For a while, we didn’t know if Rockstar’s gore-tastic thriller Manhunt 2 was going to make it to stores. And honestly, if it hadn’t that might not have been such a bad thing.
You see, Manhunt 2 isn’t just some she original Manhunt, though I wish it had been. Instead, we get a game with an intriguing main character in Daniel Lamb, but little else to really cheer about.
Manhunt 2 drops us off at a spooky old asylum, where Daniel Lamb is being held as part of “The Project”. One night, things go nuts at the asylum, and Daniel, along with his friend Leo, escape into the outside world. However, they’re being chased by a group of Hunters, hitmen dressed in back suits and what appear to be S&M masks, charged with the task of apprehending and killing the escaped men before they can reveal “The Project” and its dark secrets to the world. Just oozes originality, doesn’t it?
The selling points of this game were the graphic, violent game play and the Wii remote controls. Let’s take a good look at these points, shall we?
First off, the graphic violence, and the violent kills that go with it, have been neutered due to the fact that the game originally got an AO rating from the ESRB. There’s a filter in place so that you can’t see the nitty-gritty details, but that’s not so much a problem as the game play is. While there are weapons and stealth kills in the game, pulling them off is easier said than done. For most of the game, you’ll be relying on beating people down with blunt objects, or later in the game, shooting people with guns.
That is, when you’re not hiding in the shadows trying to be Sam Fisher or Solid Snake. Stealth tactics play an important role in the game, but in a gory game like Manhunt 2, this feels a little out of place. I mean, it’s obvious Daniel doesn’t want to get caught… It also doesn’t help that the A.I. is as dumb as a sack of bricks at times, meaning that if you just slightly slip into the shadows, it’s as if you’ve disappeared off the face of the Earth. And really, when you’ve got a bunch of people hunting you down to silence you, you’d figure they might try a little harder.
And the Wii remote controls? Well, they try to simulate the actual violent acts they correspond with, but they fall short. Your actions are mimicked with the actual fighting system, but when it comes to special kills, there’s just nothing special about them in this game. The controls themselves don’t always feel natural to the movements the character is doing, and for me, that’s a problem. I know the Wii remote and nunchuk doesn’t give you complete control, but the kill movements could have been better.
The only good use coming from the Wii remote involves a mini-game when you’re standing in the shadows and a Hunter comes to investigate. You actually have to hold the Wii remote still so that the Hunter doesn’t notice anything and moves on. If there’s one single thing that can be pulled from Manhunt 2 and used in any future Wii titles with stealth game play, it’s this feature and this feature alone.
Article comments
1 - Sith Lord 666
I hate Manhunt 2 It is too gory!!!!