Manhunt 2… Rockstars already heavily censored “murder simulation” game was once again BANNED in England despite its “M” rating that it finally received after blurring and blacking out the violence for the most part.

Before the re-tooling of the game and subsequent neutering of it, Manhunt 2 was banned in every country and givin an AO rating which caused all major retailers to openly scream that they won’t carry it… so the game went through a process of ‘moral cleansing’ and got an M rating… however England isn’t buying it…

David Cooke, Director of the BBFC said:“We recognise that the distributor has made changes to the game, but we do not consider that these go far enough to address our concerns about the original version. The impact of the revisions on the bleakness and callousness of tone, or the essential nature of the gameplay, is clearly insufficient. There has been a reduction in the visual detail in some of the ‘execution kills’, but in others they retain their original visceral and casually sadistic nature.

We did make suggestions for further changes to the game, but the distributor has chosen not to make them, and as a result we have rejected the game on both platforms. The decision on whether or not an appeal goes ahead lies with the distributor.”

So the moral police of England tell us flat out that despite them ruining the game to begin with, that they want it to be less sadistic and evil.

Nice.

The problem is though the gameplay is horribly affected by the censoring of the kills. It was made so that the more time and effort you put into the executions of the kills the more viceral and violent they were. Sure you’re put in a lot more danger by sneaking slowly up behind someone to cut their head off… but it was part of the strategy of the game…it was shocking, disturbing, violent, and amazingly fun… now the harder, more brutal kills get blurred and fade to black which completely kills the point of the game to begin with.

I’m glad we live in a society that can tell us what is and is not right for us… and frankly whats the difference between M (which is 17+) and AO (which is 18+)

Don’t you love it?