Previews// Manhunt 2

Sometimes, it’s hard to be a liberal.

Posted 4 May 2007 18:30 by
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Our man Danny seems to have volunteered himself for some dodgy treatment as part of a top secret weapons experiment he was involved in, the side effects of this being the reason why he’s found himself banged up in the Dixmore hospital for the criminally insane nuthouse for years. That is, until a freak electrical storm causes the hospital’s security system to go haywire. The lunatics, it seems, are taking over the asylum. Which is where the game starts.

Danny needs to sneak his way past guards – not to mention other crazy inmates (one of whom even decides to take a piss on poor old Dan) - by creeping carefully down the corridors and sticking closely to the shadows, keeping a close eye on the radar at the top of the screen which will alert you when guards are less likely to be aware of your presence.

Creeping past the guards is fairly straightforward at first, but pretty soon you come face to face with your first opponent, one of the other inmates who smacks you full on in the face. While Danny is, apparently, not used to violence, in no time at all you find yourself having no option but to beat the guy to a bloody pulp. Which soon seems to clear Danny of his fear of violence, as he is soon moving on to grab a syringe from a nearby room to stick it right into the neck of a nurse who is blocking your escape from the hospital.

Danny also has a mate called Leo who’s talking him through his escalating spree of ultra-violence to help him out of this hospital. As you make your way out of the hossie you will also discover the questionable thrills of sticking a pen in somebody’s eye or sticking a knife or some shards of glass into a victim’s neck. In seemingly no time, you manage to pick up a shotgun which means that you can stop sneaking through the shadows and instead you can joyously pistol-whip the interns or, should you lack imagination, just shoot them in the face as you run through the corridors.

Another new feature which the guys at Rockstar were very keen to show off in the game was the ‘environmental kills’ – shown off in a brothel area called ‘the Honey Pot’ - which simply refer to the various ways in which Danny makes use of objects around him (toilets, telephone cables, fuse boxes and so on) to take out his unsuspecting victims with ever more gruesome glee.

To be (brutally) honest, it was at this point of the demo where I found myself questioning the very point of Manhunt 2. Sure, the ‘kill animations’ and ‘environmental kills’ were hilariously over-the-top in terms of the level of gore and general squeamishness. We can imagine playing the game through for the first time and squealing with a kind of perverted delight at how well executed (sic) these in-game moves were. But then, we cannot imagine getting much pleasure from this game beyond the initial Beavis and Butthead-style “heh, check it out, I just stuck a pen in that dude’s EYE!”.

Overall, while the production values in the game are no doubt much-improved on the first game, I cannot shake the feeling that the game itself seems extremely limited. Unfortunately, while I want it to work on many levels, I find it hard to recommend Manhunt 2 in any way.

If you are aged ten to fourteen and you find extreme schlock horror style violence funny and cool, then you will probably love it. However, if you are a fan of games that involve a little more thought, strategy and challenge, then I cannot help but think that Manhunt 2 is going to fail to deliver.

Just like the worst kinds of original ‘video nasties’ Manhunt 2 contains enough darkly gruesome murder scenes to keep ‘fans of the genre’ happy to plod through the fairly tedious gameplay to get to the next darkly gruesome murder scene. However, I for one just hope that this is the last outing of this rather tedious game, which I cannot really describe in any better way than Rockstar’s Achilles heal.

The hardest thing, for me, is going to be the difficult job I’ll no doubt have of defending such an average, poorly-designed videogame when it gets yet another tabloid-press mauling around the time it launches later this summer.

The whole thing reminds me of that quote, usually attributed to Voltaire:

“I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”…

Sometimes, it’s hard to be a liberal.
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Comments

headcasephil 5 May 2007 17:33
1/11
cant wait for this on the wii all i can say is they say nintendo is for kids I DONT THINK SO !!!
Bob Fossil 5 May 2007 20:06
2/11
Meh... may as well go and read American Psycho and have done with it IMHO... this game sounds W.A.N.K.
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JimmyDeansZombieCousin 6 May 2007 22:27
3/11
Poorly written preview. It seems like he just played the game for the gore and not the actual story or game play surrounding the brutal killings. By the looks of it, he probably didn't like the first one either, and probably for those same reasons.
spongsucks 7 May 2007 01:48
4/11
yeah whoever wrote this must be quite a pussy
zoydwheeler 8 May 2007 10:23
5/11
I wrote it. And I assure you I'm not 'a pussy', just a fan of good games. And I'm usually a big fan of Rockstar's games. I loved Table Tennis and GTA IV is up there in my most-wanted for later in 2007.

My honest opinion about Manhunt 2 - based on being shown the few opening levels of the game - is that I feel that this game is far too much (gory) style over (gameplay) substance.

The kill animations/environmental kills really are incredibly gory, but the sneaking about in dark corridors stuff that you have to do in-between these 'cool bits' just seemed to me to be a bit boring.

mrben43 8 May 2007 11:11
6/11
I wonder... should a line ever be drawn regarding videogame content, and if so where should it be drawn?
zoydwheeler 8 May 2007 11:30
7/11
No. That's like saying - should a line be drawn in music, literature, comics etc. etc.? i.e. "When should we censor stuff?"

All censorship is bad, if we don't like something then we have to formulate reasoned arguments as to why we don't like it.

If the game/song/book/comic contains gratuitously violent/sexual/adult content - then it really has to be judged on its own merits. Does it work as a game/song/book/comic?

In this case, in my opinion, Manhunt 2 (ab)uses its ultra-violent content - as it seems to be way too much of the focus of the game - at the expense of more-involving gameplay and an interesting storyline and so on.

You might compare it with, say, Clockwork Orange - which (in its day) was hugely controversial for the sexual and violent content. And hence banned for years. But, in my opinion, it worked as a film.

Of course, as responsible adults we have a duty to protect children from sexual/violent/adult material which could be deemed offensive - but that is a slightly different debate.
mrben43 8 May 2007 17:17
8/11
I don't know...

What if Rockstar's next game was a paedophile sim involving the rape and murder of little children? Wouldn't we all feel profoundly uncomfortable with that, even if it were a well made game?

I am a bit worried by the things we choose to entertain ourselves with.
TimSpong 10 May 2007 13:33
9/11
mrben43 wrote:
I don't know...What if Rockstar's next game was a paedophile sim involving the rape and murder of little children? Wouldn't we all feel profoundly uncomfortable with that, even if it were a well made game?


I have a feeling that Rockstar would rapidly go out of business having seen all its staff lynched in the streets by the general public or by Take-Two's stockholders as the game would simply not sell.

I get what you're saying in terms of thin ends and wedges, however, I tend to refer to prosecution counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones in the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial when he asked, "Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?"

Who are we protecting from what and why? The same culture that rants about games content destroying children is producing corporations that charge for water (Cochabamba) - the lack of which human staple kills exponentially more children than any game is ever likely to.

We've got to engage with the real question which is that any people gets the culture it desires.

mrben43 wrote:
I am a bit worried by the things we choose to entertain ourselves with.


Absolutely, in the first case, don't buy it. In the second case, come up with a better idea for a game or book or TV show.
Richard 11 May 2007 08:20
10/11
You don't have to defend the game just because Keith Vaz will attack it.

As long as you believe that violence in games does not cause violence in the real world, then violent games are worth defending if they are good games. But why bother to defend bad games?
WIISucks... 20 Jun 2007 18:05
11/11

Posted by phil cort
cant wait for this on the wii all i can say is they say nintendo is for kids I DONT THINK SO !!!


Er, no your right - it's just the graphics are complete garbage on the WII plus it sounds like something you'd do in a toilet...
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