I might buy it if it gets pretty good reviews, oy.

Put me in the 'Never planned to buy the game' category as well.

Personally, I think this speaks more to those of us at GP than gamers as a whole. Not all gamers are as well versed or up to date on things as those of us on gp tend to be. Not saying that it's not a good poll, just saying that it might be a bit hard to get an accurate guess of sales rates for Manhunt 2 from just those of us here.

Should be interesting on halloween

i never planned on purchasing manhunt in the first place, so any changes that were made were not of any consequence to my 'no' vote. i say that the question is flawed

Meh its my style of game I prefer FPS, or fantasy style 3rd person,modern settings for games even WW2 stuff is a turn off.

I don't care for Manhunt in any case.

I'm not much into gore for gore's sake.

Give me a game from the Silent Hill series anytime where the blood and disturbing images actually have a function.

I personaly think the poll lacked the opption "I never intended to buy manhunt 2"

A good idea for the poll would also be to ask why they are taking the action (buying/not buying because of the censorship?)

I was thinking the same thing when I saw the poll. I wouldn't buy Manhunt 2 period. Not that the poll is flawed, necessarily, but this happens all the time. Unless a poll is worded perfectly it fails to show the image of reality that it was designed to show.

I was never planning to buy it AO or not. I think the game is a terrible idea. I never bought the first one. SO I didn't vote because there was no never was option.

Well, quite frankly GP, I wasn't going to buy Manhunt 2 in the first place, it's just not my type of game.

Yet another vote for "I voted no, but it's nothing to do with toning it down." I've never liked a Rockstar game. I've simply never found one to be fun. I'd rather spend $135 on Nomad Soul and the World Eaters (huge collector's edition... I'm such a sucker) than $50 on Manhunt 2. One will be fun for me, the other won't

Well, I said I wouldn't buy it, but I wouldn't have either even if the rating hadn't changed, so...

I wasn't going to buy that crap one way or the other ...

I have Metroid Prime, Twilight Princess and WoW to keep my free time not so free. This is a niche market game to begin with, and watered down just makes their target audience less interested.

I've wanted this game since finishing Manhunt years ago.

I don't want an edited version desiged to make Hillary Clinton happy. That is not the point of the game. The original was excellent in that it really (and I mean really) made a statement about the times we live in, what we find entertaining and how we treat people.

I was sure Manhunt 2 would have been a continuation and possibly an expansion of the theme.

More importantly the idea that R* and TT would release the game despite all the cries of pop moralists was important for the industry and for consumers. Changing the game to placate the self riteous 'critics' was a terrible move.

And I won't be buying it. If R* takes a loss on this one I hope that it and other developers understand that it isn't controversial games that don't sell - its changing the content of a game that ruins its original intent and thus makes it less playable.

Does my vote count if I wasn't going to buy it in the first place?

I'm with E. Zachary Knight. I never planned to buy it, so I didn't vote due to a lack of a "wasn't going to buy in the first place" option.

No offense, but i think the poll should be redone with an option for people who were never going to buy it in the first place. I voted to not buy it and I didn't base my decision on the new rating.

@Zigs

There you go with the ESRB again; give it a bloody rest. They are to rate, nothing else. They do not force censorship; Rockstar decided that ON THEIR OWN. They could have left it as is and tried porting it to the PC, and selling it through their site.

There was no option for wasn't going to buy the thing in the first place.

Actually, I'm not buying it because I think the game looks like shit. That wasn't an option in the poll, I believe.

I bought Bully (limited edition, too) only to show support for the game being released. The game turned out to be quite good.

The only reason I have to buy Manhunt 2 is because the "Culture Warriors" don't want me to.

So I normally don't do this, since it's bad form to cross-post, but if GP came to the ridiculous conclusion that this poll was somehow "valid" it makes me question whether or not they saw my original rant on this poll. If so, GP just shrugged it off, which is worrisome because that means GP is more interested in spreading their own agenda than telling the truth. So I'm reposting it at the bottom of this post, since it's something that I really think GP needs to take to heart.

The poll was biased and broken, like most GP polls are, and the results say nothing about peoples actual opinion other than a good number of people just don't want to buy Manhunt 2.

Lets crunch some numbers for a moment:
52% won't buy
30% are unsure
18% "will" buy?

18% of the gaming public will buy Manhunt 2? If this was true, this game is going to be the best selling game ever! Lets consider the 30 million PS2 systems in the US... that means 5.4 million copies will sell in the US on PS2 ALONE. Not counting Wii or the European markets... if this poll were accurate, R* will soon be the most successful game company on the planet.

Or maybe those numbers are stacked by the fact that many of us (myself and EZK) who won't buy the game didn't vote because we weren't represented in the poll. Those us us who would rather see Manhunt 2 die silently instead of getting constant publicity from both the pixel-anti and GP don't have the option of "I have better games to play" in the poll.

Yes, I'm frustrated. I was only slightly frustrated when I saw the poll was broken yesterday. But the fact that the results of said broken poll are now being used to make the exact argument that I feared they would: "See R*, you shouldn’t have censored it!", this just pisses me off.

GP, your site is the best place on the internet to get news on the current state of game controversy. But in this instance you really dropped the ball, by using the results of a poorly written poll to try and push a biased agenda. You're better than this.


--------------------------------
Cross posted from:
IGN: How Rockstar Toned Down Manhunt 2 for an M Rating

On a somewhat different topic: I think GP needs to have somebody else make the polls that show up on the front page. They are often written in a way where all answers display a knee-jerk reaction.

The current one is especially bad, though many others often exhibit these traits:

“Given what you know about the changes Rockstar made to the game, will you be buying Manhunt 2?”

- I’m Buying
- No Way
- Not Sure

The wording of the question is specifically discussing it as if the decision to buy the game is affected by the changes currently made to Manhunt 2. These answers are directly interpreted as:

- Yes, I’m buying it despite the changes.
- No, I’m not buying it because of the changes.
- Not sure if the changes will affect my decision to buy Manhunt.

In other words, the answers assume that we were already going to buy Manhunt 2. What about those of us who have no interest at all in the game? We’re not represented in the poll.

While I know that internet polls aren’t really “official”, polls written with this sort of bias help feed the common misconception that we’re all frenzied in anticipation for the next Rockstar bloodfest, when I say “No Way” it will be interpreted by the pixel-anti and gamercore alike as being another vote toward “See R*, you shouldn’t have censored it!” when my actual reaction is “I don’t give two shits about this game.”

If it was just this one poll I wouldn’t feel the need to comment, but more often than not the polls on GP give me this same impression. I always want to put my vote in on the poll, until I realize that my vote will be biased toward the opinions of the person who created the poll. So usually I just look at the results and wonder “How many of these people actually meant what they said here, and how many just didn’t read the poll closely enough?”

Enough ranting, carry on with the otherwise good work. :)
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I never planned on playing Manhunt 2 anyway. The game just seems TOO violent for my liking.

I said "Not sure" simply because FPS isn't my first choice of game genre. Horror and violence are ok, but I'd rather have an RPG.

Nightwng2000
NW2K software

@Dthrax
yea, same here. he should have had the poll have an answer like "planned on getting AO version, and am still gettin M" and "not gettin M because its not AO" and "didnt want it anyways

Of all the recent stories, this is the only one that does not have a JT post. Weird.

there should have been a "No, I wasn't planning on buying it in the first place" option

The game turns me off, so I voted no. It has nothing to do with the cuts.

Yeah, I wouldn't have bought it anyway. It looks like a terrible game, and I tend to play good games. Bioshock was awesome. I loved the ethical decision you had to make, whether to save the little sisters or sacrifice them. What've you got in Manhunt? Scripted levels and a very weak premise for a game. Pass.

I voted "Not Sure." I'll wait until the reviews and metascores come out before I make a decision.

@E. Zachary Knight

Of course Jack isn't commenting on this article. It's all about gamers not wanting to buy Manhunt 2. So Jack doesn't have nearly the room to insult us that he'd like. Meanwhile other articles do have the room he likes.

This is way off-topic, but speaking of Jack, does he ever use the 'pixelante' pejorative anymore? Or did he drop it.

The poll needed the option "Edits or not, wasn't going to buy it anyway."

[...] In response to this brutal stabbing, Rockstar edited “Manhunt 2″ and the ESRB re-rated it “M”. The editing consisted of blurring out or darkening the worst executions, and outright removing a castration sequence. Although it was now cleared for release in retail stores, a lot of gamers were not happy with the censoring. A poll on Gamepolitics showed that respondents weren’t going to buy the new version. Obviously the setback was considerable, but whether “MH2″ would escape Leatherface’s chainsaw in the UK was, at that point, undetermined. [...]