The Ontario government has taken the unsual move of slapping a Restricted rating on the "vile and violent" video game Manhunt, Consumer Minister Jim Watson announced Wednesday.
Manhunt -- already banned in New Zealand -- features intense images of blood and gore as the player assumes the persona of a death-row inmate out to kill his enemies.
Watson said it's the first time the province has placed an R rating on a video game.
"If you've seen this video you realize, quite frankly, it's really disturbing," said Watson. "Some of the graphics that I was shown should alert parents that this kind of a video is for older children."
"I've never seen anything like it before."
An R rating means no one under 18 can legally buy or rent the game, which is played on Playstation2. It was applied by the Ontario Film Review Board, an arm's-length provincial agency.
The decision marks the first time the board has intervened and used its authority to reclassify a video game as Restricted. Normally, the board accepts the video game industry's voluntary classification system as determined by the New York-based Entertainment Software Rating Board.
In this case, Manhunt was originally given a Mature rating from the U.S. agency, making it available to those 17 years and over.
However, that rating isn't enforceable, said Bill Moody, chairman of the Ontario board.
In Manhunt, the player takes on the role of death-row inmate James Earl Cash. Instead of being executed, he is kidnapped and thrown into a freakish world of psychopathic gangs.
Although the game does have some puzzles, the main objective of Manhunt is to kill the enemies encountered by Cash.
The game's violence is so explicit that it prompted a ban in New Zealand last December, where it was called "injurious to the public good."