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A gory, solid attempt at a new stealth game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: March 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

THE SHORT: Excellent use of stealth, gore and ambient sound and voice make the game a unique visceral treat. But many will dislike the gore, and the lack of overall playstyle variety.

THE LONG: Playing this game made me feel like I was The Predator. Some may not like Manhunt but I sure did! What an adrenaline rush it was to startle my enemies, then run around corners and hide, only to slowly creep out of the shadows and murder them one by one. Playing this game made me feel less like Solid Snake and more like Jim at the end of 28 Days Later.

Your heart beats as you rush around corners, hoping there will be a dark place to hide and not a dead end. And once in those shadows, it's a waiting game as you watch the gang members and stay patient long enough to jump him from behind when he turns around. All the while, the ambient music is expertly scoring the whole scene.

Drawing your enemies out with noises and lures is fun, as it makes you develop tricks that help you isolate a single enemy from the group (and gives you a great feeling of satisfaction when you take him down without the others noticing). It's equally thrilling when you accidentally get caught sneaking around, or when someone jumps out to surprise you. I don't exagerrate when I say that there will be several times in Manhunt where your whole body will literally jerk in shock when someone jumps out from around a quiet corner and chases you down (The late-game battle with "Piggsy" is a pulse-quickening masterpiece). But Manhunt gives you loads of places to hide, and some great controls to help you do your best to stay alive.

The voice acting is fantastic, with your sadistic director sounding like a genuine, twisted person on the other end of your headset barking out orders. Gang members also sound good as they call you all sorts of names and do everything they can to make you reveal yourself.

And of course there's the violence. Heads will be cut off, faces bashed in, and shotgun blasts will do their thing. It's a very grim game, loaded with death and just about every swear word I know of. But to me that actually helps this game feel more serious, like I'm dealing with real personalities and real lives. Still, there's a definite satisfaction when you succesfully lure out and execute one of your tormentors, only to retreat back into the shadows to lure out another.

Bottom line- Honestly, to compare it to Metal Gear's stealth system is too easy. It's actually much more fun, and more pulse-quickening. This whole game is all about racking up kills while breathlessly trying to stay alive yourself (like I said, the whole game is almost just like the climactic ending mansion scene in 28 Days Later).

There's a definite storyline to the game as well, and while it's interesting, it's nothing ground-breaking (although the subject matter is somewhat new to videogames). And if you quickly tire of the stealth/hide mechanism, then just quit playing because that's basically the whole game. Massive artillery is introduced halway through the game and you do a little more shooting than hiding, but the game's still about stealth so if you hate the beginning you probably won't stay with it.

There are some definite tough spots, and you'll get frustrated every now and then, but don't give up. You'll be missing one of the most unique and exciting games to come along in a while.

My Metal Gear fantasies come alive

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: December 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Call me a sadist if you will, but one thing I felt was sorely missing from Metal Gear 2 was the torture factor. I mean, shooting held-up soldiers in various extremities was fun, but after shooting them in 3 places, they just dropped dead! Where's the fun in that?

Manhunt is one of the most ... what I can describe best as "messed-up" games I've ever played - and I don't just mean the gore factor. It's a dark, twisted horror b/snuff-movie of a game that had me hooked from the first level. At your arsenal, you have all sorts of weapons and non-weapons - plastic bags, knives, glass shards, and my favorite - piano wires - all very useful in making your prey sorry they were ever born. Your opponents go from tattooed hoods that shout obscenities to a torso with a bloody mush where the head used to be. All my favorite MG aspects are there - the sneaking, the sneaking-up, the shooting - with the best ever twist - surprise executions.

That's right - you can go toe-to-toe in a stab/gun fight with your opponent - or just sneak up behind them and slit their torso/throat/crotch (with a scythe, nonetheless!), or just chop/blow their heads off, and use their remaining body parts to distract future opponents!

Once a thug is pushing up daisies, why not throw him in the middle of the road, and use him as bait for some of his less intelligent buddies? Cut-off heads are always useful too - just throw them some distance to attract attention!

The dank, smelly, ruined mess that is Carcer City fits this game like a glove - it really does make Liberty City look like the Garden of Eden. The environment, as well as the random ramblings of the insane do a great job at setting just the right mood - especially if you play the game at night.

Manhunt is not a game for children, and it's not marketed as such. The type of material in this game can make even the most veteran game player wince - the amount of gore is plentiful, and the subject matter itself requires a fairly warped mind to be fully appreciated (chase and kill a grown man in a rabbit suit). I must say, however, that Rockstar North have outdone themselves again - I can't compare Manhunt to, say, the Grand Theft Auto series (kings of their own realm), but I'll go so far as to say that this is the best game I've seen since Vice City. And by the way, if you know your GTA3 trivia, you can probably guess one of the chief actors in the Shakespearean trainwreck of a play that is Manhunt.

Thank you, Rockstar North, for consistently pushing the envelope.

Wicked....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: February 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

In a word, wicked, I think sums up this game rather well. Rockstar delivers another game worthy of playing. As an adult who enjoys video games, I can't play this cartoony crap being developed by other companys...that's where Rockstar changes the game. I can already hear the angry parents carrying on about this one..mad soccer moms calling senate and whining all night, while in the other room her son plays Manhunt.
THIS IS NOT A GAME FOR:
1. The weak minded.
The reason being, this game can stay with you, and we don't need some guy in a office, ducking behind cubicles,armed with a Mont Blanc pen and a stapler, getting ready to "Ice the chump!"(as the Director puts it)
2.The weak stomached.
Logic for this is the violence is amazing, not the crappy old Mortal Kombat blood flying, this is grainy, graphic, morbid cut scenes, with a level of brutality not matched in another video game.(Example.. execution with a bat actually sends peices of skull flying...and you can find them on the ground)...wicked!
3. The children.
Do not let your little kids play this..c'mon parents have some common sense here, If you let lil Johnny play this, and 2 weeks later he comes from around a corner with a glass shard and stabs you with it...4 or 5 times...in the face, in my humble opinion, you had it coming. If the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had lil kids at the bus stops beating the hell out of eath other with terrible kung fu, then I shudder to think what a game like this will have them doing.(breeding a generation of Hunter/Killers) Use common sense parents, I know Ritalin is easier than parenting, but when Johnny is a freak, it is your fault.(Terrible parenting or bad genes or something:)}

Long winded........YES.
Helpful....I don't know.
But one thing is for sure, Manhunt is the game to have, if you want a dark, strategic, violent fun.

Welcome to Carcer City

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: May 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

It's demented, it's twisted, and a bunch of all the other nice words you can think of. Manhunt is one of the most bold games to be released in recent years. This is trully a game of atmosphere and immersion, one that makes you sweat cold, thinking what may be waiting for you in the next corner. The feeling that you are being unmercifully hunted by all sorts of criminals, from street thugs, to racial supremacists, to lunatics and even SWAT teams is very real and having to hide in the shadows with them only inches from you is enough to make your heart stop. Another aspect of the game that some reviews have shown is that Manhunt works as a wild and demented satire about the violence on media, especially on tv and the lust we feel watching it. The whole art of the game is directed to the idea that we are watching some sort of reality show. The story reminds me of Survivor staring A. Schwarznegger. A death row convict called James Earl Cash is aparently executed by lethal injection but in reality is trown in an ghost town aptly named Carcer City. Through an earpiece he knows his "savior", a snuff films director called Lionel Starkweather, that has saved Cash so he can be his new "leading man". As Cash progresses, the player is only limited by his cruelty for "the means of disposal" of the bad guys. Whenever you aproach a hunter from behind and depending on the weapon you have, you can execute him in three diferent manners, all of them shocking and disturbing. And as plus the executions are shown by the perspective of a security camera, so some executions are so realistic that blood even splatters all over the lenses. Just for it's premisse and it's dark and violent realism Manhunt is a must for every enlighted player.

Amusing for a few days

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: January 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The violent killings are entertaining and some of the dialog spoken by your victims is funny. What killed it for me was the 'safe shadows' stealth mechanic: If you're hiding in the shadows, a hunter can be standing 2 feet from you, looking in your direction, and be unable to see you. Note that you are not hiding behind something, or camouflaged, or prone; you're just standing there just on the other side of the line where light/dark meet.

For a game that is supposed to be an immersive experience (e.g. hunters react to sounds you make in the headset, call for help, etc.), this very contrived and artificial implementation of stealth takes me out of the story and reminds me that I'm just playing a video game with certain programming rules that the computer AI must follow. (Which is fine except that it's not what I thought I was buying. I can play Tenchu or Metal Gear Solid if I want to play a stealth game with clearly defined "rules".)

So, the game then becomes a series of
1) try to stealth kill a hunter
2) mess up and alert all the enemies in the area
3) enemies chase you and yell stuff at you
4) you run around a corner and duck into a dark area
5) four hunters stand around your 'safe' zone peering into the darkness and complaining how they've "lost" you even though you're standing inches from them (hunters will NOT step into the dark zones unless they saw you run in there)
6) hunters return to their pre-programmed routes and completely lose their alert status
7) go back to step 1

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

After a while, it reminded me too much of the games of "tag" I used to play at school where a certain tree/pole/tire was 'safe' and you couldn't be tagged while you were touching it. Would've been much better if the AI would at least try walking into the shadows from time to time when they were looking for you to keep up the suspense level. As it is, you just sit there, perfectly safe (and bored), waiting for the enemies to cycle through their pre-programmed "alert" status and go back to their normal patrol routines.

Anyway, my$0.02. Depends on what you're looking to get out of this game. I suggest renting it for week first and see if you're still interested in playing it after that. I sold my copy to a buddy who loves it, so obviously it's just my perception of the game here.

An Excellent Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: January 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is one of the best I have seen come out so far for the Playstation 2. Once you start playing it will remind you a lot of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, but it is much better. The only downfall and the reason I only gave this game four stars is because the game is split up into "scenes." A lot of the harder "scenes" take a lot of time and the game will not allow you to save until you have completed a "scene." This can be irritating if you are close to the end and die. Other than this the game is perfect. Gameplay is great and unlike most other PS2 games it is not *that* slow.

Another Rockstar Classic!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: November 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is fantastic but only in the fact if you play it for the right reason. This game has been attacked several times for its influence on ignorant kids who renact its gameplay....Can you say stupid? This game is a great dipiction of a absent-minded director and a cold-hearted killer teaming up. In one night your character (Cash) goes through a maze of baddies and kills them in horific ways. The fantastic thing about the game is the graphics, gameplay and simply the AI. The game for the most part is taken as stealth (except for a couple missions which are just as fun) and the AI has to be advanced otherwise you would just be playing another Medal Gear Solid (Huh what was that noise!!). The fact is the AI in this game is beyond enhanced and sometimes is unbarable if put on difficult settings. The brilliant idea of stealth plays in with shadows which is perfectly displayed through this game. Hiding under dark and heavy shadows allows enemies not to see you and giving you the upper hand when killing them. If you cry easily don't come anywhere near this game just go running to your mom. Otherwise pick up the controller now...Your playing MANHUNT!!:)

Just beat it, very fun.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: January 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Whew. Just beat this game and let me tell you; it is awesome. As others have stated, It's not for young children but being over 14 or 15 is seemingly suitable.

For the first 7-9 levels you are stuck with nothing but weapons and maybe the occasional nailgun. These levels are when the game is unique, but not as fun. When you hit the 12th or so level is when the game becomes an awesome stealth/shooter. The handguns and shotgun are something needed to be told about. In other games, the guns seem so unrealistic to fire and not powerful. In this game, the guns actually do damage and villains die quickly when shot, especially in the head. This is one of the things I noticed about the game. You can hear how loud the gun is and how powerful it is shooting.

The scenes:

Level one is quite intimidating, and takes a while to get used to killing the "hoods" (gang). No good weapons yet, plastic bag, glass shard.

Level two is a step further, introducing a bat, a crowbar and a blackjack. Still fighting the hoods. Seemingly still "boring" compared to whats in store.

Level three is introducing a few more weapons and tactics, but still fighting the easy hood gang.

Now, levels 4-5 introduce the nailgun, which changes the gameplay a little and makes it a bit less stealthy, but more difficult as you are battling a new gang called the skinz. From here on out, the gangs have creepier masks on and are more ready to hunt you down, but are still as stupid and easy as the hoods.

Levels 6-7 get hard. They introduce shotguns and revolvers. Still often you will come across an easy "wardog" without any kind of gun, so be patient. The end level gets you into the most FUN PART of the game. The firefights. These are hard, but make the game much more intense!

Levels 8-13 incorporate the same guns as the last, but now have new brutal "combat" weapons such as an Axe and a meat cleaver. The gang is now the "smileyz" and they are mostly all insane or retarded. These levels get hard so stick in there. These levels have little to NO gun battles, and stick back to the first levels where you have to use stealth. I would say these levels sucked, but thats for you to decide. :)
Also, level 12 is ridiculously annoying, and may make you mad...

Level 14 gets HARD. The ending to "divided they fall" took me so many tries, but eventually I barely got it. Let me just say, it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE. By now, it is almost solely gunbattles mixed in with mind blowing stealth.

Level 15 is where the game turns around completely. You meet a reporter and now you are ONLY using handguns and shotguns, battling cops (They are NOT innocent, so dont worry!). This level is so hard, you may begin to sweat. It's fun, and the end of this game is worth it.

Level 16 is where automatic guns come in. Now you will most likely have to take multiple tries on each level from here. The SMG introduce is so much fun to use, and makes taking out "cerberus" easy.

Levels 17-19 are very difficult, but oh so fun. Now you will have an automatic rifle along with heavy handguns. The game gets a little scary (If you know whats waiting for you on level 20)but hang I thought these levels were great.

Level 20. You find yourself in a mansion attic with a chainsaw whirring somehwere down the hall. Who weilds it? Walk closer to find out. Boom! A man in a pig mask comes running at you revving the chainsaw over his head and oinking. This level is the hardest. It will be a while, but once you defeat "piggsy" and aquire his chainsaw, you will finally be able to get revenge on starkweather.

Over all this game rocks. The last level was a bit intense and actually somewhat scary given the monster lurking around waiting to saw you up, but hey, it was my fav level.

I hope this review gives you a more in-depth look at each part of Manhunt.

Not worth time, money, or effort

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: December 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

While Rockstar has proved itself in the gaming world by producing incredible games with depth, character, and shall we say, "diverse" subject matter; Manhunt falls awfully short on all these levels. Although the premise is interesting (interesting enough for people just to buy the game based on a snuff flick), its execution (pardon the pun) lacks the elements which we have all come to expect from rockstar.

Based on the same engine used in the GTA series, we control a poorly rendered character in a poorly rendered environment. After playing GTA, one would expect a much larger urban sprawl than the skimpy levels we're given. Instead, we're given maybe one or two (real) paths to any given goal. Which contrary to belief, does not make the game dynamic.

Chase cams get awkward when confronted with certain elements, making you lose sight of enemies and objects. This gets especially annoying when u think you're gonna finish that kill and end up kicking a can. Subsequently, getting your ass kicked.

Silly missions and triggers make the game more of a chore than an enjoyable experience. In one, you have to utilize a crane to... drop a refrigerator on gang members shoooting nails at you. The applauded "Drunk Driving" level is nothing but a little added fluff that adds nothing to the game but annoyance.

Enemy AI.... what? I've seen math problems with more surprises.

Manhunt, like all rockstar games, had the potential to be something incredible. Unfortunately, it was not realized.

Ok but not really worth the money.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: July 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I rented this game from Blockbuster, I popped it in and was really excited since I've been waiting for a long time to play this game and was actually saving up the cash to buy it. I did as the game instructed, I turned out the lights and was prepared to kill. For about 10 minutes I thought this was the best game ever but my expectations quickly dwindled through out the game. All you do is sneak, hide and kill over and over and over again. Nothing different, nothing special. It quickly became tedious and dull. Yes the executions are cool but only if you don't get spotted. Once you do get spotted you're in for boring fighting or running away. Also I wouldn't compare this game to GTA. GTA was fun and exciting, had a great storyline, cool weapons, freedom most games don't allow, with a good amount of gore. Manhunt is just plain dull after 10 minutes, I'm not even gonna bother completing it. I'm just gonna take this back to Blockbuster and after writing this review I'm wiping it from my wishlist.

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