Lock up your sons and daughters, protect the elderly, alert your reactionary local MP and somebody please fetch the barbed-wire entwined baseball bat- Manhunt 2 has been given an official UK street date…

To the dismay of many this questionable piece of digital entertainment did not fall at any of the fences thrown into its path en route to certification, in spite of the British Board of Film Classification’s best efforts. Thus the game’s release is now not only inevitable but dramatically close at hand.

But the whole Manhunt 2 thing is a bit of a storm in a teacup, isn’t it? There are more gratuitously horrific games out there and Manhunt 2 has been on sale in the States for ages now - and without any of the hoo-hah that’s likely to accompany the UK release once the tabloids get hold of it. Not that controversy-courting developers Rockstar would be bothered - there’s only one thing worse than being talked about, after all.

Anyway Friday 31st of October is the date of doom to diarise, when the ‘game’ is unleashed on PS2 and PSP platforms. The family-friendly Wii too, for flip’s sake. Whether British society crumbles into violent anarchy as a result remains to be seen.