Red Dead Redemption. That's the title of the sequel to Red Dead Revolver, the great western shooter from Rockstar.
Just thought I'd mention, since this IS a Rockstar Games union even though it's dead.

Go to http://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption/ and start waiting with us for this PS3/360 open-ended western shooter.

Just read their review.

Also a new character video on the official site: Niko Bellic.

Great video!

You should really check it out.

Check it out people its the last Trailer before the game is released, Enjoy it

Decide for yourself if it's real.

You have all heard about the Manhunt 2 UK release problem, right?
Well, it's finally solved. Manhunt 2 is now allowed to have a rating in the UK, meaning it will finally be released there. And in some other countries too, I'd guess.

That's about it, we could all stop holding our breath and chewing fingernails if it wasn't for GTA IV being released next month and EA hassling with Take 2.

As you may have noticed, our images have recently been replaced with photobucket's "Bandwidth Exceeded" warning.
I personally suspect that this little annoyance isn't a cause of a normal use of our images. The reason for my suspicion is that over the many months I have had our Real Rockstar account AND my personal account (which is in heavy use) at Photobucket, the bandwidth limit has NEVER been exceeded, and we have always had half of the allowed amount left when the bandwidth has been reset.
Now I'm supposed to believe that the use of our images has more than doubled this month, reaching the limit 9 days before the reset, when our union is the only place those images should be used and it has been quite inactive for the past months.

So, what I 'm getting at is: please keep your eyes open and inform us of the people who may use our images without permission.
I admit that I can't do anything to the possible bandwidth thieves, but it sure would be nice to know who the bastards are.
Also, if you are using our images, make sure you have uploaded them to your own image hosting account. I have nothing against people using our images, just don't steal our limited resources.

One possible solution to the lost bandwidth would be making a new account and switch to using that, but then people could easily use THOSE images and we would again face the same problem, and photobucket might see having multiple accounts as limit-dodging.

Since the Manhunt 2 ban-appeal-release feud is STILL going on strong, our union's a bit inactive and you all have probably forgotten Manhunt 2 already, I thought we could recapitulate the mess. Again.

July, 2007: Banning
Rockstar was proudly presenting us a sequel to their cult-hit game called Manhunt, where the protagonist was a death row inmate and the player's goal was mostly to just kill of the members of various gangs with various means while a director named Starkweather recorded every bit for his snuff-film business. Manhunt 2 was going to be released for Wii, PS2 and PSP.
Unfortunately for Manhunt 2 fans the British Board of Film ****fication banned the title, preveting it from being sold in the UK, and ESRB rated the game AO, thus also preventing it from being sold in the US due to Nintendo and Sony not allowing AO rated games on their consoles.
Rockstar appealed the decisions.

August, 2007: M-Rating and Netherlands Un-Cut
On August Rockstar appealed the UK ban, but also submitted an edited version of the game for a rating, with every execution scene edited with red and grey blurring and a couple executions deleted entirely (Wii was edited the most and nobody cared about the PSP version).
ESRB gave the modified version a rating of M, Mature, thus allowing a release in the US on Halloween 2007 and giving Daniel Lamb and Leo Kasper the chance to kill a lot of people on their journey to finding out who the hell they are.

For a short while people were also hoping that the uncut version of Manhunt 2 would be released in the Netherlands due to their laws of not supporting censorship but the right of speech and expression. Of course that didn't happen, and a couple of hundred kids were really disappointed later.

October, 2007: Second Ban, The Leak and US Release
BBFC thought that the game was still overly violent and announced that they would stick with the ban. During the next couple of months angry articles were written, petitions were made and MPs were called up everywhere, and BBFC was slandered in every way possible. We all knew BBFC was crap already, so nothing really happened, people didn't give a damn about a broken system when it's been broken right from the start.
Rockstar appealed the ban of the modified version.

Soon an uncut version of Manhunt 2 (PAL) started circulating the web. Behind this leak was a former employee of Sony Europe, even though at first it was rumoured that Rockstar themselves leaked the game as a statement.
The leaked version was an early version of a game still in development, but fans didn't mind that and according to many unverified reports some small shops around Europe, Australia and South America sold it to anyone who dared to ask, even though various websites loyal to Rockstar tried their best to keep the game from spreading.

29th-31st of October, Manhunt 2 was officially released in the US and got mixed reviews.
The protagonist of Manhunt 2 was a man named Daniel Lamb who woke up in an asylum without his memory and got out with a little help from his friend, Leo Kasper. Together they started looking for clues concerning Daniel's dark past.

November, 2007: Un-Cut PSP Version
Right at the start of November, a hack for the PSP version surfaced. This hack allowed people to play the game uncensored. Fans were worried about a possible re-rating, but ESRB didn't hold Rockstar responsible and BBFC was still using the banhammer.

Soon, Target pulled Mahunt 2 from their shelves. People were angry.

Some US politicians tried to make a name for themselves as people's heroes and decided to stir up the somewhat stale case again. Nothing happened, it was politics. Politicians never get anything done.

December, 2007: Rockstar Wins
Rockstar won their appeal, and European fans without a modified PS2 were happy. Unfortunately BBFC took the deal to High Court, and the fight continued.

January, 2007: Boredom
Now, people are already bored of this whole thing and everyone except 3 ultimate Manhunt fans have forgotten Manhunt 2 was ever banned, modified, re-rated and banned again, since most people who really wanted Manhunt 2 already have it in one form or another.

High Court decides that the law was misinterpreted when the ban was overturned and the case has to be sent back to the appeals committee. This doesn't mean Manhunt 2 will be forever banned, the committee just has to re-judge the possible harm of Manhunt 2 along the new guidelines set by High Court.

I'm writing this post.

Come Check it out

GTA:IV Trailer 3 "Move Up, Ladies"

GTA IV boxart has been revealed!

Trailer 3 coming on december 6th!

The trailer is called: "Move up, ladies"

The Trailler for the Game below,

Opening Cutscene From Manhunt 2

Manhunt 2 First Trailer

Manhunt 2 Last Trailer

See inside this update, or the union board.

So apparently it's still not censored enough, are these people nuts

Well, that's what old Jack is, kind of, saying.
This is, again, older news, but Jack Thompson is threatening to get Rockstar North's GTA IV banned, for he believes that he is personally being targeted in the game. One of GTA IV's first missions has Niko killing a lawyer who yells out "Guns don't kill people. Video games do."
What Jack Thompson says he is worried about is that since people mimic what they see in video games (duh, obviously), he might actually be in danger if anyone gets to play it and sees the connection between Jack and the lawyer in the game.
He has, again, sent letters to Take Two, demanding that any possible references to him are taken out before the release of the game, or he WILL stop the game from reaching shelves by any means necessary.

Source: GamePolitics.com

Many games before GTA IV have had similar jokes about over-exaggerating the influence of video games when it comes to violent behaviour, best known possibly Rockstar Games' Max Payne 2 and Bully.
It might very well be that GTA IV's joke was just a coincidence and accidentally hit the nail, but I personally do understand why Jack is angry. The whole scene seems quite too good to be accidental when you think about the sense of humour the guys at Rockstar have, and to a person who is obviously afraid of the whole video game world this might be the worst kind of insult. Well, not even close to the worst, actually...

Related to all this is the VERY old debacle where Jack Thompson got angry when Rockstar called him a bisexual pedophile (Jack's middle name amongst modern gamers these day it seems).
Well, Rockstar didn't say that exactly, but made a big joke on one of their promotional fakesites where JT@citizensunitednegatingtechnology.org has an interest in young girls. The whole thing went further than that, but you get the idea, Jack Thompson was basically slandered.
I do understand why someone could get angry about that.

Oh no, I used a similar title as GameSpot...oh, well, I happen to like it.
It's so clever, in it's completely unimaginative way.

But anyway, since GameSpot (and every other big gaming website) posted an article about Manhunt 2, which goes through some the changes in the M rated version, quite some time ago, I decided to store it inside this update.
I'll make a topic about this on the board for discussion, and if I find anything relatively important in the other websites' articles, I might compile all the main points of interest in one text.

The main point of all the fuss is this:
The executions are blurred and often darkened in Manhunt 2.
For more info, read the article/s. Oh, and they're talking about the Wii version in this one.