Just in case you haven't been informed, the BBFC has rejected a revised version of Rockstar's Manhunt 2 title. The game was originally denied a certificate back in June and it is likely the publisher will now continue its appeal through the Video Appeals Council.
Explaining the decision David Cooke, Director of the BBFC, said:
"We recognise that the distributor has made changes to the game, but we do not consider that these go far enough to address our concerns about the original version. The impact of the revisions on the bleakness and callousness of tone, or the essential nature of the gameplay, is clearly insufficient. There has been a reduction in the visual detail in some of the 'execution kills', but in others they retain their original visceral and casually sadistic nature.
We did make suggestions for further changes to the game, but the distributor has chosen not to make them, and as a result we have rejected the game on both platforms. The decision on whether or not an appeal goes ahead lies with the distributor.
This re-emphasis on concerns regarding the "bleakness and callousness of tone" will be of most interest to those watching the case for its freedom of speech connotations. The focus on the feel of the game rather than any specific moments of violence, takes the decision further into the realms of subjectivity, which many will find unacceptable. What criteria are laid out before BBFC employees in order to judge such ethereal elements as tone and atmosphere? And surely, the often-cited torture porn superstars Hostel, Saw and Captivity must also have been considered for their bleakness - yet they strode through the censor's lair and into our cinemas.
Manhunt 2 is a difficult game to defend. But then, very few anti-censorship battles (at least in the West) are fought over universally acknowledged masterpieces. They're taken up over the scrappy, offbeat, sometimes repugnant works operating out of the frayed edges of society. As an eighties hip-hop fanatic I remember the furor surrounding 2 Live Crew's hideous album As Nasty As They Wanna Be, which was banned in Florida after being declared 'obscene' by a high court judge. Music critics and other artists went though a crisis of conscience - should they support the ban due to the album's deeply violent and misogynistic imagery, or should they defend the group against censorship?
Videogames are probably where rap was in the late eighties, in terms of general acceptance of, and attitudes to, the format. Manhunt 2 is this generation's Nasty as they Wanna Be - or at least it would like to be. I suppose the question is, is anyone up for the fight? Does anyone care about games like they care about music - even crap, hateful music? We may soon find out.
.jpg?w=600)
