Manhunt 2 rated 18+ in US
Slasher game maker wanted 17+
Rockstar Games' Manhunt 2 may have been banned for sale in Britain, but it has been rated Adults Only (AO) in the US, the developer's publisher, Take-Two Interactive, has confirmed.
Take-Two said it believed an M rating - for Mature - was a more appropriate classification, and said it was "exploring its options with regard to the rating of Manhunt 2" - language, we'd say, that indicates it may appeal against the AO rating.
The AO's rating's age band is 18 and up, while M's is 17-plus, so there's not exactly a lot in it.
The US rating comes courtesy of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), an industry-founded body that rates games in order to provide US consumers with guidance on what age range a given title is suitable for. Unlike the UK's rating system, overseen by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the US scheme is not backed by legislation to prevent, say, a retailer selling an adult-oriented game to a minor.
The ESRB's decision was welcomed by the US Center for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), which had been lobbying the organisation to give the game an AO rating because "in Manhunt 2, players can saw their enemies’ skulls in half; mutilate them with an axe; castrate them with a pair of pliers; and kill them by bashing their heads into an electrical box, where it is blown apart by a power surge. On Wii, players will not merely punch buttons or wield a joystick, but will actually act out this violence...
"...One review describes using a saw blade to 'cut upward into a foe's groin and buttocks, motioning forward and backward with the Wii remote as you go'."
Manhunt 2 is due to go on sale in the US on 10 July for the Sony PlayStation 2 and the Wii.
COMMENTS
Sounds good..
.... but i'll only play it if it lets me throw people in a basement, whilst waggling my wii controller, as it rubs the lotion on its skin....
This game sounds awesome
God I hope they release it in the states
Isn't this the responsibility of the parents???
I think we need to form GASP (Gamers Against Stupid Parents) to ensure that parents are responsible and stop pushing the responsibility of protecting their kids off. I think it is stupid that parents complain about their kids (under 17) getting games that aren't made for them if in most cases the parents buy them for their kids. I think parents should be prosecuted for contributing to the delinquency of minors if their kids get these games and become viuolent. The ESRB has screwed me out of my right as an adult to play whatever games I want to too many times already. Make the parents responsible and stop trampling on my rights! AO games are usually hard to find and buy because a lot of retailers are too scared to carry them.
Beh!
They should just make the blood blue. Then it would be ok. Kind of like how Call of Duty 3 was rated T for teen because you could shooy a guy directly in the face but there is no blood.
Part of me thinks that killing someone without the graphic screaming/bleeding is kind of unrealistic and might lead to people actually doing it because they don't get the severity of actually killing someone. Maybe if a war game had people running out of ammo, cowering in holes, pleading to spare their lives, the game would be a bit more realistic. As a kid we some friends of mine got a hold of "Faces of Death" and we got to watch all sorts of people dying. All of us who weren't screwballs to begin with found a lot of the scenes extremely disturbing. If you're mimicking what you see in a video game at age 13, something is already f'ed up with your head and Rockstar and the community at large isn't responsible for sheltering you from life.
Rockstar - If you want someone to help port your game to the PC gratis, let me know. I'd do it just to do it. Maybe we could even release it as a "software application" and f the whole ESRB.
