Rockstar’s Most Controversial Game, Manhunt 2, Turns 18

Manhunt 2 marks its 18 year anniversary today.

The Most Controversial Game Ever Made?

We put that header in the title for a reason. Manhunt 2 earns this distinction over all the Grand Theft Auto games, other infamous violent games like Mortal Kombat, deep cuts like Chiller and Custer’s Revenge, even more modern titles like 2018’s Agony.

Manhunt 2 was denied classification in the UK, received an Adults-Only rating from the ESRB, and is banned in Germany and Malaysia to this day.

That Adults Only rating was equivalent to a ban in the US, because no console company or game retailer was willing to sell or distribute games with that rating. Rockstar would make changes themselves so that they could get the rating down to M for Mature.

It eventually made its way to the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo Wii in 2007. But truth be told, it was all for nothing.

What Even Was Manhunt 2?

The Manhunt games were stealth games were you played characters in unusual scenarios that allowed them to kill other people.

In the first Manhunt, you were a death row inmate forced to participate in making a snuff film. In Manhunt 2, you play a mental asylum inmate with amnesia named Daniel Lamb.

Lamb escapes the asylum with the help of a fellow inmate named Leo Kasper. Lamb and Kasper then try to figure out why you were in asylum, while escaping a mysterious organization named The Project.

Expanding from Manhunt 2, Lamb can melee enemies, and even shoot them down. But most of the game still consists of him skulking in shadows to kill enemies.

Sometimes you can use weapons to pull off violent executions. It was these executions that made the game so controversial, so Rockstar blurred them in the final game.

The Other Reason You Can’t Buy Manhunt 2 Today

Obviously, a game that faced this much controversy will be hard to sell even today. We can imagine a store like Zoom Platform would be willing to take it, but there’s another reason Take-Two hasn’t touched the IP since.

Manhunt 2 is also widely regarded as one of Rockstar’s worst games. It received MetaCritic scores of 67 on the PlayStation 2, 69 on the PlayStation Portable, 62 on the Nintendo Wii. MetaCritic didn’t tally enough reviews for a PC metascore.

The censorship was hardly the worst thing about the game either. Reviewers complained about poor controls, especially for its shooting, a forgettable story, and a lack of polish from Rockstar in general.

The only legal versions of the game out there are of course on older consoles, with varying rarity. There is allegedly an ‘Adults-Only’ version of the game in circulation, out in the black market. But it is not worth the risk to satiate your curiosity about this clunker because it is certainly no hidden gem.