• Posted October 7th, 2008 at 05:23 EDT by

And so a tortuous tale of censorship, sadism and ruddy great virtual chainsaws draws to a close. Rockstar Games' ultra-violent Manhunt 2 will be released for PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable on October 31 in the UK.

Rockstar's murderous brainchild was refused a rating twice by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) last year, on the grounds of "its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing." Yikes.

The final retail copy is the fruit of a lengthy court battle and numerous edits. The odds are it's essentially the same, censored version North Americans have been playing for a year now.

Thanks MCV.