Manhunt 2 rating wank
Rockstar Games, home of the Grand Theft Auto franchise and Jack Thompson's most reliable meal ticket, is no stranger to controversy. If it's not the hidden "Hot Coffee" minigame with CJ and Woozie one of his girlfriends getting it on in GTA: San Andreas, it's a stock scandal at parent company Take-Two Interactive. This time around, the controversy is centered around recent actions being taken by game rating agencies in the UK and the US for the upcoming Manhunt 2 (planned for release on the Wii and PS2). The original Manhunt centered around the practice of making snuff films and was highly controversial, so these developments shouldn't have come as too much of a surprise.

Cheap Ass Gamer (aka CAG) is one of the more level-headed large gaming forums, but still gets wanky from time to time, especially when it comes to the actual practice of buying and selling games. Therefore, it comes as no surprise when Manhunt 2's ratings becomes a hot topic, with a fair number of SHAQ-FU emoticons (CAG's way of censoring "fuck") being thrown around.

The ESRB's rating of the game as "AO" (Adults Only) and the BBFC's banning the game for sale in the UK are the starting points of this particular thread. The thread starts out fairly normally, with people saying that its a shame, but also an inevitability considering how the first Manhunt game was received. However, things devolve once the word "censorship" begins being tossed around, and MarioColbert first points out that Nintendo doesn't support AO-rated games.

There's also suspicions of a PR conspiracy on Rockstar's part, comparisons drawn between games and movies, debate over what an AO rating means, discussion about Rockstar's relationship to Nintendo, and key points repeated over and over and over and over. And of course, Godwin's Law is violated.

There's a lot to go through here (17 pages worth as of this writing), and the splooge is still flowing...