User Reviews (41 - 51 of 197)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Rock star Does it Again

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Imagine that the stealth/ninja game series "Tenchu" and the Joel Schumacher film "8MM" mated. How's that for suspension of disbelief? Now, now, stay with me. I swear, I'm going somewhere with this. Now imagine that the product of this unholy union is a game called "Manhunt". The long-awaited creep out freakfest from Rockstar North has finally hit the shelves. I, for one, am not disappointed. Not in the least. Following in the GTA tradition, this game doesn't shy away from violence. If anything, it wallows in it. Wallows like a Piggsy in gore. The plot is fairly basic. You play James Earl Cash, a convict who has been sentenced to death. Instead of taking a one-way ticket to the afterlife in order to start paying for your sins, you awake to find that the execution was staged and a man known as Starkweather (a.k.a., the Director) has dropped you into the middle of a sadistic snuff film trying to pass itself off as competitive entertainment. The setting is a vast urban wasteland called Carcer City (for those who don't know, it's the place where the lead character in GTA3 got double-crossed by his girlfriend during the opening scenes--check the name of the bank--useless trivia, I know). Some of the arenas that you will find yourself in are a decrepit shopping mall, a deserted zoo, and an asylum that has been taken over by the inmates. The graphics are fitting, considering the subject: dark and gritty, filled with long, dark shadows in which to hide yourself. The game controls are easy to learn and user friendly. I was particularly impressed by the A.I.. It's far better than most games, and generally unpredictable. This, as well as the many possible paths one can follow to "incapacitate" the enemy, provides the game with a decent amount of replay value. It's for this fact that I quickly shrugged off my initial suspicion that the game was something of a one trick pony. If you're looking for a confrontational fighting game, look elsewhere. You have to be patient in "Manhunt", sometimes waiting for what seems like forever until your prey appears, other times luring them to you by throwing objects or banging the walls with your weapon of choice. In this respect, it's a third person strategy game. Depending on your performance in each level, you are rewarded development art and bonus games. All told, I didn't mind spending the money on this one. Considering I usually purchase my games from a used store at drastically low prices, I hope this carries some weight. In the end "Manhunt" will take it's place on my shelf with "GTA3", "GTA Vice City", "Max Payme", and "Dead to Rights". Who says crime doesn't pay?

Oh, yes, and before I forget, let me close by saying: THIS GAME IS NOT FOR CHILDREN! Look, folks (and by folks, I mean the oblivious mothers and fathers out there), movies are given ratings for a reason, cds are labeled "Adult Advisory" for a reason, and video games are rated "Mature" for a reason. Please take the time to check what you are buying for the little ones. That way, there will be no confusion as to what is considered "adult entertainment" and entertainment for "general audiences". There is a great deal of graphic violence as well as strong language. Be warned!

A GREAT ALTERNATIVE TO ROAD RAGE!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Ok, at first I was sceptical of this game.....after playing State of Emergency I thought this could be another piece of crap too. I loved GTA however actually got a little bored in GTA Vice City. Upon first playing this game it seemed that the controls were tough and that all I'd do is run around and kill people......WRONG!!!! Give this game a chance! After the first level and getting comfortable with the controls I quickly became interested in the plot. Why is some guy filming me killing people? The gangs I was hunting got much smarter so in killing them I had to become more devious. This game sucks you in (DEFINITELY PLAY IT IN THE DARK!!). This game will eat up hours of your life as you "just have to get to the end of the level to see what happens."
I personally hate Splinter Cell and all of those other games that have so many commands and options. I love games that I can get into and don't have a HUGE learning curve to enjoy. I work hard all day and have few brain cells left to devote to reading books with instructions on how to play games. This one is simple: SURVIVE and GET THAT SICK ... TOYING WITH YOU IN THE END! Part the movie "Running Man" and even part "Deliverance" this game is great!
My two biggest complaints: the controls initially take some time to get comfortable with and the second is the lack of save places. Some levels take about an hour and if you die you start over (Grrrr! Must kill to deal with RAGE!!). Anyway, buy this game and play it through a level or two. It is really that good but VERY DISTURBING AND GRAPHIC!!

A Guilty Pleasure

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've always had a lot of faith in Rockstar Games and now after Manhunt I have more. They seem to have a lot of balls putting Vice City out on the market and now Manhunt. I have lots of respect for them (Both games are top notch games). First of all I'll have to warn you this game is extremely gory and I'm sure that not everyone would like it, but to me it's a guilty pleasure. I feel kind've dirty saying that it's fun to kill but it is...WHEN IT'S ON A VIDEO GAME. People definitely shouldn't take this game to heart and start doing what is in this game. That is not Rockstar's intentions.
Manhunt is described as a stealh/horror/action game, and that's what it is. You will get some scares out of the game with it's dark scenery, psychotic "hunters" and dark music. In Manhunt you have to use a lot of stealth and patience to get the perfect kill and not attract more hunters. But the catch is that each mission is timed and you are rated between 1 to 5 stars in your time category. The goal is to kill very violently and gruesomely in as little time as possible.
There are a lot of weapons that you can attain. Anything from a plastic bag to a sawed off shotgun. In between you have weapons such as: a sickle, metal and wooden baseball bats, nail gun, .38 Revolver, hammer, machete, knife, glass shard, bricks (also used to attract hunters from a distance), whiskey bottles (also used in attracting hunters from a distance), chainsaw, a mini axe and a few more but I can't remember them. There are also a lot of different guns you can have.
The killings with the stealh items are violent and awesome to perform but I really love the gunplay in this game. It doesn't hold anything back and his very realistic. If you shoot a hunter in the head with a shotgun their head will be off and you see the jagged flesh left on the neck of the hunter and the flesh and brains on the ground. Also there will be a big blood spray onto the wall. Very fun to do. You also can lure hunters next to gas cans, and wait for the right moment to shoot the cans and blow the hunter away. Most of the time you will need to hide behind objects and time it right to pop up above the object and fire a quick round into a nearby hunter.
There is also a good story lost in all the killing. You are James Earl Cash. You are a death row inmate and have supposedly been sentenced to lethal injection but really they only sedated you. You wake up to the sound of Starkweather over the intercom. He tells Cash that "The only way you can get out of this is if you listen to everything that I tell you and do exactly as I say" Starkweather is a washed up Hollywood director who has turned to snuff movies. He explains that there are "hunters" that are after Cash, for no apparent reason. He must fight for his life and survive to see the next day. I'm not going to spoil the rest of the plot, you must play it for yourself. You will be hooked on it.
There are many scenes that Director Starkweather has you complete. All of them are different from one another and you won't get tired of this game. Rockstar has struck gold again but I wouldn't recommend this game to people under 17 years old. There is a LOT of violence and the F word is in use. The M rating is there for a reason. As with their other top notch games, Rockstar has created a wonderfully visual and interactive city to play in. I think that's what they do best. Well I hope you try this game out because if you don't you're missing out on a great game. One of the best of the year.

Dirty, simple, brutal after-life

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Manhunt is by far one of the simplest and most stupid games ever made. And yet I love it, oh yes I do. The stealth aspect reminds more of a hide&seek children game as it isn't about any realism but certain rules that are very very very simple and primitiv. The violence is really extreme, unbelievably RAW. The executions in the first 5 levels are only about raw murderers: fists, baseball bats, knives and stuff and it's totaly cheek2cheek, a knife cannot be thrown: James is hitting it several times into the hunters body, and one time into each of his eyes while the blood is splitting on the camera etc.

Parts of an almost deserted american industrial town are giving space for that illegal "sport". The game itself is a very primitiv night odyssey throught these battle arenas. It's not that James is meeting other poor fellows just as in Silent Hill for example, although there is a reporter that you learn about in the intro. I have to confess that when playing it I was thinking about selling the game as soon as I'm throught with it. Now I find myself playing throught several levels again AND AGAIN, so the more I play the more I like it. Which doesn't really make sense. The story couldn't be more simple, the gameplay either, every level is about killing people as brutal as possible, there's nothing else to do... so why the hell do I like it? It's the atmosphere... one can literally smell the stink of this awful Carcer City. Everything is dirty and sick here, the hunters remind of typical super-maniacs (à la SLIPKNOT), the hero is a multiple murderer, the director Mr. Stalkweather is an even bigger pervert than any character (going "oh yes give me blood, Cash, BLOOD! You like it too, don't you Cash?!"), it definetly is one really BAD universe, that snuff stuff. Speaking of that uncomfortable subject one has to realize that it is worked out perfectly. We don't like Snuff and we shouldn't like playing this game. There is nothing funny here, not one single joke (expect for the drunken driving level maybe), no Tarantino-esque parody. It's just sick, brutal, strong, hard, horrifying, nighmarish, dirty, stinky, vulgary, primitive... hell it's so much fun playing part of it. Rather than really being. Still, it's a game.

Maximum Carnage

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Manhunt is a very fun game for PS2. Don't listen to the other people who said it sucked, if you like carnage and strategy this is the game for you.

My favorite game...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is great. Well what can you expect from the makers of GTA, Rockstar. In Manhunt, you are this guy named James Cash and are givin a "second" chance to live. He was suppose to get the chair but instead was sent out to be hunted down, by abunch of gangs.
This game is so cool because you can get so many weapons. You can get a glass shard, bat, knife, wire, bag, machette, butcher knife, pistol, chainsaw, crowbar, and like 10 others.
The cool thing about this game is that you sneak up on guys and do these cool bloody moves. They vary counting on wich weapon you have. Like with a machettte, ( or however you spell it,) You stab it through their backs, and while they are screaming, you pull their head back and constantly hit the guys neck till his head falls off. Theres blood everywhere on the screen. ITS AWSOME.
I know i may sound like a sick violence freak, but im not. Its just fun to play this game, so buy it and have fun, YOU WILL!!!

Now we?re talkin?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Just when you thought Rock Star couldn't surpass Grand Theft Auto, they slap everyone in the face with this beautiful masterpiece which they call, `Manhunt.' FULL of the blood and violence that I've come to love in video games today. They really decided to stretch the limits with this one. It's about time somebody grew some balls big enough to stand up to those censorships, and to the threat that some of the public holds against games of this genre.

You play as a convict who was sentenced to death for crimes unknown, but the only place you die is in the mind of the public. Your death was staged, so you could be used as a pawn in a corrupt, underground snuff organization, which is governed by a guy called Starkweathers. Despite his sick passion for filming the deaths of people, Stark is actually secretly contracted by the Police? FBI? to stage the deaths of criminals (like you) so they can be forced to engage in a ring of survival and mayhem. You are placed in deserted sections of Carcer City, weaponless, to kill gangs hired to kill you. This is some morbidly creative way Carcer City wants to dispose of it's criminals. The theory is that you will take out an X number of wanted criminals for as long as you can, before you yourself actually gets hacked. You are being filmed the entire time, as Starkweathers is monitoring you through cameras set-up everywhere and talks to you through a little ear-piece. Meanwhile, people are paying money to see these videos Starkweather is directing at your expense, which will not go to chairty.

Are you loving it yet? No? Okay...it may sound too frustratingly hard to take out so many bad guys like yourself without all the automatics and revolvers that most games will supply you with offhand, but it's not. You run through this game pretty smoothly, in fact. Thankfully, the 20 missions this game has are very long. None fail to entertain. All environments are large, heavily shadowed, and full of things to hide behind. Once hidden, you make noise to attract your prey. Once they walk by you, you walk after them, with whatever weapon you found in hand (a bat, an axe, a machete, a crowbar, a glass shard) and kill them unsuspectingly. Each weapon has 3 unique executions that you can perform on `the unsuspecting'. We're talking gutting, decapitating, castrating, stabbing, neck-breaking executions that just never get boring (Starkweather always appraising you through your little ear-piece as the bodies continue to mount). And if you're a lover of some nice shoot-out action, then this game has a little something for you too. About half way through, you go from Medieval sword fighting to your typical kill them all and let no one live shoot'em up game. Revolvers. Shotguns. Sniper Rifles. Uzis. Assault Rifles. This game's got all the goods. You can huddle behind anything during a shoot-out (garbage dumpsters, turned over cars in the middle of the street, mail-boxes). This system is set-up to where all you have to do is press the target button, and your character will pop his head out, gun pointing at someone's head, shoot, release, and back down he goes. This process is repeated until everyone's dead. Very intense when you have four or five guys hiding behind stuff and shooting back. It's all about timing and good judgment. If you shoot someone close enough, their head comes right off and pieces of brain splat on the wall behind them, stick there for a while, then slide down. It just don't get better than this people.

This game is not for everyone. It's plot is utterly pointless, it totally involves no thinking, and it's story is hardly worth following. For gore hounds only. This game here probably raised even the eyebrows of a few of those crazy Japanese people that are literally the KINGS of Snuff videos and violent entertainment. If only our culture would just loosen up a bit, we'd see a whole lot of what Rockstar is only showing us glimpses of. This has got to be the most violent and sick game for the American PS2 console, so get it now.

Huge style points.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Manhunt for PS2 is an awesome gaming experience. I picked the game up about a year ago. I haven't finished it yet (like quite a few games on my shelf) but it's one I really need to go back to and finish.

Why style points? Because it oozes with a style that works. Dark, gritty, voyeuristic violence. The James Earl Cash/Director relationship is a satire on how far TV will go to satisfy a sick demand. Satire done well, indeed.

The whole ghetto is wired, video cameras dangling from graffitied brick. The whole setting for the game is dark, giving James Earl Cash a clandestine shroud. Gang members patrol the streets, knowing their end of the Director's bargain, knowing that some wussbag is on the loose (JEC) in these slums.

In game controls are as good as you'd expect from the GTA games. You'll really need to prove your mastery of controller when you've been discovered and decide to flee the gang of scvmbags chasing you. I give controls 4/5 stars.

The gameplay is perfect. Know that Manhunt is a creepy-crawler; slow moving game, wait till the gangbangers got their back to you, release yourself from the dumptsers shadow, make your move. Pray no scvmbag allies are in the vicinity as you execute a mild/medium/hard attack on your victim. If you're clear, drag the remains to an alley or behind your respite of a dumpster. This is the sum of the gameplay. If this doesn't sound fun, don't bother. Personally, I enjoy taking my time with a game such as this. Miniscule (if any) amount of guns ablazing in open areas. Another area to note in Gameplay, is the optional use of the PS2 headset. Right, put it on and use your voice to attract enemies. Very nice touch, being that the Director alsos communicates to you through this headpiece.

Graphically speaking, Manhunt is great. The style is dripping like coagulating gang member blood. The atmospheres are so moody, the Director takes you to slums, garbage dumps, cracked out tenements (Max Payne reminscing). Environments are perfect for this type of game. Style points also alotted to the villians, especially Smiley Face Gangster. Love the irony.

Final Note: It's an uproariously controversial game. Manhunt begs the question of "how far is too far". Taken in context, however, viewing the total picture as situational, and dare I say art, Manhunt is a very gitty and grimy experience that loses nothing if you can appreciate heavy dark satire. Which brings me to my next point in saying that none of Manhunt is done "just for the sake of being so". That award (gulp) goes to "State of Emergency". But you already know about that.

Scarey but fun game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I got this game a while back on sale. I had read a lot about it. I guess some kid had killed somebody in England or something and they wanted to ban the game. Well, I got it and started playing it and I must say that it totally creeped me out. I mean I have never played any kind or horror or any kind of game like this. I never expected to play a game that literally had me anxious and a bit scared while playing it. Maybe it was the music or the atmosphere or whatever but it reminded me of watching a really good and scarey horror flick. I literally got up and turned the lights on. lol
I liked the concept and the back story that they give you. You are a convict that at the whim of a rich weirdo is placed in this strange kind of ghost town that is just full of thugs, gangs and serial killers. All of them are after you. The language is also very VERY graphic and colorful. When they are chasing you and you are hiding you can hear these psychopaths mocking you and trying to get you to come out of hiding. Also you can fight the guys head up but even if you win it is very violent and you lose much of your strength. The secret is to wait in hiding and ambush your opponents so they don't have a chance. The whole time your benefactor is video taping the whole thing for his own jollies. You can also kill these creeps in the most gruesome ways (a shard of glass to the throat multiple times or a plastic bag over the head from behind).

This game just creeped me out. And in its abilitie to creep me out I thought, MAN THIS IS GREAT!

Manhunt. . .

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

"Manhunt" is a stealth intensive action/horror game that casts you as James Earl Cash, a death row inmate given a secret, so-called "stay of execution" so that he can star in a snuff film that pits him against bloodthirsty gangs and slavering lunatics in the fictional cesspool of Carcer City. Cash is a very reluctant participant in this game of death, and is understandably unhappy about it all. Even so, he's an anti-hero who has no qualms about killing mercilessly to stay alive. Yes, you guessed it, "Manhunt" is an M-rated game that was never intended for the faint of heart.

The controversial background story for "Manhunt" is certainly original, and at times quite disturbing. It's ultimately a very interesting excuse to plunge into the game's world of horrific violence and twisted, offbeat humor - not because of the game's irreverence, but instead because the game is FUN, pure and simple... provided you're not overly squeamish or easily offended, it goes without saying.

"Manhunt" is initially a 3rd person `sneaker,' but later evolves into an over-the-shoulder action game. In both cases, stealth is essential to Cash's survival. Part of the game's sadistic appeal lies in its `stealth kills,' which can be performed by successfully creeping up on an enemy and hitting the attack button. There are three grades of stealth kill (normal, violent, and gruesome), and all are satisfyingly over-the-top. Stealth weapons include razor wire, plastic bags for suffocation, and shards of glass, if that gives you any indication just how unflinching "Manhunt" can be. Performing successful stealth kills is crucial, as Cash is far from superhuman. If he is forced to fight openly, it's usually a bad thing.

Later on, ranged weapons become invaluable as fierce firefights become inevitable. The game's targeting system works very well in this mode, and the action is frenetic enough to compete with the thrilling stealth missions from earlier in the game. Unfortunately, the problem of difficulty does arise here. It can be mercilessly difficult, especially with its limited save system.

"Manhunt" is perhaps one of the most atmospheric console games ever developed. Environments are suitably dark, gritty, and devoid of hope. The game's enemies fit into this gloom-and-doom atmosphere perfectly, and some of them are quite unnerving. Still, I can't help but feel that "Manhunt" occasionally goes out of its way to be controversial. Sometimes the game's sick gags seem forced, and less effective than when they flow naturally into the scheme of things.

When it's all said and done, "Manhunt" is a twisted gem. It's unfortunate that its high frustration factor sometimes gets in the way of things and prevents the game from achieving a classic status. Even so, I recommend it to the darker side of gamers everywhere.

Final Score: B+

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions