As the October release date slowly creeps ever so closer, a select few of us have been quietly keeping tabs on Rockstar’s controversial Manhunt sequel on the Wii, waiting for word of exactly how toned down the finished game is going to be. According to a comparison by Matt Casamassina of IGN, it’s nothing to take to the streets and riot about. As Matt puts it, the AO and M-rated games are surprisingly similar, minus a testicle or two:
“When we first wrote about Manhunt 2, we referenced a particularly nasty death sequence, in which Danny could use a pair of pliers to literally rip the testicles off a hunter. That murder has been completed removed from the updated build of the game. Not a big deal for us, as it only amounts to one kill out of dozens.”
Not to usher in a dose of buzzkill to those of you that looked forward to a few good rounds of testicular torture, but I don’t think any of us are going to miss that aspect of the game a whole heck of a lot — unless you happen to be an estranged wife on the downswing of a pretty nasty divorce. The rest of us could probably do without. On a more sour note, there is one thing they mentioned in the preview that does sound like it could be a detractor of an otherwise “interesting” game. It sounds like Rockstar decided that introducing a little blurriness is the best way to get the game past the critics. Question is, does it detract from the gameplay, or are some things just better left unseen?
“The biggest and most disappointing change relates to the major death strikes. In the AO-rated build of Manhunt 2, we could clearly see these over-the-top and horrific animations. In the M-rated version, Rockstar has added both an extreme blur effect and in most cases darkened the graphics so that it is nearly impossible to make any sense of what is going on. Players will be able to see character movement, blood splatters, and sometimes they may catch a glimpse of an identifiable action, but mostly it’s guesswork – a garbled, motiony mess that’s far less satisfying.”
On the plus side, IGN reports that everything else about the game seems to have remained unchanged, and they still feel that Manhunt 2 is as fun and as gross as ever, regardless of the edits.
[Thanks Justin]
