of the censors. Granted Rockstar's towering, financially resplendent empire had been significantly aided by the controversy surrounding its games in the past, but the last title to be outright refused a certificate in the United Kingdom was Carmageddon in 1997. Evidently, nothing since has pushed the boundaries of taste far enough, not even Manhunt 2’s hugely controversial predecessor.

A simple cosmetic touch was that Carmageddon required to clear its path to the high street shelves - the zombies' blood colour was changed from red to green - but Manhunt 2 has no such easy escape route. The violence and these is plenty based in a gritty, realistic reality. Your victim bleeds red because they are human. Just like its progenitor, violence is so central to your characters success that is difficult to imagine where any simple but significant changed could be made. This isn't a matter of trimming a shot or cutting a scene; pain and discomfort saturates every moment of the experience.

Indeed, it could be argued that this is entirely the point. Manhunt 2 is a horror game and the abiding atmosphere of decay and malaise is testament to the skill of all those involved. The grimy, shadow-flecked environments, the brilliantly atmospheric sound, the menagerie of homicidal gimps, hicks and freaks - this is expert design work, and the cumulative effect is one of skin-crawling intensity.

The storyline is also a vast improvement of the wisp of narrative that underscored the original game. Where James Earl Cash and snuff movies seemed like ciphers providing a clear path of violence, Daniel Lamb's struggle to recover his memory and his past is deeply entrenched in emotional turmoil, and a more logical extension of the character. In terms of narrative and overall execution, Manhunt 2 is certainly a more mature effort and represents a significant enhancement over the original in all but one respect: the violence.

The predicament Cash was placed in provided a coherent reason to pursue increasingly brutal executions, and was a satisfactory, if somewhat contrived explanation for the inclusion of 'Style Points' the rate the barbarity of your performance. Manhunt 2, however, places you in control of a man fighting against his homicidal tendencies as he tries to reclaim his identity. In this context the steadily escalating brutality lacks a clear motivation, resulting in the Style Points working directly against the underlying themes of the narrative, and making it all but impossible for Rockstar to deny that the game glorifies its violent content.

Traditionally the role of the sequel is to provide more, but the extra depth and focus given to the narrative would have been better complemented by greater restraint and a more cerebral approach to the violence. Rather than providing the knockout punch they are intended to give, the comic extremity of the executions tends to diffuse the tension the game so effectively manages to build. Personal views on the necessity of such violence are neither here nor there; this is a matter of tone, and Rockstar seems to have built Manhunt 2 around imaginative death sequences rather than story.

At the time of writing it seems unlikely that Manhunt 2 will ever be officially available in the UK - at least not in its current form - and that is an unmitigated shame. The ban will only cloud the issue of whether the game itself is of genuine quality, but this remains precisely the kind of experience that entertainment-starved Wii owners have been waiting for. Expertly crafted, unbearably intense and ideally suited to motion control, it ticks all the boxes for a console that is still a long way from emerging from it's well-published drought, if only Rockstar had realised that, in this case less would certainly have been more.

Verdict 6/10

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