In the original, James Earl Cash was forced to kill for the entertainment of others, and got extra points for more brutal snuff. What bothers me is that there doesn't seem to be a good reason for all the killing this time around. I haven't gotten any guns yet so I can't comment on the faster aspects of gameplay. You walk- not run- around poorly lit spaces and wait for masked baddies to skulk by without their friends, then you walk up behind them until your reticule changes, execute, watch hilarious sequence, rinse, repeat. In terms of gameplay, I haven't found anything to differentiate this one from the first Manhunt. Why do they always wear masks in Manhunt games?
Also, your avatar will occasionally vomit on his victim's corpse afterward, as if to press the point further home. I'm of a mind that this is the ultimate victory for ESRB: In order to satisfy their demands Rockstar didn't just obscure the death sequences but did so in a way that conditions you to NOT want to perform them. You are already squinting at the psp, hunched close to make anything out even with the brightness cranked up, and then suddenly it feels like you've been hit with a hot poker in the brain via entry through the left nostril. What modding does do is remove the jarring, blinding, mind-searing colorform crapfest that flashes on the screen any time you kill someone. To be sure, the executions have gotten all the attention prior to Manhunt 2's release and I agree that they are chillingly violent, but on the psp and ps2 the graphics are so muddy and the characters so sparsely rendered (seriously, you can count the polygons) that you can barely make anything out. And though I've been generally enthused about getting the chance to act out my innermost violent urges I'm really more pleased to just be playing it before Sir Cucumber.
I'm currently playing Manhunt 2 on my my cracked psp, modded so I can see all the delicious torture sequences uncensored.