What in Manhunt 2 has changed to make it go from an Adults Only to Mature rating?
Manhunt 2 has an American release date of October 31st, Halloween, on the PS2, Wii and PSP. But what has been changed in Manhunt 2 to make it go from an unacceptable (or rather, un-sell-able) Adults Only to a mainstream Mature rating? It turns out the major change that took place is the brutality in the killings (obviously). To be specific, changed are the scenes that play during the successful execution of an enemy. While they still show the horrific infliction of pistols, plastic bags, shovels, pens (shown below) and other items on enemy body parts, they have been put through visual filters. This means the scenes now look blurred and have different colors and thus are somewhat less violent.
Also, MTV News notes that the preview version they had earlier in the year still had a scoring system that has now been dropped in the final version. The scoring system gave incentives to performing the most extreme version of a kill. Such brutal kills were the most nerve-racking and challenging activities in the game, since performing one required waiting longer behind a more powerful enemy before pouncing.
Rockstar Games developer Jeronimo Barrera said: “The scoring was a hold-over from the first game, and when we had the opportunity to make edits because of the rating, we decided to remove it. We felt it flowed better without a score screen between levels.” Watch how one of those killings look with a pen:
If you don’t know the plot of the game. It’s described as you controlling Daniel Lamb, a tortured man who wakes in a daze in a terrible mental institution and proceeds through 15 missions, skulking through red-light districts and graveyards, finding hiding places in shadows and then creeping carefully enough to execute a stream of hoodlums and police officers, all of whom seem unnaturally hostile. Lamb is aided by the cajoling of Leo Kasper, a man who is always nearby but seldom gets his own hands bloody. The mystery of who Daniel and Leo are and what has put them in this situation propel the action of the game.
Watch how the game begins…
