First Thirty: Manhunt 2 (PC)

By Joe Haygood | November 9, 2009

With the consoles never allowing anything stamped with an AO rating to be played, Manhunt 2 underwent a few changes to remove some of the gore that had been put in the game by Rockstar Games.  Step forward one year, and with little fanfare or advertising, and Manhunt 2 has been ported over to the PC, and this time, it is the full vision from Rockstar, garnering an AO rating from the ESRB.  I decided to jump on the game when I first heard it would be on Direct2Drive, and I scored a copy of the original Manhunt in the process.  This is my first thirty minutes playing Manhunt 2.

Rockstar pulls no punches with this version of Manhunt 2.  As I loaded up the game, I was presented with a tutorial to show me how the finishing and execution moves worked.  It is a black screen that is spattered with blood, while you hear a scream or grunt with each move.  It is somewhat disturbing, but it does show you all the moves.  From there, you jump into the first level, which has you in the middle of a full scale riot at a mental institution.  Within two minutes of being in this wonderland of hell, you start to see the violence that will be shown through the game.

My first execution has me stabbing someone in the throat with a syringe.  The blood squirted across the screen while the syringe tore open a gaping wound on the man’s throat.  You are left with a bloodied carcas, and splatter from the damage all over your hands.  Kills only got more gruesome as I found a sledgehammer, which splits open skulls like melons, all in brutal detail.

As I wrapped up my first thirty minutes by escaping the asylum, I did want to note that there is a bevy of graphical options you can use to tinker with the look of the game.  The controls also seem optimized for the mouse, although there is no mouse look up and down.  This was rather jarring, as there were times I would have liked to have looked up or down when seeing a certain event or message on a wall. 

Look for a few review soon on Manhunt 2, and yes, it really does earn its AO rating.  Check out some of the screens below for more tales from the carnage.