Developer: Rockstar North
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Game Genre: TPS / Stealth
Narrative Genre: Psychological Horror
Horror fans should take a look to Manhunt for its out-of-the-box approach to stealth gameplay and its view on what an art statement can do to improve the level of fun a game can provide.
In my first sentence I could write “snuff fans” instead of “horror fans” but I thought of it as an unhealthy recommendation to begin my review. But I don’t mean to deceive no one, and snuff and gore is what Manhunt is all about. But, like I said, that’s not everything that there is to it, specially in the style department. Because Manhunt’s aesthetic draws heavily from cheesy exploitation and grade B movies from the ’60s and ’70s and that, in a video game, is just awesome.
The game provides a spartan range of weapons and things that can be used as such, like glass shards, plastic bags and wire. These, while they’re not weapons per se and can’t be used in melee combat (except for the glass shard), make perfect deadly weapons for executions. Manhunt features other objects, like bottles, bricks and cans that are used to attract the enemies to the hiding place. Noise used as a bait can also be relied upon by hitting walls or kicking certain objects of the scenery like trash cans, rigs and such.
Normal kills can be performed with certain melee and fire weapons. Executions can be regular, violent or gruesome. These depend in the time the player is willing to invest after having targeted their enemies and started the execution. A longer wait after locking the target will mean a more disturbing kill, but also means that things can get awry in the meantime.
When the player releases the button at the regular, violent or gruesome execution timing, the player is awarded with an FMV animation showing the beheading, skull cracking, eye sticking, throat slashing, strangling, or asphyxiation. It takes a while, but when that coveted execution does happen, one will be thrilled and amused to death with it.
Playing as James Earl Cash one begins in death row about to be executed by a lethal injection when something happens that sets James free. From then onwards, one has to fight his way tooth and nail through twenty creepy levels of increasing difficulty, hindrance and, why not, degeneracy; making use of the sparse inventory that can be collected. The twenty levels of locations are all spooky places.
From an abandoned mall, seedy streets, construction site and a zoo, to an abandoned jail a cemetery and even Starkweather’s mansion.
It’s very fun to hide in the dark while waiting for a favorable moment to execute the enemies because they will be constantly talking among themselves or mumbling things that may or may not be about James.
The socially resented movie director Lionel Starkweather freed James from the death penalty, but nothing is free and the director will charge Cash his dues. The director will do it, by forcing him to feature as main character in his latest snuff production. James has to travel by different spots of Carcer City (a part of Rockstar’s fictional Liberty State) while murdering and executing different gangs.
The many gangs, Starkweather pawns, populate each one, because they’re all different, a spot (one-two levels) of Carcer City. Meanwhile Starkweather is going to be telling James what to do and commenting about his “acting” (meaning murder and execution) style.
The journey isn’t going to be a fast or easy one, considering the lack of weapons and, consequently, the great need for tactics, strategy and cunning stealth to make it to the next save spot.
Manhunt is a must for snuff and gore fans, a great experience in gaming for its originality and a really great choice (for its overall easy paths to accomplishment) to give one’s first steps in the stealth TPS game genre.
Spoilers
Somewhere after the game’s middle point James reaches the supposed ending of Starkweather’s snuff movie. From then onwards is an all-out quest where James is gonna be pursuing the director himself; to make him pay. These levels are highly difficult but at least one is going to enjoy the lack of Starkweather’s constant cynical goading.
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