A year after Manhunt 2 was released in North America, it’s finally making its way to the U.K., though even more censored than in America. The game originally got an AO rating in North America and was denied a rating at all in the U.K.. After censoring some of the more violent scenes (apparently by adding seizure-inducing special effects that caused the player’s eyes to bleed, which is actually much more disturbing than badly-animated polygonal decapitations) the game managed to snag an M rating in North America, but was still denied a rating by the BBFC. Then some other stuff happened.

Anyway, the game eventually launched in North America to a resounding “meh.” That didn’t stop Rockstar, though. Oh my, no. They’ve managed to get a “heavily reworked” version of the game a BBFC rating, god bless ‘em. I don’t know how they could make the violence any less visible. Unless whenever you try to castrate someone with a sickle, your Wii actually ejects the disc so forcefully it flies out and hits you in the face, permanently blinding you. Which, again, seems a lot worse than actually seeing the castration in the first place.

IGN

It has begun. You may or may not have heard that the upcoming Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will allow you to sell drugs. Well, someone knows and, according to UK newspaper “The Sun,” they’re outraged.

There are a few lines in the article that are likely to make any gamer with any experience following the industry raise an eyebrow or two, such as the very first paragraph, which refers to the Nintendo DS as a “family friendly” handheld, as if there has never been an M rated DS game before. It also claims that “Experts predict the final edition is unlikely to feature explicit criminality.” That’s like saying the next Dead or Alive game is unlikely to feature breasts. Mm-hmm.

The Sun
via Game Politics

While most of us were watching some of our predictions being shattered during the live Nintendo Conference this morning, we seen a logo that gave some of us a shock.  While no actual game footage was shown, Nintendo announced that there is an upcoming GTA game for the Nintendo DS called Chinatown Wars.

Considering the graphical limitations of the Nintendo DS handheld itself, I can’t help but wonder if this game itself will use a scaled down PS2 version of the game, or will showcase a new type of GTA gameplay. Does anybody have any predictions?