Unfortunately the inspiration for my very first rant in a long time comes from one of my personal hatreds of society. Censorship. Recently the BBFC refused to rate the game Manhunt 2, while it’s counterpart in America, the ESRB, gave the game an Adults Only rating, which while not banning the game, effectively eliminates it from being sold in many US stores, such as Wal-Mart (which counts for 25% of games sold in the country alone), Best Buy, EB, GameStop, and a myriad of other retail establishments. Oh but then Nintendo and Sony released an (already known) bombshell that they don’t allow Adult Only games on their systems. So now no one’s getting the game at all.

Excuse me while I chuckle at all the Americans who laughed at my country and started spouting all that “that’ll never happen here cos we gots a (apparently open to interpretation) Constitution!” Ha. Ha. Ha.

Anyway, I deplore censorship in most forms, but I can’t help but wonder about the exact contents of the game which brought about these decisions. I was not a fan of the original Manhunt, mostly on the grounds that it was a stealth game, a genre where I have a distinct deficiency in the skills required to play them, i.e. the patience of a bull elephant in mating season and slightly less subtlety. I definitely don’t have a problem with violent games, as a quick glance at my Xbox 360’s played games records will attest to. However, considering how liberal the BBFC is I can’t help but speculate on how “bad” the content of Manhunt 2 is.

However, in the shadow of this censorship debate, I have though of a solution that will bring us back into the light.

Wow, that was pretentious.

In actual fact I’ve taken some inspiration from this debacle and decided to use it to amuse myself and hopefully others.

Basically my solution to the whole Manhunt issue is to remove the weapons and the gore from the game, dress everyone in black and white stripped tops, paint their faces white and release the game under the title “Mimehunt.”

Think about it, I think we can all agree that mimes are not human, right? And it’s a well known fact that they can’t be killed by conventional means and must be dealt with harshly (ask Lord Vetinari from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels). So the only way to rid the world of these inhuman beasts is to use their own invisible imaginary weapons against them.

Think of it. You’re a former policeman on the edge, a loose-cannon who plays by his own rules, who is sick of the inhuman sickness that threatens our street corners and shopping centres. You take it upon yourself to rid the world of the monochromatic menace, infiltrating their evil training centre and using their own skills against them, destroying the problem at its source. You sneak and silently dispatch mime after mime until finally coming white face-to-face with the leader of this sinister cult of cartoon-like rogues, dispatching him with your invisible rocket launcher in an all out battle of pretend explosions and blood that completely goes against everything else you’ve been doing in the game, thus ruining the experience. YOU HEAR THAT ODDWORLD INHABITANTS!? STRANGER’S WRATH WAS BRILLIANT UNTIL IT TURNED INTO A POOR MAN’S FPS! It was so much fun, hunting down your prey with your living ammunition, doing the platforming sections, but no! Right at the end it becomes nothing more than a poorly executed shooter that was even worst than the dullest game of the genre!

Ahem…sorry got a little off topic there. Anyway, yes Mimehunt. Any developers interested? My only requirement is enough money to fill a pool, so I can live my live out my life long fantasy of being Scrooge McDuck. And that’s British money before you try and ship me a truckload of Yen, which is actually worth about £50. Quack.