'Manhunt 2' bloodied, unbowed by M rating

— -- The Holy Grail of video games has been to create an experience that, like the best movies, can make you cry. With its new Manhunt 2, Rockstar Games wanted instead to make players wince in horror.

But the industry's rating board winced first: Manhunt 2 received a dreaded AO — Adults Only — in June, equivalent to an X-rating for a movie. So the developer's dilemma became how to change it enough to satisfy the board but retain its (literal) cutting edge.

Recently, a three-man team from Rockstar offered a preview of the finished game, now rated Mature for ages 17-up (due Oct. 31, $30-$40) along with some insight into the approval process. "We were planning an M-rated game," says Rockstar's Rodney Walker. After the changes, "it's still Manhunt," he says.

The first Manhunt, in 2003, was rated M. That game, which sold about 1 million copies, put players in the role of a death row escapee hunted in a gruesome contest, orchestrated by an unseen director, in which the methods of murder escalated.

Manhunt 2's story line has psychiatric patient Daniel Lamb escaping during a power outage. He's an amnesiac who has been experimented on and must go on a killing spree — using weapons, from hypodermic needles to an ax — to get out of the ward. His quest to uncover his identity then leads to encounters with sadistic killers and sexual deviants.

Late last year — about the time the Wii game system was being launched — Rockstar contacted Nintendo about designing Manhunt 2 for the Wii, because its motion-sensitive controller system promised unparalleled immersion into the game as compared with the usual button-based controllers.

The first hint of trouble for Manhunt 2 came from the British Board of Film Classification (which also handles games). The board banned the game on June 19, citing "sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game." (Rockstar is appealing the decision.) The last game the board banned was pedestrian hit-and-run Carmageddon in 1997.