Sunday, September 23, 2007

MANHUNT

The 31 October sees the release of Manhunt 2, the second release of the controverisal Manhunt game series created by Rockstar Games. The Manhunt game series revolves around a graphically violent narritive where you play as a character who must survive planned carnage set up by 'the director' (owner of a Snuff Porn distribution company) by performing executions on gang members. The degree of violence in which you perform each execution gains you more or less points; for example a plastic bag usability for execution ranges from strangling the viction to pulling it over his head and performing funky move in which breaks the gang members neck.

Controversity has surrounded the manhunt games series ever since arrival on the market in 2003. It has been banned, criticised and even linked to a murder of 14 year old Stefan Pakeerah in England.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Leblanc

British, New Zealand and Australian ratings authorities all banned Manhunt and it looks as though the same will happen to Manhunt 2, however they still seem to allow films such as the Saw 1,2 and 3 and Hostel to be viewed in our cinemas. To me the sadistic violence inherent in both Saw and Hostel would worry me more, then the cartoon violence within Manhunt gameplay. The higher truth modality within films such as Saw and Hostel of whether such a sadistic piece of violence is realistic does not come into effect as much within gaming.

However is this all controversy and publicity on the game really going to stop gamers from playing it? Or is it only going to increase the curiosity of a wider range of gamers to see what the hell all this public outcry is about? the media has really saved Rockstar Games a heap of money on advertising, for the amount of primetime exposure their game has received on all forms of media mediums.

2 Comments:

Blogger rainman said...

i totally agree. I have played manhunt and it disturbed me far less than any of the saw movies.

September 23, 2007 at 9:49 PM  
Blogger Hannah said...

Simply to add to the debate regarding the controversy -

Manhunt 2 was originally given a restricted rating in the United States. However the producers took the game away and made changes which allowed the game to fall into the M rating. This allowed the distribution of the game within all major retailers.

These alterations do not take away from the fact that video games that are violent or sadistic do not change, only become more psychological. This is not ideal, as the producers are only becoming smarter and not really dumbing down anything at all.

September 23, 2007 at 10:41 PM  

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