Back when the original Manhunt appeared, my first thought was that it was just an attempt by Rockstar to try and make a little more money with its GTA game engine and maybe throw in a nice story. It turned out to be a gory and ugly game about directed stealthy killing. The Running-Man-esque plot intrigued me, but the promise of being urged on to do special kill types by an unseen voice really made me uncomfortable, so I never played it.

N’Gai Croal did play it, however, and he liked it. He pointed out something that I’d never seen before or even considered that should be taken into account with the new Manhunt 2 rating controversy. Manhunt had two levels to it. On the surface level it’s about killing, but there was actually a statement the game was making. This isn’t Robotron with piano wire where you go around slaying people willy-nilly.

He put it very well (after the jump):

“The … reason I was so taken with Manhunt … : the man who has rescued you from execution and brought you to the abandoned town of Carcer City, where you must kill or be killed, all for his amusement. … [H]e gives you orders through your earpiece. He tells you where to go. He tells you what to do. He tells you what minimum level of violence he’ll accept in the surveillance camera-meets-snuff film killings that you must commit for his pleasure before he will open the doors or gates that will let you proceed to the next area. He sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t he? His name? The Designer–I mean, the Director. Yes, at the heart of Manhunt is a brilliantly twisted joke. Rockstar grabs the translucent veil of mildly disreputable innocuousness in which most action titles cloak themselves, tears it open and exposes the sinister truth that lies just beneath the surface: in an awful lot of videogames, the developer and the publisher are asking you to virtually kill an awful lot of virtual enemies, over and over and over again. Manhunt is just more honest about this than most, and cleverly, brutally so to boot.”

The critics didn’t really pan Manhunt, either. Gamespot handed it an 8.4 Great rating, Gamespy 4/5 stars, and IGN an 8.5. Would I play this game now? I doubt it. My tolerance for gruesome games is lower than ever.

As for Manhunt 2 and its rating issues, N’Gai takes the position that it’s not the actual types of violence that should get an AO rating, it’s why the violence is performed.

From Newsweek