ESRB stands for the Entertainment Software Rating Board -- they're the organization that assigns all the ratings to games, handing out E, T and M to all the games you play on your console and your computer. This week, they gave Manhunt 2 (Developed by Rockstar Games and published by Take-Two Interactive) an AO. AO stands for Adults Only, and it pretty much tombstones the game from being released, as no gaming console will release an AO game. (There are 31 games (since 1992) with Adult Only 18+ rating, and they're all for the PC)
Rockstar and Take-Two essentially have 30 days to clean up and make changes to Manhunt 2 to slide it under the 'M' rating.
An AO game is classified thusly:
Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content suitable only for adults. Titles in this category may include graphic depictions of sex and/or violence. Adults Only products are not intended for persons under the age of 18.
As far as I can tell, Manhunt 2 doesn't include sex, which means that this game must be graphically violent to have obtained this rating. I'm not a big fan of violent games, but I'm going to bet that there are games that are equally as violent that have managed 'M' ratings.
Since Take-two was the company that announced this pending AO rating, I highly suspect that this is partially a publicity stunt to raise sales of Manhunt 2 (this is Rockstar and Take-Two, the same people who sold millions upon millions of copies of Grand Theft Auto). This game is banned in the UK, and in it's current form will not be released in the U.S. These are two huge markets for Take-two, so I fully expect them to go back through and edit out some of the game to make it fit under the M-rating:
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.
I mean honestly, think about it -- in just about every shooter out there, you're given dangerous weapons, and when you die, you explode into giblets. A quick look at ESRB's listing of M games reveals a large share of them containing some of the following: "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Sexual Themes, Partial Nudity, Drug References", so it really puzzles me that one game out of the hundreds of games that are released annually can manage AO. It must be horrifically violent to have managed this -- far beyond that of splatterhouse gore. Still, time will tell what will become of Manhunt 2 -- one way or another, AO won't be the rating it'll be released with.
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