Manhunt

Written by Chris Reiter  on December 15, 2003

Full Review: 42 bottles of beer on the wall, 42 bottles of beer. Take one down, smash it to the ground, and execute the Hunter before he finds out you're there at all.

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What is fear? It's expected that fear resonates in all of us, triggered sometimes by a fictional demon that haunts us with their illustrious illusions. Fear can also be paranoia, or it can be the idea that a spider is crawling on the wall and is heading our way. But fear is not just one means. It's everything and anything. Reasonably, it can also be the fact that sometimes we are all alone. We're never safe and sound as we want to be. Fear is the devil in us all, and his minions are always out to scathe us of our will to live. Say hello to a new kind of fear: Rockstar's Manhunt -- the first game that has you surviving the odds of death by bringing an end to those who try to use that same tool of destruction against you.

Outside somewhere there rests a sicko with a lot of money and a plan brewing on his brain. This man known to you as The Director is soon to be your only friend, as well as your greatest enemy. For you are James Earl Cash, former death row inmate whose life is about to change for better or worse. In this case worse. After expecting a lethal injection, the shot James was given was nothing more than a strong sedative and James finds himself very much alive confined to a room that's just one meager part of the entire Carcer City The Director wants James to escape from. The catch is The Director doesn't want James to escape. Not easily anyway. Allocating the same Carcer City are cameras everywhere. From these lenses', The Director can watch James from his very own sultry seat on the other end where he'll contact James through his ear piece on a microphone. Hundreds of lowlife thugs have also been inserted into the heart of the city. Like a piece of meat traveling through the vein, James is to get in and get out of hotspots unseen and is clearly to remove those obstructing his path out. Otherwise, what good's a piece of human meat if it isn't moving?

In the last few years, stealth has become a common fad amongst many an action game. Manhunt is Rockstar's and Rockstar North's (the makers of the widely successful Grand Theft Auto series) first entirely stealth-oriented baby. Rather than being some sort of Sam Fisher or Solid Snake army man though, you become in yourself a famed murderer. Now the tables have been turned as a huge chunk of Carcer City has been blocked off and the only means of release is through a doorway where bloodthirsty gangs will await to meet your demise by their hands. The Director, in his full intention to make the most use of you while you're still alive and kicking, will aid you as much as he deems necessary. For by nature you are the killer now attached to a puppeteer's strings.

The first and foremost thing you need to realize about Manhunt is there's a lot of them and only one of you. Every level is crawling with scum bags, brandishing weapons that will quickly end you lest you stay out of sight and out of ear. Which is a strong enough reason why shadows are your greatest allies in Manhunt. In all of Carcer City there's light areas and then there's dark ones called safe zones. That's where you want to be most of the time, because in Manhunt, that's the only place where enemies can't detect you. Seriously, unless an enemy doesn't catch James slipping into a patch of shadow, or an enemy doesn't somehow walk right into James while he's invisible in blackness, you can just wait, and wait, and wait some more. The way the game generally works is enemies, called Hunters, team together to bring James down. They'll patrol different parts of the city, guarding your route out. If one Hunter hears or spots James, he'll more than be ready to call out to his fellow mates for some backup. In turn, James has the ability to sneak, distract, and then whack a Hunter once he's turned his head the other way around; even able to obtain the very weapon he was holding onto.

Ideally speaking, Manhunt isn't a very complex game in totality. There's really no major puzzles to solve outside a mandatory situation where you may have to fetch a crowbar or a knife from an enemy to break a lock or shred some rope off a gate in order to proceed to the next block of town. It's more like your brain is geared to navigate shadows and then remove those in your way from there. There are a couple good challenges in between however, like when you must set Cash's family free by staying out of sight completely from the bad men with guns and taking them out one at a time. Except for the few times specific scenarios like this comes along, the game's core doses on stealth as its mainstay. Killing enemies can be a cinch however, just as long as you've got a shadow, a way to attract one of the idiot listeners with a pound on the wall for instance, and then a means to sneak up behind him while he edges away, only to suffer most painfully and gruesomely as possible. That's also why Manhunt can get very repetitious. Hunters aren't only lured away by sight, but by sound too. What happens exactly in most situations will go a little something like this: as James you can press up against a wall and knock on it or bang on its surface with a weapon. Once a Hunter hears a noise, he'll come waltzing over, turn around and walk away, then BAM -- he's dead. This same routine functions flawlessly most of the time, but sometimes certain spots get a little sticker.

Sometimes you won't be up against one guy. There could be three, four, or even five at a time. Obviously you don't want to sneak attack an entire family, but rather the middle child. Then comes Pa, Ma, and so on and so forth. In order to make use of the environment around you, you'll have to not only rely on the shadows and keeping quiet as a mouse, but the HUD. Basically James uses a sonar map on the bottom left hand side of the screen that displays each Hunter with a yellow triangle positioned adjacently to the circle in the middle (that'd be you). Hunters have three degrees of alertness: yellow is neutral, orange is suspicious, and red means they can see you. Whenever James orchestrates noise or is slightly spotted, the triangle turns orange. On the other hand, if James emanates sound while a Hunter in orange mode is looking directly at James while sitting in the shadows, then not even darkness will save you.

Other items on James' HUD displays to the right the stamina (allows James to run for a period of time) and health meters, which refuels his life using the painkillers sprinkled throughout the level. Along the way James will also pick up weapons from enemies or found inside a level, which is shown right above the health and stamina. Similar to Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell release last year, James gets an icon that resembles the level of shade influencing his body. This icon appears in a caricature form of James' body, which additionally resembles various actions James can decide on from when the time approaches -- depicting transition from normal to kick position by standing next to a box so to call attention to himself, or when standing over a dead body that will let him lift and hide it so no other patrolling Hunter catches sight.

While adapting to the style of play Manhunt presents itself in isn't too difficult to develop, playing the game is. Unlike Rockstar's previous Grand Theft Auto outings, Manhunt isn't about open-ended space where the faster you drive, shoot, and beat enemies to their senseless destruction, the better. Manhunt switches from some enclosed areas to some wide ones where the more shadows the better. Each of these levels only provides so many painkillers to restore your health. For reasons that combating up to two Hunters at a time has a high probability of death for James when his life bar isn't much to begin with (believe you me, it does take a good amount of life and effort just to finish off one creep with the game's slow fighting techniques some of the time) and since there can be multiple enemies popping up at any point between the diversities in the environments, stealth attacks are a highly significant factor to surviving the night.

Implementing stealth requires a matter of patience from studying Hunters' movements. If you've got a Hunter facing in the opposite direction and one of the game's many melee weapons with which to surprise them with from baseball bats, to a meat cleaver, a machete, some wire, a crowbar, or even something simple as a plastic bag, then and only then can you perform sneak kills. There does exist shooting objects such as a nail gun, a sawed off shotgun, a sniper rifle with tranquilizer darts, and a pistol, but most of these items can't be gained until about halfway through the story, and there's no stealth kills to activate with them. Executing a Hunter with this so called "stealth kill" mechanic is designed with three stages in mind. As you creep slowly and silently behind the Hunter, a set of white triangles locks onto his head. Wait a little longer and they'll turn yellow. Wait even longer than that, and then it'll finally change red. Once either run is executed, a movie plays relaying the kill from a camera's point of view. Considering that each weapon serves its own type of sequence and that each colored stage provides a different level of intensity in slaughter cinematics, with red being the most gruesome, yellow in the middle, and white as the quickest and easiest fatality to pull off, but also the least appalling, it's fun to experiment with how you slay your man, yet offers a most difficult proceeding at times. The game does reward those who are able to pull off the riskier stealth kills (riskier, because you'll have no shadows to take stiff cover in while tailing your target) and by progressing the level quickly as possible, gaining concept art and even bonus levels (four in all that add to the already 20 existing ones) when you accomplish these feats. But again, Manhunt is a hard game for just about anyone. It will tame those trigger happy freaks out there by requesting a certain mastery of patience and a key timing. You will die a lot. You will.

Carcer City certainly is a rundown, mucked up place -- but at least it's good looking. Disorderly, dirty, and most of all dark with content, the game of Manhunt's many places to visit takes the grime, bloodstains, and the filth of the world and pisses it right on a beatdown city gone mad. James, having to traverse through shadow will encounter smashed vehicles lined up along the roads, cans of trash through the alleyways, and assorted locations in disarray -- from a mall with construction barring James' path and furniture flipped over to provide cover, to a junkyard where stacks of garbage lines up aside flaming canisters and fencing. Texturing also brings alive the nastiness of rooms where you may discover bloody bodies hanging from the ceiling, or the bumps, tiling, or trails left behind in cement, wooden, and dirt floors.

Throughout this sinful city exists you Cash, the hunted, and Hunters, the huntees. Perhaps the greatest thing about James and the Hunters is that they never look the same way. Well, James does, in his folded up, long sleeved, light-blue prison uniform with dark jeans and a black strap around his torso. However, as James acquires different weapons, he'll place those certain items in their fitting slots. Imagine having a baseball bat held to James' back by the strap, whereas a brick or a severed head from a Hunter (yes, James can do that) will be pocketed in the rear and actually appear on James as he makes his way through daunting corridors. Fortunately, James is always up against more than one team of Hunters, for there are several kinds each with a distinctive look. Case in point, the Innocentz dress up in demon masks and hoods while the Wardogs rumble in the urban jungle in military gear and camouflage. In its apparatus Manhunt looks great overall, but like Rockstar's 3D Grand Theft Auto releases, the game's not a touchstone in defining features meant to be taken to the next level.

To the same quality of the different levels found in Manhunt are the various effects that bind them. Shadows, for one, are everywhere. They're there in corners, behind pillars, against walls and vehicles, underneath fixed objects, and even being dragged by the characters of the game. Contrasting that darkness is light from bulbs on the ceiling, trash cans on fire, and the aura of the moon itself. These sources of environmental bright and blacks also fit nicely into the levels, although, they too aren't far up on that reality scale as it comes. Animations are another part that keeps the game from slicing the dull off. Sneaking, fighting, and hiding is just some of the action James will take against those he opposes. These actions will keep him live and others dead. It's also very cool to watch as James reaches and slides out the weapons he's culled right from the very spot they've been sticking out from. But it's especially cool to get a glimpse at the way in which James will put these devices to use on the video feed presented in executing manners -- from his neck breaking, hacking at the neck, clubbing in the back and axe to the face mannerisms.

Think back to all the horror movies you've seen, in the moment when the lovely blonde or brunette slowly nears the bend only to end up in shock when the monster waiting for the right time finally gives itself away. The type of suspenseful rhythm that rolls in those particular scenes is also the type of eeriness found wherever James strolls. Alerting a Hunter will change all that, though, as the calmness quickens a bit as James' heart beat mixes into the darkened mood. Then when a Hunter sees you, all hell breaks loose in a chaotic strut. Given the fact that the music basically parades to the same tempo in and out of Manhunt's level offerings, you won't want to crave its natural obscurity, but on the other hand you won't mind its subtle slithering either. Ears of a fox you must have to be playing Manhunt, Mr. Tough Nuts, with reason that the audio is also well and good to hear all around. Anything, and I mean anything, can call attention to yourself in the game (including the plugging in of a USB headset to shout obscenities into the mic), whether it's rubbing against a trash can, pounding on a wall, clubbing your fellow man, and especially after firing a long ranged device. Certain parts of a level can even sound off louder than others, like if James were to tread on a pile of gravel instead of the usual cement fare. Balanced to the right pitch you'd expect from which motion to act like, the audio works.

Last year Rockstar presented gamers with an event so big, it was huge. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was after all the first game to ever feature a full-fledged cast of Hollywood actors to perform the voices of the mobster man Tommy and the friends and enemies he had to confront. This year, while without its grandeur talent lineup, Rockstar does have on hand much to smile about and a few things to cringe on. Most notable of all, actor Brian Cox known for his roles in such films as The Ring, X2: X-Men United, and Super Troopers, stars as The Director -- providing James with sickly commendations and displeasing commands as James mushes through the bloody trail he'll leave behind in the shadows. Just as well, the Hunters all talk to James, ridiculing him when he doesn't face his fears like a man or tries to lure him with a placid message that's so silly it could make lemonade in your pants if you were Cash in person. The voices do instill a sense of comedy, loathing, and fear into the game's pace when James is on the hunt. A lot of times though many of the speaking bits may channel in more than once, which can trigger more repeats than you would initially want.