Is Manhunt 2 the Most Violent Videogame Ever?

Oct. 30, 2007 — -- Your name is Daniel Lamb, and as you try to escape from the Dixmor Asylum for the Criminally Insane, you torture and kill various security officers and fellow inmates. You stab them in their eyes, set them on fire, strangle them with wire. You use hammers, chainsaws, guns. It is, as you yourself put it, hell.

So goes the premise of Rockstar Games' uber-violent videogame Manhunt 2, which -- before its Halloween released -- has reignited the debate over the impact of these games and their role in our broader, increasingly violent culture.

At a press conference in San Francisco, Calif., Tuesday, James Steyer, CEO of the children's advocacy group Common Sense Media, called Manhunt 2 "one of the most horrifically violent games that we've ever seen. It features a variety of different executions and is really a very, very violent almost unwatchable game."

Steyer said he "can not figure out how anybody would want to create that game and what went through their mind."

Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take-Two, issued a statement, saying "Manhunt 2 fits squarely within the horror genre and was created to be an entertainment experience specifically for those players mature enough to appreciate it." The company accused Common Sense of "misleading" parents by showing reporters scenes from the game that are "not in the M-rated version of the game we shipped this week. The content appears to be from an unreleased version of the game that was stolen from a partner in Europe."

Manhunt 2 had previously been rated "Adults Only," for players 18 and older, which would marginalize the game since many major retailers refused to sell games with that rating. Rockstar made some tweaks to the game -- removing a graphic scene of castration, for instance, and received a new rating of M -- for players 17 and up -- paving the way to the big-box stores like WalMart and Circuit City. Seth Schiesel, a culture writer for the New York Times, has played both games and suggests "99%" of the original version remains in the game.