Rockstar's snuff film-style stealth action game is about as enjoyable to play as its executions are to watch.
Manhunt caused considerable uproar when it was released owing to its brutal content that left nothing to the imagination, especially when the aim is to kill in the most graphic way possible. However, I think that the hysterical backlash against the game has hidden the only thing about it that even matters: it's crap.
If you're still reading at this point, bear with me and I'll explain myself.
The plot is straight of a 1980s dystopian cyberpunk novel or film reminiscent of The Running Man, and it's clear that Manhunt's debt to this runs deep. You play James Earl Cash, a death row inmate given a reprieve by "The Director" to participate in a grotesque game where he must kill gang members as violently as possible in exchange for his freedom. An unpleasant premise, but one you're willing to swallow to begin with.
What follows is a motley selection of so-called "scenes", in which Cash must murder the gang members or "Hunters" as they're described, and which are filmed by The Director for his secret and highly profitable business as a snuff film maker and distributor. Using stealth to sneak up on enemies in dark areas where you become nigh-on invisible to the Hunter, a charge of the action button across three possible levels of severity determines what kind of execution Cash performs. These are always graphic, because that's the point.
However, there is no actual premise to these besides an improved score at the end of the game - you'll advance anyway. Cash is soon out for revenge rather than freedom, but the events in the game are so unnecessarily unpleasant that they give you no empathy with Cash himself, and as a death row inmate he is a murderer by default. This lack of identity with him means that you become - bizarrely - indifferent to what you have to do.
The gameplay itself is hit and miss, with the stealth aspect done well, but without being anywhere near the level of games like Metal Gear Solid, and the combat, especially hand to hand, is appalling. Cash and Hunter lunge at eachother with no real control or smoothness that usually ends in the former's death, resulting in the unintended side-effect of stealth becoming a necessity to progress rather than a choice.
Graphically unspectacular, the dilapidated areas are suitably gritty and burned out, but character animation isn't really anything to write home about. Sound effects are quite good though, and the execution scenes are aurally apt.
Problem is, by the end of the game you're not bothered about the executions, the plot or the gameplay anymore, you just want to finish this ugly mess and get it over with.
Dominated by its juvenile plot that smacks of B-movie tat and shock tactic gameplay, this is a game devoid of humour, fun and strange as it feels to use this word, humanity. Rockstar can't even be applauded for bringing the long-rumoured subculture of snuff movies into gaming because at no point is there a deliberate aim to stop it happening, and its ending is too ambiguous to make any kind of moral standpoint. At best it's a misguided attempt to be cool, and instead ends up alienating the player.
Rockstar likes to go against the grain to say the least and put morally ambiguous characters at the epicentre of many of their games, with Grand Theft Auto and Bully to name but two. This to me is a cheap tactic to add extra hype and publicity to such games, and whilst the GTA series undoubtedly and arguably inadvertently transformed itself into a gaming landmark, Manhunt by contrast should be consigned to history.