Manhunt 2 (PS2, PSP, reviewed for Wii)
Developed by Rockstar London
Released on October 30th, 2007
First things first: you probably want to know how bad the blurring effect is in the game’s executions.
It’s bad.
I assume it’s much, much worse on the PS2 and the PSP as you don’t get motion controls to vaguely clue you in as to what the hell your character is doing, but even on the Wii some of the more gruesome kills in some of the darker locales are really damn hard to make out. You get a vague idea as to what’s happening, but it’s impossible to go through a single execution without feeling a great deal of irritation at the fact that what you’re watching could have been much more gruesome and descriptive.
And don’t kid yourself -- the only reason to play Manhunt 2 is the violence. Anyone who played the first Manhunt knows the gameplay isn’t particularly good, the graphics are dark and grimy, and only the slightest traces of a story are present. In this respect, Manhunt 2 doesn’t fall too far from the franchise tree.
I’m not quite sure how to summarize the story. Explaining the main conflict might spoil a major plot twist for you, but I’m hesitant to even call it a twist in the first place. Anyone with the slightest amount of intelligence will understand the relationship between the protagonist (Danny Lamb) and his friend (Leo) within literally ten seconds of seeing the two of them interact. Still, the Manhunt series has never really been targeted toward those people gifted with an overabundance of brains -- perhaps it’s better to leave this plot detail unspoiled. Suffice to say, Danny Lamb escapes from a hospital with mild amnesia, and has to spend the game’s 4-7 hour runtime killing his way to the truth. There are some interesting moments in the game’s narrative, but, overall, it’s superfluous at best and infuriatingly hypocritical at worst (near the end of the game, Danny tries to stop his violent nature by getting rid of a character who forces him to commit murder. He gets rid of this character by stabbing him in the neck with a syringe and beating him to death with a shovel. Yeah, right -- yay for nonviolence).
The majority of the gameplay still revolves around stealthily hiding in shadows and taking out “Hunters” -- a nondescript, catch-all term for anyone who wants you dead. Thankfully, Manhunt 2 is nowhere near as linear as its predecessor in terms of immediate local agency. The maps still consist of a pretty straightforward A-B route, and the game is still pretty damned linear when taken on its own, but, unlike the original Manhunt, the player isn’t forced to use only a melee weapon or only a gun. The first game forced you to use silent executions with melee weapons for about 70% of its runtime until giving you a gun (and only a gun) for the final 30% -- Manhunt 2 pleasingly cuts through the crap by giving you a gun and a melee weapon relatively early in the game, and allowing you to choose whether you want to stab, bludgeon, or shoot your way through the game.
However, beyond this little bit of choice (which will only be of note to those who played the first game) there’s nothing even remotely interesting about Manhunt 2’s gameplay. You run for a while, you hide in shadows, you gruesomely kill a passerby, you shoot a few Hunters, you run some more. Rinse, repeat. Nearly every aspect of the gameplay is uniformly mediocre: the braindead AI will walk around in circles or clip into walls, the Wiimote aiming is awkward, and many of the levels are so lazily designed that you can literally sprint from checkpoint to checkpoint, ignoring nearly every enemy around you, and complete each level in record time. It’s as if the game knows that anyone who would play it is only doing so for the gruesome executions; the levels are designed with the assumption that the player is looking to maliciously linger on the deaths of his enemies, rather than attempt to simply move past them and further the narrative. As such, they’re incredibly boring.
I’d also like to point out two particular aspects of the gameplay which, quite honestly, pissed me the hell off.
Firstly, the developers also included some half-assed attempts at changing up the gameplay by implementing pointless obstacles like locks or jammed doors. Upon reaching these obstacles, the player is forced to search the entire damn level for a crowbar which a single, random enemy happened to carry. If you can’t find the crowbar, you can’t proceed. At one point, I spent literally a half hour searching the final level for a stray crowbar an enemy had dropped a few miles back; I needed a crowbar, evidently, but the game didn’t bother to tell me that until twenty minutes after I’d killed the only guard who carried one. A great deal of backtracking, nook-searching, and profanity followed.
Secondly, it’s impossible to skip any of the in-level cut scenes. This wouldn’t be so bad save for the fact that any frigging time you die, you have to rewatch the most recent cut scene which played at the start of the last checkpoint. Forcing the player to sit through the same damn cut scene over and over and over just for accidentally dying may well be one of the stupidest game design choices I’ve seen all year.
Oh, by the way, the graphics suck. I state this as a fact, not as an angry point of irritation: I’m not really a graphics guy, but I know ugly, and Manhunt 2 is ugly. The character models are blocky and decidedly last-gen, even on the Wii, and the environments are drab and dark and grimy, and not in a moody or unsettling sort of way. I’ll admit that the character animations are really good, especially during melee combat or the execution cut scenes, but, other than that, Manhunt 2 just ain’t pretty to look at.
Negativity aside, however, Manhunt 2 does do a few things right. When the player is hiding within shadow, for instance, a Hunter might run up to the dark area and study it, looking for any signs of movement. At this point, a short but well-integrated Wii minigame (of sorts) occurs. Upon the Hunter’s arrival, the player has to keep the Wiimote as still as humanly possible; if it moves too much, the Hunter will notice the movement and attack, but if the player can keep the Wiimote steady for ten seconds, the Hunter will move on and expose his back to the player. Visually, the minigame is implemented in a simple and straightforward manner (a wobbling dot appears onscreen to show you how much you’re inadvertently moving the Wiimote, and in what direction, while a circle surrounds the dot to show you how much you can move the Wiimote before the Hunter notices you), and it adds a great deal of physical, Wii-specific tension to what would have been an otherwise drab few seconds of passively waiting for the Hunter to pass.
Additionally, the motion-based fistfighting system works pretty well. It’s not The Godfather: Blackhand Edition by any means, but I never had to worry about the game not recognizing my blows -- when I punched with the nunchuck, Danny punched with his left arm, and when I punched with the Wiimote, Danny immediately threw a right. As with the hiding minigame, this little bit of Wiimote functionality made a potentially boring-ass event (in this case, non-execution melee combat) a great deal more fun.
Here’s my main problem with Manhunt 2: it exists solely to provide its audience with the most gruesome, disgusting deaths it can possibly muster. Now, we can debate whether or not that’s a good thing until the clichés come home, but that one part design principle becomes problematic when you can no longer provide that one thing to your audience. For a game which lives or dies on delivering awesomely horrific kill sequences, Manhunt 2’s enforced censorship has essentially removed any reason for the game to exist. Period.
As it stands now, Manhunt 2 acts as the worst of all worlds; its non-gameplay will irritate gamers who actually want to enjoy themselves, its presumed violence will send the media into a frenzy and send public opinion of videogaming back another five years, and its relatively low level of visually clear violence will disappoint gorehounds who just want to see a bad guy get his balls ripped off with a pair of pliers. Yeah, the Wiimote implementation is pretty interesting at times (enough so that I’d refer to the Wii edition as the definitive version of Manhunt 2), but there’s just no damn reason to actually play through the few hours of gameplay Manhunt 2 has to offer.
If you’ve got a Wii, buy Zack and Wiki instead. Maybe then, the media will focus on the epidemic of excessive happiness amongst Wii owners rather than worrying about our propensity to commit real-world murder triggered by crap videogames.
Rating: 2.5
Verdict: Forget it!
A news story waiting to happen...
i saw this coming a mile away.
So, they're charging $50 for the first manhunt again (now with blur effects)?
I like the whole "don't censor games" argument, but if they could take the time to make the game at least a half step up from total shit it would help.
Dementium is serving me up nicely.
I am sooooo glad I changed my mind and didnt buy this game. Saving that cash for UR MR GAY
@ Inchworm
I was with you, chilling out with a slurpee watching this come in all its trashiness.
Anybody that chooses this over Zack & Wiki needs a good nutpunch. When it was still an AO rated title, I was all over it for the shock value and to try and get more intense stuff on Wii. After the edits were made, I don't have any interest unless it hits $20 somewhere. Shallow, sure, but so's the game.
Must...resist...urge...to...buy it.
This raises the question: If people will get annoyed with the gameplay, will that raise their level of aggressiveness or will it be the violence? ;)
You can't have Summa and Pedobear in the same room together, it'll be like an evil team up, like, The Joker and Lex Luther.
Let's doooo the tiiime waaaarp agaaaaaain...
Sorry, wrong post. On topic : I wouldn't have bought this game if you paid me to.
As I thought...blows.
I don't think anyone buys a Rockstar game for it's graphics, granted GTAIV and their ping-pong game look good, but other than that they've always had very basic blocky looking games, especially the Grand Theft Auto series (up until IV). This'll be a great game to pick up once it hits the bargain bin used for 9.99. Other than that get Zak and Wiki like the reviewer said.
This comic sums up the entirity of the Manhunt 2 situation beautifully:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/02
I almost feel like this game series is a social experiment of sorts for Rockstar.
"Can a game devoid of any actual merit still sell well if it's encapsulated with violence and controversy?"
so i downloaded it, :( just to see what the heck.
good thing too. i never even liked the first one, i hate the controls, i hate the camera views, i hate how you have no real control when you kill someone, it feels like you are playing a puppet that doesn't respond well.
i freaked out bad on myspace about the esrb and censorship over this title. and man what the heck, the censored version shows the stuff the same with some strange color wash fx thingy, i don't get the controversy either way now.. this game is not for me, i don't like the controls at all. i hated it on the original as well. I guess it's all good and dandy by me...
throwing the download in the trash as i ype this. i wouldn't spend a penny on this game... forget it..
the game blows.
the hype is uncalled for in all ways..
Oh well. Maybe GTA will rock our socks off and be violent enough. I mean all we want is the ability to run over hookers. Woooooooooooooooo
oh and btw, i am not a pirate, i only installed a m33 os just so i could check out the uncensored game, what a waste of my time. i plan on butting back my original psp os.. i hate hacks too.
Thank God. If this game got a good review I was going to stop reading Destructoid.
Wow. It is too bad Rockstar even put this game out.
I can't wait for UR MR GAY, that's the game that will make me actually play my Wii :D
@ hexfix
Don't lie. You just hate it because it's not a PS3 exclusive.
vexed, go stick a banana in your ass, and blow cum bubbles out your ears. shit breathed retarded raver kid who wears day glow.. fuck you..
So is there any way to get an uncensored version onto a ps2?
@hex
Damn, son. Guess that statement puts you square in Rockstar's target demographic...
the guy/girl above me is a fucking idiot.
I kinda like it....please don't hate me. It's very "80's B-movie slasher violent". The "hostel" level alone makes it fun, and if you kinda squint, it's like watching a blocked out porn channel back in the day. Except for nudity, it's horrible violence.
And why did they blur the executions, when within ten seconds you walk by a dead guy with blood shooting out of his open throat? My recommendation is to find someone who has it, and play it that way.
Note: should read "except instead of nudity"
Sorry, I've been drinking. And I don't stupid type like whiteboy, so you can't really tell.
I love the Rev's reviews.
Fuck this game! but Ill rent it haha
Rockstar should stick to hooker beating and ping pong.
Looks like ol' JT didn't have anything to worry about. I doubt anybody will play this game, anyway! lol
only reason i like this game is because it and its uncersor patch were free
Two thumbs up
Zack & Wiki!
2.5 - lol
Too bad, Rockstar should have spent that money porting The Warriors to Wii. I would have bought it.
Finally! A game that Twilight Princess is better than! Who would ever have believed it possible?! ¬_¬
Meh, it sounds like it sucks about as bad as I figured it would. Too bad that this is the game that caused all that controversy. See, if the anti-gaming retards hadn't been so adamant about this game and drummed up so much damned interest in it while trying to get it banned, consumers almost certainly would have spoken with their wallets and this game would have probably died the quick and horrible death that it commercially deserves. Are people really still planning to buy this game just on principle or whatever? o_O
That's too bad. I was hoping this game would turn out to be good, and deep, so I could laugh in the face of Thompson and his ilk. And instead it turns out shit. Too bad.
I probably would have gotten this if it were given an AO rating, just on principle, but I guess I'm glad they had to tone it down, now I have an excuse not to buy an awful game.
The worst part is that the lousy sales of this over-hyped game will further support the argument that 3rd party games don't sell on Nintendo systems.
I would buy Zaxk and Wiki if I could find it.
Heh, saw this coming the moment I heard Rev was reviewing the game. Still, good review.
Still banned in the UK....
I think Jack Thompson got through to Rockstar. They're clearly trying to punish anyone stupid enough to buy the game.
huh. the 2.5 is BY FAR the lowest rating i've seen Destructoid give. it seemed you all were in line with most other gaming sites, with 5 or 6 being an "awful" rating, but a 2.5?!? i think you're being a little harsh.
that said, i have not played the game yet myself, just the original. maybe it IS bad, but a 2.5 bad?!?
ITS FUNNY CAUSE THIS GAME SUCKS!
lmfao
all that drama for nothing XD
Have I ever mentioned I admire you, Anthony?
I'm surprised but then again I'm not lol
Thanks for the comprehensive review-warning on this digitized heap of doggy poop. The siren call of the $29.99 price tag has been muted by your words of reason.
I HOPE YOU ALL GET RAPED MANHUNT WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST TITLES FOR PS3 AND FROM THE LOOKE OF THE UNSENCORED VIDS THIS LOOKS EVEN BETTER...YA'LL NIGGAS GAY
stfu godl1ke, manhunt is crap.