The highly controversial Manhunt 2 was recently hacked revealing its true, uncut form.

Let me give you some background as to what has been going on with this game. Manhunt 2 is noted to be the most controversial video game in the history of the industry. Why? Well, the aim of the game is to kill. While this is nothing new, Manhunt 2 goes above and beyond to focus on the game’s violence factor. While still in production, the ESRB gave the title an Adults Only (AO) rating, rendering it useless as Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony do not publish AO games on their systems. Rockstar was forced to rework the game until it was given a Mature (M) rating. Of course the game then became 100x more interesting. It’s considerably rare to ever come across an AO rated game — needless to say, fans wanted the uncensored version. And they got it. Much like Grand Theft Auto’s Hot Coffee incident, modifications were made to the game’s image itself to disable the censors. While this only holds true for the PSP version [as of right now], it’s still a very significant event.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Rockstar knew this was going to happen. I’d put money on it. After pushing to allow the game to be published as an ‘art form’ and failing to do so, why wouldn’t Rockstar make it easily alterable? The hype that the game racked up was unbelievable — all because it had originally received an AO rating. The executions within the game were the prime reason the ESRB deemed it unacceptable. They were just too real. One could see without much effort that Rockstar made Manhunt 2 so violent solely for shock value. You can see for yourself via this video if you don’t believe me. Before watching, however, I must warn you: this is not for the faint of heart. Although it’s not the worst thing in the world, it’s still pretty brutal. Watch the video [here].

While watching the above video, I couldn’t help but think to myself how someone could agree to develop such a game. Rockstar’s staff must be pretty messed up. While I’m all for freedom of the press, Manhunt 2 is just plain unruly. It’s one thing to add violence to a game, but to make it the main source of entertainment — that’s just damn impractical. Jim Sterling from Destructoid put it best:

It’s dreary, it’s drab and it’s far too real. It’s downright creepy.

While some may find violent videogames to be tons o’ fun (I, personally, do not), Manhunt 2 just goes beyond what is considered acceptable in regard to the overall industry.