|
Violent gameplay with bloody executions and a sadistic film director happliy cheering on the action. This is the short story for Manhunt. The long story is that the short story is about all you get in this game.
First of all, this game is not a run-and-gun shooter, nor is it a beat 'em up. Rather, it is like a stealth action game, in the same vein as Thief and Splinter Cell. However, the gameplay boils this genre down into a more simplified set of goals and mechanics, ending up with a bloody ride through repetitive death animations.
The game starts out with you as Cash, a death row inmate who was executed, but instead of actually being executed, you are dropped into this sadistic filmmaker's new set. The game is setup such that you are trying to take out hunters (as your opponents are called) with whatever means you have available. This includes such things as strangulation with a plastic bag or stabbing your victims with a knife. Later you get guns, but will find that you are still not entirely able to run through the levels gunning everyone down.
The distilled gameplay starts with the lighting. In other stealth games, you have degrees of exposure to light. In this game, it is litterally a black or white issue. Either you are in the light, or you are completely in the dark. Other games have missions like stealing treasures (Thief). This game has only one mission, kill all the bad guys and survive. This game does provide some nice audio to accompany the death scenes, which adds nicely to the overall brutality.
While these elements are not bad, they contribute to the repetitive aspects of the game. When you sneak up and strangle a bad guy, the animation is done for you, providing one of three sequences, so there are no surprises and this becomes old. It is also unavoidable, as you cannot escape out of the scene. Also, other cut scenes cannot be escaped, so if you die and have to repeat a sequence, you will have to watch the same cut scene over and over. While the game has different gangs of these hunters, the various members of the gangs aren't very distinct for the most part, so it is like luring and killing the same three guys over and over throughout a level.
The game also uses checkpoints, so there is no quick save feature. This can be frustrating, especially if you pick your way around cautiously only to be accidentally spotted and killed near the next checkpoint and forced to redo the entire section. Later on this annoying feature lead me to abandoning the stealth and just gunning down bad guys, which usually just ended badly for me.
The game has some quirky and annoying play mechanics that give an edge to the AI. For instance, there is a noticeable delay between the trigger pulling and firing, so facing an enemy in a quick draw situation usually leads to the player being shot. Also, in hand-to-hand fighting, the AI will almost always swing faster, landing blows more easily. Additionally, if the AI has you in its sights, especially at close range, the weapons it employs just take on abnormal firing rates and no reloading requirements, so you can quickly be gunned down.
I also ran into more than one spot in the game where I was temporarily just stuck and couldn't move. This was not in a corner or hole somewhere, this happened once, for instance, on a wide open stairway as I walked near the railing.
While Manhunt offers some stealth, some action, and some brutal and violent gameplay, it falls short on providing a dynamic feeling or compelling story. Instead, it simply relies on its own over the top violence to carry the title, which it just cannot do and achieve very much.
|
