Rockstar’s Manhunt 2 has been rejected for a second time by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), despite the developer submitting an edited version to the company for approval following its ban in June 2007.
"We recognise that the distributor has made changes to the game, but we do not consider that these go far enough to address our concerns about the original version," commented BBFC Director, David Cooke.
"The impact of the revisions on the bleakness and callousness of tone, or the essential nature of the gameplay, is clearly insufficient.”
"There has been a reduction in the visual detail in some of the ‘execution kills’, but in others they retain their original visceral and casually sadistic nature”, he added.
The company added that any appeal to the decision is now squarely in the hands of the games publisher, Take Two.
The title fared better overseas, where an edited version of Manhunt 2 was approved by the ESRB, granting it a Mature (M) rating for regional distribution in North America later this month.
Stay tuned for more developments as they break.