Manhunt 2 brings all the fun of a killing spree to the comfort of your living room.

Manhunt 2 is Rockstar's second foray into the 'ole ultraviolence. While Grand Theft Auto often sets the news agencies ablaze with its carjacking and murdering of sex workers, it's Manhunt that really gets the watchdogs' blood boiling. Much like Alex from "A Clockwork Orange," the bespectacled protagonist of Manhunt 2 is capable of murdering without conscience. Wallowing in the shameless brutality of this sick and twisted fairy tale is the player's primary goal.

The reward for stealthily sneaking up on your victims is a broad range of killing vignettes, ranging from "hasty" kills to "violent" murders, and on to the most desirable "gruesome" kills. One could choose to avoid murdering many of the foes encountered in the game, but you are painted into a blood-red corner more often than not. It's kill or be killed in Manhunt 2, and the fun, as it were, is in cutting as bloody a swath through the game's antagonists as you can stomach.

Killing in the Name of... Anything

Manhunt 2 is, in a nutshell, a fairly interesting story vehicle that provides the player with innumerable opportunities to slaughter human beings in the most creative of ways. Your character can carry and kill with a variety of different weapons and tools. Weaponizing regular objects and household goods is part of the allure for those who don't mind setting their morality to the side for a few hours. Did you know there are three ways with which you can use a plastic bag to kill someone? And then there's the electric table saw, the morning star, the shovel, the shard of broken glass, and so on. Added to the mix are new elevated executions, which you activate by pouncing on an unsuspecting victim from above. And then there are the new context-sensitive "kill zone" executions as well, like sticking someone face-first into a fuse box. Insert obligatory "shocking" pun here.

The biggest issue that fans of the original Manhunt will have with Manhunt 2 is the way that Rockstar toned down the violence in the game in order to appease the ESRB's ratings board. The game's trademark executions have been altered significantly, to the point where the player loses nearly all recognition of the events taking place onscreen. Initiating a killing maneuver cuts the camera to an angle more suitable for viewing, which is then browbeat by an unwieldy series of camera edits and obnoxious crimson filters that distort the images to the point where it's anyone's guess what exactly is taking place. The execution in question could very well be mistaken for a sloppy wet kiss, even if what you're supposed to be witnessing is a horrifying decapitation. The only evidence you have of what sort of mayhem you've inflicted is the bloody mess on your arms, chest, and face, and the dead body you leave behind, painstakingly deformed and remodeled to reveal the torture you've inflicted.

To wit, Manhunt 2 is stuck in a Catch-22. Most people won't find the content in the game appealing. The game is filled with disturbing imagery and rife with perverse subject matter. The humor would be hard to label as funny per se, when adjectives like sick, nauseating, and depraved are still available. On the other hand, fans of ultraviolent films like "Ichi the Killer," "The Devil's Rejects" and "Audition" look at descriptions like those as a checklist for what they want out of their entertainment. There's an audience for this sort of material, but those who adore the gore will be turned off by the heavy-handed approach that Rockstar was forced to implement when toning down the violent visuals.

I Came for the Executions. I Stayed for the Drama.

To its credit, Manhunt 2 features a far more interesting storyline than you'd find in most B-movie slasher flicks. The voice work is well-acted, and the characters are alive with personality, even if they are suffering from severe psychological disorders. Learning about and understanding the story behind the game's main character and delving deeper and deeper into the truths behind the malicious "Project" will keep players interested far longer than the obfuscated death visuals or the rudimentary combat system which degrades into a mindless and uninteresting button mash should you fail to sneak up on a victim.

The Wii controls for Manhunt 2 come fairly close to making the experience more realistic, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on where you stand. While the little mass murderer in us envisioned Wii Remote and nunchuk strangulations, the context-sensitive execution mini-game comes close enough. When you come close enough to a victim, a series of gesture-driven commands will urge you to shake the controller left or right, for instance, or drive both controllers down, as if you were smashing a heavy object on someone's skull. It's not a challenge by any means, as the game doesn't seem to want you to miss out on any of the juicy kills, but it does make the experience more interactive. At some point after failing a stage more than a few times, you may even be accomplishing these murderous gestures by instinct alone, which can be a bit scary once you think on it.

It's difficult to recommend Manhunt 2 in its current M-rated form to anyone. This material isn't just inappropriate for children, it's not appropriate for most of the people you know. The background material behind the storyline is well developed enough, and those with considerable tolerance for over-the-top gore and violence may derive some pleasure from it. But the game's execution as a bland third-person stealth adventure with sub-par combat and annoyingly stylized death sequences hamstrings what could have been a sleeper hit for mature audiences. It's hard to completely blame Rockstar for all the failings of Manhunt 2, considering the ESRB's hand in crippling the developer's vision. Whether or not that vision should be considered artistic is up to you.

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