Sweet merciful crap! Rockstar are cooking up trouble again with the announcement today that they’ve begun work on a sequel to MANHUNT. For those uninitiated, the controversial original revolved around a man on death row named James Earl Cash, sentenced to death by lethal injection due to a never explained yet grievous crime. An exceedingly wealthy former Hollywood director named Starkweather (voiced by Emmy Award winner and Golden Globe nominee Brian Cox), who runs a seedy community in an impoverished town named Carcer City, bribes the doctors to inject Cash with a powerful sedative instead.
The Director, as he likes to call himself, creates and distributes snuff films through a company named Valiant Video Enterprises. He sets up Cash as his latest star using the corrupt Carcer City police force, as well as his personal ‘Cerberus’ guards, to corral Cash into butchering Carcer’s local gangs on camera to make ‘quality’ violent, visceral, underground snuff films.
The game was also notorious for it’s violent kills referred to as ‘executions’, including lopping guys’ heads off with a cleaver in a less-than-humane fashion, garroting a guy so bad you also saw his head off, and even more gore for the sake of gore (plus a couple of references to horror movies like MOTEL HELL thrown in). The game also had a rather neat stealth component to it, yet many reviewers wouldn’t touch the game/badmouthed it because of the content.
Needless to say, the game was banned in many parts of the world (including getting bitched about by the Ontario government and classified as a movie, which is a joke in itself if you live there like myself and fellow gamer, Scott). Anyways, onto the news, which has the game expected for release this summer for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and the Wii (the first Rockstar game for Nintendo’s new console).
Rockstar has confirmed it as the debut title for Rockstar London, which is working in conjunction with Rockstar North, the studio responsible for the first game, and Rockstar Leeds. Rockstar Toronto is also getting into the act by handling development of the Wii version of the game. “With MANHUNT 2 we have tried to create a game that stays close to the original concept of chilling suspense and stealth, whilst pushing the game design and storytelling forward,” said Rockstar cofounder Sam Houser.
Needless to say, it’ll be interesting to hear more about this sick puppy as the release gets closer. For more info on the original, head to the Manhunt Uncut fansite.
What controversy?
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