Manhunt
I’ve always wanted to know what the inside of johnies skull looked like
Tags: Manhunt Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Andrew on Jul 2nd, 2004
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Manhunt (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Stealth Action | No | ||
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There comes a point in certain games where no matter how much of a grasp of the English language you possess, there are only so many words to use in order to describe an event or an item. Manhunt is a unique game, in that no matter what is written about it, words will not do justice to the game for what it is. There is no manner of speech or verbose language capable of describing the feel and acts that are possible or must be done to move on in this game, and so a review really must fall into two categories: one, for the people who have seen or played this psychopathic game; the other, for those that can only glimpse an idea of the game from an article.
In Manhunt players control James Earl Cash, a death row inmate who was supposed to be killed for his crimes but is instead entered into a twisted game of cat and mouse in a run down town called Carcer City. The man responsible for his rebirth is a shady individual known as Starkweather and he promises Cash his freedom as long as Cash can earn it by running through Carcer City killing thugs and anyone else in the most brutal ways possible.
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Gee, sounds boring enough, and truth be told, the actual game play is not very exciting. It does get better as the game goes on, but the overall storyline and the game itself even are secondary to the main point of the game. You are here to perform acts so despicable that there is no description. The basic premise of the game has you hiding from massive groups of masked “gangs” who rely on bad one liners and the inability to see into slight darkness 1 inch away from their face. Your job is to find whatever object you can to use, sneak up behind the bastards, then eviscerate, decapitate, or as you can do in the second level of the game, take a crow bar, rip out a guys intestines, beat him upside the head, and then shove the crowbar up his spinal column until he stops spasming on the ground. Sounds fun, huh!
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As you find the large variety of weapons around Carcer City, you are given the choice as to the amount of sound and the violence that you wish to create. When you start to sneak up behind the poor sap who is about to have a brick stuck out of his head, you hold down an action button, and the longer you hold it down, the worse the act that you perform is. This adds some strategy to the game, because you are also waiting right behind a guy that can suddenly turn around and beat the living crap out of you. Make no mistake, when you mess up, you know it because you aren’t that great of a fighter, and if there is more than one of the bastards, run because you are toast. You can run and hide in the shadows, and assuming they didn’t see you run in, and you aren’t making noise, you can wait for them to get bored and leave, then go after them again.
Ok, back to the sick and gruesome things you can do, since that is what the game is about.
Basically it seems that Rockstar used this as a reference point to show that GTA really wasn’t all that bad, and comparatively, GTA is nothing more than the old arcade game. You can slit a guys through, beat him senseless with a baseball bat, suffocate him with a bag, gut him, decapitate him, and eventually use a gun to blow away large portions of his skull, and all done in cinamgraphic cut scenes which leave little to the imagination.
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For those that didn’t see the other reviews of the game, the PC version is the last of the three versions to make its appearance. The only differences between the three versions of the game are the superior graphics and sound in the Xbox and PC versions and the incredible control in the PC version. There isn’t a huge difference in the graphics, since they looked pretty good anyway, but they are a lot smoother and cleaner on the Xbox and PC. The Xbox version controls pretty much like the PS2 version, as you would expect, but thanks to the keyboard and mouse the PC version really stands out. The shooting is a lot easier with a mouse and that makes all the difference between the three versions.
What really stands out as you play through the game is just how believable and realistic everything is. While the fact that the weapons, fighting, and executions are all firmly rooted in reality is a little disturbing, I think that if it had been done any other way the game would have lost its edge and not been as good. The city is massive and looks run down, the enemies look human and the acts that you perform are certainly somewhat realistic, at least I would imagine that is what the effects of a crowbar shoves through a guys head looks like.
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The atmosphere, in the sounds and look of the city really do help add to the feel of the game. While the actual game play can get very repetitive and boring at times, the dirty and scary feel is part of what makes this game great (for what it is). Again, since the acts themselves are so gruesome, the atmosphere must reflect the darkness and that isolation, the no escape feeling and the need to do what must be done, and Rockstar did a great job on that end.
The only last thing that must be said is that this game is not for kids. If you haven’t noticed, we have been running a number of articles about the morals, ethics, and perceptions of video games, and while often they are given a completely inaccurate portrayal by the media, this game is different, I can almost not believe that a game like this could come out. It is possible that this game should have received an AO (Adults Only) rating.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Graphics + Feel of the game (atmosphere) + You will not believe that things that you will do in this game |
7.1 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Repetitive - Once you get guns, it turns into more of a shooter eliminating the best part of the gameplay |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| My what a lovely tea party... | |
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Tags: Manhunt
Posted by Andrew on Jul 2nd, 2004 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
