Z-Reviews || Games || Review

Your mother always warned you not to play games like Grand Theft Auto, but you did it anyway. Why does it feel so good to steal a car, run over an old lady, and blow up an ambulance with a bazooka? It must be that primal component in our makeup; what makes us human. Rockstar Games knows all about this component, and they strive to feed us what we need to keep it healthy and active. Along comes Manhunt – it’s everything GTA was but at a more primal, and visceral, level. You’re not killing to accomplish some silly mission, or to get a few hundred bucks in your pocket, you’re hacking and slashing your way through this game because… well, you’re told to do so. You want to. You don’t know why, but it feels good, and you keep doing it until you’re done.

The story is fairly simple, although, it does get a little bit convoluted as the game moves deeper to conclusion. You are James Karl Cash – death-row inmate of a Carcer City (yes that is a neighboring city to Liberty City) penitentiary. You’re given a “second chance” at freedom in return for your skills at being a cold-blooded killer. How does that work? Easy: you’re given an earpiece and immediately told that if you follow whatever the chilling voice in your ear tells you to do you’ll be a free man by the end of the night.

You find yourself in a city of GTA look and feel, but it is no GTA. It’s all a stage; you’re the star, and this is only the beginning. This is Manhunt in a nutshell. There are other “stages” you visit along the way, some seemingly very unsystematic in their order and appearance. Then again, there doesn’t have to be a reason for why you’re placed in any one place, since its all for the sake of making an entertaining “manhunt movie” for your twisted director, who never fails to egg you along as you chop your way through the game. Along the way you encounter all kinds of lowlife thugs who are either also inhabitants of the prison, or just really good at playing the part of “low intelligence thug.” Seemingly they’re promised a similar proposition to Cash: hunt down this loser (you) and you will get an easier sentence, or freedom, or maybe a bag of potato chips or whatever it is that makes these guys tick. For them, it should be easy, but its not, because you’re such a badass. Some are “hicks,” some are white supremacists, some are mentally handicapped, some are just mean. It’s hard to say what really sets them all apart, but they’re all pretty stupid and say some really insensitive but at times funny things while you’re running around bashing their brains in.

Brains and skulls get bashed a lot in Manhunt. The first half of the game involves very little gunplay. This might turn off some people who are expecting a GTA style “shoot-‘em-up versus inbred-losers” type of game but it makes the later gunplay in the game all the more satisfying. The first half rather, includes all sorts of hardware such as cleavers, machetes, hammers, baseball bats, and even a sickle (that thing in the old USSR flag). No, this isn’t the Oregon Trail; you’re sneaking around and executing these scumbags with your tools. Sneaking around in the dark becomes another major element in Manhunt very quickly. There’s even a few one time use stealth-kill weapons like a plastic bag, a glass shard, and even a Hitman-esque wire for some good ‘ol fashioned stranglin’.

You can try to start a fistfight with most of the thugs you encounter but after the first or second brawl you’re going to be plenty hurt. After a while, and to actually save time, you’ll end up sneaking around everywhere to get through the game. You’re rewarded for being stealthy, and for killing while hidden in the shadows, because if you kill someone out in the open it usually garners the attention of every other enemy in the surrounding area – making for quite the nasty cleaver brawl. So the game has elements of stealth, a shooter, and a button masher (the combat element.) Unfortunately there is no driving – hey it is a GTA-esque clone.

It does get repetitive though. You’ll find yourself running away into darkness a lot, waiting there, and then emerging for the kill. You can’t save anywhere, only after you reach certain “checkpoints,” and with these checkpoints available you’ll end up playing some parts over and over and over. Don’t get me wrong, I like a challenging game, but it does get slightly mind numbing to replay some of the sections this many times – especially considering the content. Maybe that was another intention of the game makers: drive the player insane so he/she becomes a true ravenous murderous psycho. I was getting there. It was only when I made it about three-quarters through the game when I realized I could perform 3 levels of execution (only because it was a requirement to finish the particular level.) This is unfortunate because I was getting horribly bored with the single “style” of execution associated with each weapon; looking back on it I probably would have never tried the other two types per weapon because of their difficulty. You do get rewarded for doing the more-gory executions by your score at the end of each level, which in turn unlocks more bonuses – such as artwork and 4 bonus levels.

Executions aside, you’re finally rewarded with pistols and then machine guns. It’s just as good as you imagined, running around poppin’ caps in perfectly placed headshots is quite gratifying. The later enemies include SWAT officers, police officers, and Splinter Cell-like commandos. It is at this point in the game where you can choose to continue to sneak around and kill each enemy by stealth or run around guns blazing, hiding every now and again (who doesn’t?) to lose your tail. All enemies in the game have three visual levels of alertness on your radar: yellow – idle, unaware of your presence, orange – aware of danger but not actively looking for you, red – on high alert and actively seeking you. It’s when they are in the last alertness state that hiding in the shadows doesn’t always work because they have a visual lock on you. If you turn a corner and hide it may or may not work, depending on if they saw you do it. This works as well as you could expect it to work – similar to many other stealth games, you might be right near your foe but if you’re in the dark they cant “see” you, cool! Now, pop ‘em in the forehead with a hammer.

Some things in the game seem only partially thought out, such as the stamina bar. It’s supposed to limit how much you can run (as opposed to walking), but its so large, and recharges so quickly, that its basically worthless. Then there’s the save issue; even though the parts entail many replays to complete, when you do reload your save point you find yourself with full health and ammo – so whenever you reach a save point you can save your game, and die (if you’re low on health and ammo) and then reload it to start out with a full boat. Another thing I didn’t test too much was the ability to run through levels without killing almost anyone. Sure, some levels have scripts that require you to kill certain enemies to move forward, but a few times I found it possible to run past a load of enemies without any repercussion. Don’t get me wrong – the game is still plenty challenging.

There’s plenty of fun stuff to keep you coming back for more though. From all the insanely nonsensical things the enemies say to each other and you, to the ridiculous situations you’re sometimes placed in – such as having to complete a full mission while making sure a wino-bum doesn’t die, to following a white rabbit, to fighting a human pig, you’re never left without curiosity about what’s going to happen next. I also enjoyed the fact that when an enemy is weakened a lot, but not dead or laying on the ground, they run away like the cowardly homophobic racists they really are – it was quite therapeutic to chase them down and slice them up.

The most glaring point to be made here is that this game is not Grand Theft Auto but you’re constantly reminded that it’s a very close cousin. From the graphics to the sounds, everything is borrowed from GTA. The weapons lay on the ground just like GTA, and all the pick-up ammo/weapon sounds are borrowed from GTA. This isn’t exactly a detriment to the game, just something to make a note of.

The engine itself is slightly modified for the stealth tactics and close-combat gameplay, and it works well for these elements. The bat swinging action is notably much better than in GTA. The graphics look very grainy and haphazard in the screenshots but in-game they’re very appropriate for the mood that is being evoked. This is, after all, a highly organized snuff film that’s made to look like a low budget b-level horror movie. At times you do wonder how they “filmed” some of the camera scenes – as a camera pans in right behind the action. The game ran very smooth at 1600x1200x32 – partially because of my video card, but also because the game features very simple textures and a low-polygon count. This doesn’t really impede the game’s ability to entertain the gamer; just as in GTA, even with average graphics, it’s the gameplay, and more importantly the atmosphere, where the game really shines.

Sound is complimentary in Manhunt. The voice acting of the Starkweather character you hear in your earpiece is superbly played by Brian Cox (Troy, X2, The Bourne Identity) as he really does get dreadfully irritating. As I mentioned before, the taunts you hear throughout the game from the peanut gallery are quite amusing, albeit grating after a while. Surround sound effects are minimal, but mostly because of the gameplay – you never really find yourself running around with gunshots all around you.

The music is eerie and goes along perfectly with the missions. The tempo changes when things get hairy and as the hunted you can’t help but get a little tense. It’s a very gloomy game – graphics and sound alike – which I feel is all part of Rockstar Games' masterful knack at atmosphere creation.

While playing the game I found myself frustrated at many points in the game. Not so much because of the difficulty but also because of the sheer repetitiveness of having to replay missions and more importantly having to complete certain actions in every mission over and over. Becoming a master at Manhunt simply requires patience: wait around in the dark, kill the enemy, move on to the next dark spot, repeat. The levels in the game are varied in their appearance and concept, but not enough to radically change the gameplay much from this formula. Even with it’s repetitiveness and frustrating moments the game is a satisfying experience by the end of your journey.

One thing that must be mentioned is just how violent the game is. Even as a seasoned gamer I was initially shocked by the content when I started playing this game. From the raunchy taunts to the enthralling executions I was quite amazed by the game’s level of cruelty and violence. Of course, as we all know, sex is a problem but gruesome scenes of murder are no problem in American media and culture so you don’t hear about this game on your local news. Still – If you ever had a thought about a game being responsible for a young person’s murderous rampage, this game might affirm that reflection. Keep the game out of the hands of young children, turn off the lights, and grab your chainsaw, it’s time to snap some necks.