Manhunt 2 gets green light for UK release
Axes controllers at the ready
Manhunt 2 has finally won a UK rating, allowing the violent videogame to be sold in Britain legally.
Manhunt 2: We can almost taste its UK arrival.
The Video Appeals Committee (VAC) this week ruled that the slasher game must be granted an 18 rating, clearing the way for the title to be sold to buyers of that age or above.
The game’s developer, Rockstar, has been wrangling with the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) for months over whether the title is too gory to be released. The BBFC believes Manhunt 2 is too violent to be safely played by children or "vulnerable adults", so should not be allowed on sale at all. The organisation took its fight to the VAC and, later, to the English High Court in order to get its way.
A spokeswoman for the BBFC told Register Hardware today that, unsurprisingly, the body doesn’t agree with the final ruling, but that there is nothing more it can do.
Rockstar said that the VAC’s final decision recognises that “Manhunt 2 is well within the bounds established by other 18-rated entertainment”. The game is already available in the US, where it carries a Mature rating, marking it as suitable for players aged 17 or over.
It’s not yet known when the game will hit UK shops.
COMMENTS
Manhunt 2...
... < SAW
Seriously, the guy who made that film is wrong. The game is just boring.
I have no friends...
...I have no friends Giles...I've been playing Battlefield for 6 years now and have managed not to knife, ex-pack, grenade or shoot anyone on my commute to work.
Just because the graphics are more realistic I don't think it is more likely to turn someone into a psychopath. Films look real after all.
In my opinion games in the 80's and early 90's which had no ratings and poor graphics are just as likely to have turned someone in to a rabid slashing maniac as modern games. You had to use your imagination after all to get through the crude graphics.
@Giles Jones
The only thing you'd lose when playing Manhunt 2 is however many minutes you bother to play it for before falling asleep. You can never get that time back you know?
"A normal sociable person who plays such a game for a few hours a week won't be affected. A person who has no friends, stops in and plays games all the time might be affected."
Your argument lacks any kind of reasoning. I used to (I stress 'used' to) be a hardcore gamer and as you delicately put, stopped in and had no friends (offline anyway) but was never tempted by games I played to replicate my actions in real life. The simple fact is that I am not mentally unhinged, so I have no difficulty separating games (or for that matter tv/film) from reality.
The type you refer to are the same type of people who send death threats to actors playing certain characters in soaps, because they hold them responsible for the actions of their character. The people who cannot separate one world from another because their brain is incapable of doing so.
It's basically the standard argument that people use to blame tv/film/games for all of societies violent problems, but the simple and unavoidable fact is that the problems we have in society are a lot more serious and complicated.
Not that I disagree about Manhunt 2, but for different reasons. I'd simply like it to disappear on the basis that it will be rubbish, which in fact it probably will very soon after release.
Giles Jones
So, presumably you support banning anything which might skew the outlook of an obsessed, misanthropic loner?
I look forward to the illegalization of... well, pretty much everything. Really well-though-out point of view there.
The fact is that it doesn't *matter* if video games - or, for that matter, any other form of expression, entertainment, or *thought* - might cause an individual to go nuts. We, as humans, have the right to freedom of thought and expression - not freedom only insofar as it is compatible with the most sensitive and violence-prone among us. If we go down that road, we'll *all* end up in rubber rooms.
