User Rating: 8 | Manhunt PS2
The latest offering from Rockstar North bears more than a passing resemblence to their 3D Grand Theft Auto games, in fact it is Rockstar North through and through. From the weapon pick-ups to the character animation to the level design to the wonderful humour, and of course the violence. Happily though, the hand to hand combat and shooting engines are much improved over the GTA ones which bodes well for GTA 4. Manhunt casts you as a deathrow criminal, given another chance by a director of snuff movies. You will have to take on increasingly large numbers of increasingly better armed gang members with a huge array of weaponry at your disposal to earn your freedom. Stealth is preferrable, and the controls and camera are certainly good enough to make this an enjoyable experience. Later on in the game however, guns become available and things start to turn into a bit of a shootout. This is far less frustrating than shooting in Vice City as the targetting works well, and you really never think that anything other than your own inadequacies has left you dead. Enemy A.I. is functional, good in fact, but limitted to make the game fair. For example, enemies will not deduce your whereabouts from the evidence around them, no matter how obvious. Most will run to any noise they hear, making taking on individuals rather too easy. Rockstar have combatted this by increasing numbers, and taking care of pairs is vastly more difficult. So, back to the violence. Again, probably the games selling point, whenever an "excecution" is made, we cut away from play to view a cinematic death. Each excecution weapon [guns are excluded] yields three increasingly violent clips triggered by priming for the excecution for longer times. This really adds to the game, giving a huge element of risk, should your victim turn around, you will have to partake in damaging fisticuffs. Manhunt can get repetetive, all the missions are samey and a stark departure from the diversity of Vice City. This, however, is no bad thing. Manhunt is highly enjoyable, conveying great senses of anxiety, fear, dread and acheivement. It is certainly more enjoyable than nearly any other 3rd person action game you could mention, and well worthy of your time.