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PlayStation (Games) Entertainment Games

Manhunt Delivers Stealthy Shock For Rockstar 68

Posted by simoniker from the pushing-the-envelope dept.
Thanks to U.S. Playstation Magazine for its review of Rockstar North's ultraviolent PS2 stealth action title Manhunt, which it rates as "a solidly constructed third-person affair." The reviewer also explains the most unique feature: "As an interesting gimmick, Manhunt supports the USB headset. With the headset, the Director's comments [as voiced by Brian Cox] are heard only through the earpiece." GameSpot also largely rates the title positively, approving of the "tension and grim satisfaction" in the stealth action gameplay, but highlighting the ways the "game unflinchingly depicts intense graphic violence" as the Director "captures on video the bloody executions" carried out by your in-game character. This leads Playstation Magazine to question the ESRB rating system, suggesting that if Manhunt "didn't merit an AO rating, then I don't know what will", while IGN PS2 simply says, with regard to the gore: "No videogames to date have gone as far."
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Manhunt Delivers Stealthy Shock For Rockstar More

Manhunt Delivers Stealthy Shock For Rockstar

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  • Title (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 20, 2003 @07:47AM (#7518643)
    So am I the only one who read the title and thought this would be an article about Michael Jackson?
    • Haha, nope.

      Am I the only one secretly amused by that whole affair?

      • Re:Title (Score:4, Funny)

        by Acidic_Diarrhea ( 641390 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @01:56PM (#7521383) Homepage Journal
        Yup, nothing funnier than a little kid getting molested; high comedy there.

        You remember when all those priests were getting busted? You must have been in stiches!

        • To be fair, it shouldn't surprise anyone. The man is a freak. Anyone who let his child be alone with MJ is an unfit parent. Ditto any parent who leaves his child alone with a priest.

        • I was cracking up when all those priests were getting busted because it was funny. It was even funnier when the churched turned around and pretended that it wasn't happening and refused to take action. It is comedy just like the Michael Jackson thing is comedy. Its dark comedy, but still comedy.

          Keep your morals to yourself and stop trying to force them on other people.

    • Re:Title (Score:2, Funny)

      by MarkGriz ( 520778 )
      My thoughts exactly. Although a more appropriate title would be "Manhunt Delivers Stealthy Shock For Former Rockstar"
    • No, that was my first thought too. But Jackson was never a "rockstar" in my opinion, Eddie Van Halen notwithstanding.

      And I'm amused how he's still referred to as the "King of Pop" although that title hasn't fit him for at least 15 years or so.

      Of course, since I stick to the likes of the Flower Kings, Spock's Beard, and Glass Hammer, I find popular music to be almost completely irrelevant.

  • About the AO bit... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bagels ( 676159 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @08:30AM (#7518768)
    They mostly define AO (Adults Only)-rated games as games that would involve nudity or sexual acts - a few hentai games from Japan would warrant this, but not much else. As it is, though the game is brutally violent, it's pretty much the same stuff that a 17 year old could see in some of the more violent R-rated movies. The problem is that people have become used to allowing under-17-year-olds to play M-rated games; in this case, the game is clearly *not* targetted at that demographic, though I'm sure that I'm about to be shocked when I hear some ten year olds talking about that awesome cleaver murder they committed in Manhunt...

    • Re:About the AO bit... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'll be the one to say it, it's that puritanical American society thing. Violence isn't as bad as sex

    • Re:About the AO bit... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by martinde ( 137088 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @09:32AM (#7519004) Homepage
      Sadly, I think you're right. I've never understood these moral judgements in American society (I can't speak for other societies) - sex is "worse" than violence. Excuse me? Sex is a normal part of a healthy (and sexually mature) human being's life. Violence is not a healthy part of anyone's life - even if you want to argue we're hardwired for it in same manner as we are for sex. If we want to repress instincts, let's start with violence, not sex, thank you very much.
      • True, but in their defense, teen pregnancy is a much more common problem than teen murderous rampages. Plus, even kids know that violence is bad in real life, while sex feels good and isn't even illegal.

        You get what I'm trying to say? They think that kids are more likely to emulate sex than killing.
        • > You get what I'm trying to say? They think that kids are more likely to emulate sex than killing.

          I definitely get what you're saying, I agree to some extent. But I think that some fairly large amount of teen sex is inevitable; for thousands of years we had a mean longevity of something like 28 years, so we evolved to have a serious sex drive starting at puberty. Our societal norms of getting married later and later goes against our innate instincts. Instincts are very hard to repress - not impossib

    • Re:About the AO bit... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by h0mer ( 181006 )
      I'm hoping that this game will be the one that does exactly what you're talking about, treating M-rated games the same as R-rated movies. Although if Grand Theft Auto (just look at the name) didn't do it, I doubt more violence will.

      What's it going to take? It makes me sick when I go to a local gaming store and see 4-5 13 year olds playing Counter-Strike. I played Doom when I was that age, but I see a substantial difference in shooting an Imp and shooting a counter-terrorist's head.

      As if network TV, Eminem
      • but I see a substantial difference in shooting an Imp and shooting a counter-terrorist's head.

        actually there little difference between clicking a mouse with crosshairs over a bunch of pixels and clicking a mouse with crosshairs over a erm... bunch of pixels nicely rendered ;-)

        shooting imps and counter-terrorist both involve guns. That's where the substatial difference is.

        Eminem

        Have you actually listened to his lyrics or have you heard the hype. Listen, understand and think again.

        Don't get me wro

        • Imps don't exist in real life. Men dressed in armor and guns do. That's the difference I was putting forth.

          As far as Eminem goes, I've listened to all of his records and I wonder how bible-thumpers haven't been able to destroy him yet. Just a couple of songs worth noting:

          Bonnie & Clyde '97: Raps to his daughter about killing her mother and taking her away with him.

          Guilty Conscience: He recommends that someone hold up a liquor store, that someone date rapes a drunk girl, and that someone kills their w
          • And the distinction I am making is that using a mouse is not the same as using a gun.

            With regards to the lyrics, I haven`t heard Bonnie and Clyde (to be fair), but guilty conscience is not about him recommending that someone goes and does these things. The song as a whole is about the internal dialogue that (may) take place within the protagonists, eddies, stans and gradys, mind. Both for and against the course of action.

            You're putting the cart before the horse. There was vioent crime long before viole
            • Anyway this is all horribly off-topic, the game is AO, and you kids shouldn`t be playing all these fun games, back to your bibles, and read up on stoning immoral women.

              The game isn't AO, which is why this is on-topic and was brought up in the first place.

              In the US, violence may raise a hair once in a while, but sex is just out, simple as that. AO gets reserved almost entirely to sexual situations in games rather than being applied to extreme violence. In a movie it doesn't take an extreme amount of nudit
    • If you RTFAs, OPM points out that the game includes sodomizing someone with a crowbar. Doesn't that count as sexual? Or is it OK because cops do it to criminals?
    • Just a guess, but wouldn't they have a hard time getting advertising space in both print and on TV with an AO rating. You see M rated games advertised all over. With an AO-rated game, what would that give them for marketing outlets? Playboy? Spike TV?
  • Really ? What about the adventures "Phantasmagoria" and "Post Mortem"?

  • It's not a movie, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bottlerocket ( 605232 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @09:56AM (#7519139) Homepage
    "As you go into battle, just remember what the MPAA says: Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as nobody says any naughty words!"

  • AO is as pointless a rating as NC-17 (Score:3, Informative)

    by AtaruMoroboshi ( 522293 ) <AnthonyNO@SPAMoverwhelmed.org> on Thursday November 20, 2003 @11:56AM (#7520241) Homepage

    No major film is released as NC-17. Kill Bill Vol 1 had a long scene edited to be in Black & White soley to avoid an NC-17.

    No major game meant to be profitable is going to be released as AO. The same religious conservatives and "watchdog" groups that threaten to boycott any theaters showing NC-17 films will raise a rukus over any AO game.

    Sad though, as in principle I firmly believe in ratings like AO and NC-17. Occasionally, I want to go to see movies intended for adults only, such as Crash, which was NC-17 and recieved a limited release.

    .
    • Crash was Ballard's worst work - why would you want to see that nonsense?

      And, in the interest of fairness, conservative groups do threaten boycotts but so do very liberal groups. Dr. Laura's television show was hurt, in part, because of the boycotts brought on by pro-homosexual groups. I think the idea of organized boycotts can have a time and place in order to bring about change but when you use it to silence people whose opinions you disagree with - that's just hurting society. From a conservative group,

      • I realize that this is off topic but I find it difficult to understand how you can "misunderstand" liberals in such a way. Liberals accept and value diversity as equality, that is, respectful diversity. Anti-homosexuals, which are bigots, are clearly not respective of diversity. Hence they do not fit. I don't think liberals would have issues with anti-homsexuals if they weren't spouting things like: "They shouldn't have the same rights as us." and "They aren't natural." But anti-homosexuals do which would
    • The best part, though, is that the NC-17 versions of films are usually restored for DVD 'unrated' releases.

      Frankly, if a scene can cause a rating drop from NC-17 to R just because they change it from colour to black & white, it just shows that the rating was unjustified to begin with.

      Theaters are usually good enough about enforcing their own rules regarding ratings (and the age restrictions for those ratings), so I don't really see the point of people protesting, and I've never really seen it happen f
      • Theaters are usually good enough about enforcing their own rules regarding ratings (and the age restrictions for those ratings)

        At least here in New Jersey, theaters don't care about age restrictions. The only time they ever cared was when the South Park movie came out. That movie caused such a huge outcry that theaters had to pretend to care for a while. Once that movie left theaters, they stopped caring again.

  • Didn't the latest Rainbow 6 game on the Xbox do the 'use the headset as a headset,' and also let you give verbal commands to your AI squadmates?

    • Yes, and SOCOM on PS2 before that. Socom was, I believe, the first game to support such on a console. It was definitely the first to have a high accuracy rate, in any case.
  • ...do we really need this kind of "entertainment"?

    I don't have anything against videogame violence when it makes sense, or even when it doesn't make sense but is done in an over-the-top comic book style, but a game where you sodomize your enemy with a crowbar while a freak with a videocamera tapes it? What next, one where the objective is to kidnap and rape as many women as possible?

    This is a new low. I love the GTA series (one of the over-the-top comic book variety I mentioned), but I am unlikely to buy
    • ...any form of entertainment that allows you to experience something that you've never experienced before automatically has value. You may not personally appreciate or approve of the experience that it offers, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have merit.

      I happen to enjoy movies and games with gritty content. They give me a window into a dark world that I'll thankfully never intersect with in real life, but that I still find conceptually intriguing. That being said, I can't play Manhunt for extende

      • ...any form of entertainment that allows you to experience something that you've never experienced before automatically has value.

        I disagree. Would you buy my hypothetical kidnap-and-rape game for that same reason? Would you buy a game where the goal was to vivisect realistically-modelled babies? There are some things that simply have no inherent value to humanity, and I think that games like this fit into that category.

        I mean, you should clearly be skipping the Lord Of The Rings films because New Line
        • > Would you buy my hypothetical kidnap-and-rape game for that same reason? Would you buy a game where the goal was to vivisect realistically-modelled babies?

          If there were high-quality titles with strong gameplay that happened to veer into those areas, I wouldn't summarily reject them just because of their content. And even if the games that covered that material were crappy, I still think that the fact that they'd offer a unique experience (however grotesque) would give them some inherent value.

          For

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