IGuns make their way into the game as well. Initially they are more of an
alternative to stealth killing everyone in the level, but in later levels they
become more of a major focus of play. There will be situations where your only
option is to resort to gunplay or you are challenged to get past entrenched and
armed enemies. In fact, there’s a bit too much of a shift to gunplay later in
the game which makes the game seem a touch disjoint from beginning to end. Like
the hand to hand fighting, gunplay is pretty basic. When you have a gun selected
as your weapon you will get a targeting dot to aid in aiming and clicking a
mouse button will fire off a round. Right clicking will make this aiming aid
jump to the nearest enemy and change it to crosshairs. The game uses a basic
location based damage model so headshots will take an enemy down faster, but in
general it doesn’t matter too much where you hit enemies. You just keep shooting
at them until they run out of health.
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| This guy is not looking to make friends. |
Manhunt includes twenty levels, which it calls ‘scenes’. The levels are grouped
into pairs, and you generally face a different gang or group in each set. These
gangs range from random thugs to Neo-Nazis and the criminally insane. You’ll
also find yourself up against law enforcement in the form of SWAT and military
units. The basic behavior of all of these groups is basically the same, though.
SWAT officers don’t exhibit any knowledge of advanced tactics over the same
techniques used by the street thugs, and a SWAT officer will come running into a
dark room if he hears you bang a bat against the wall.
Where Manhunt really succeeds is in the area of creating atmosphere. The
deserted and run down urban environments exude tension and foreboding,
especially when the streets appear to be empty but the sound of Cash’s pounding
heart tells you that they are not. The surveillance video look of the cutscenes
is an excellent effect and serves to feed feelings of paranoia over being
constantly watched by unseen eyes. Your enemies will converse with each other,
talk to themselves, and call out taunts to you. They have plenty of things to
say, different gangs will have their own lingo, and the voice work is very good.
The character voices are not repetitive as in many games and lend an edge of
realism to the experience. Another nice realistic touch is that you can see the
items Cash is currently carrying in his limited inventory. He’ll tuck a crowbar
into his belt or a brick into his back pocket, and you will see him pull out one
weapon and store the other when you switch weapons.
Unfortunately, overall the game has a problem with realism and will be too much
for many people. You can certainly make a good argument that the game is simply
just too sick and twisted. A game places you in a decidedly antiheroic role by
making you a convicted murderer taking part in a Running Man style snuff film.
There’s no real pretense of a noble or just cause here – you’re a killer,
everyone else is a killer, kill, kill kill. And then there are the stealth kills
that require you to get up close and personal with your enemies and smash their
heads with a baseball bat or strangle them with a length of wire, all of which
is captured in realistic and bloody cutscenes. If this does not all serve to
push Manhunt over the line, then some of the voicework gives it the nudge it
needs. When you beat an enemy in a fight and knock him to the ground, he’ll
begin pleading with you before you administer the coup de grace. There’s
something that’s just plain wrong about a game that requires you to hit someone
with a crowbar when they are lying bleeding on the floor begging for mercy
because they have a family at home. Starkweather’s comments exhibit the same bad
taste – the first time you hear him say “I really got off on that one” after you
make a brutal kill you’ll feel a shudder. It will bring to mind the picture of a
sick, slimy scumbag sitting in a dark room getting his jollies by watching
people brutalize each other. Is keeping such a creep happy the proper motivation
to do well in a game? That’s something that you’ll have to decide for yourself.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
69%. Manhunt’s good stealth gameplay and immersive atmosphere are
weighed down heavily by its questionable premise, brutal violence, and generally
slimy feel. Keep your kids away from this one. Far, far away.
System Requirements: Pentium III 1GHz; 192 MB RAM; 32 MB
Video RAM; 2.3GB Hard disk space.
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