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Manhunt thread - 'HEEEEEAAAD JUUUUUUICE!'
Lightning Shield!
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
First ever thread on these forums, woo.
Making a Manhunt thread is pretty tough on me, mainly because I'm such a total fucking crazy-in-love geek for the first game that it'll take some serious restraint for me to not descend into batshit loco fanboy mode once I get talking. Suffice to say that it's one of the most personally important games I've ever played, and there's barely been a week that's gone by since November 2003 that I don't boot this masterpiece up and bathe in it's atmosphere, like a carefree baby frog frolicking freely in a spring fountain in some nature reserve like the Animals of Farthing fucking Wood or some such. The game oozes horror. And not in the supernatural, zombies, aliens and mutants type of fantasy horror that's so easy to recreate in a Resident Evil sort of fashion. I'm talking human horror. The evil that men resort to when they're at the end of their fucking rag, when survival is the only thing that matters, when they're alone with a machete in a city choking under the drugs, sex and violence that runs rampant, reflecting the human condition. The horror of five men with baseball bats hunting you down in some godforsaken fucking warehouse in the arse-end of the some rust-belt industrial town deep in America's heartland. Carcer City, a hellhole so bad it makes the other GTA cities (yes, they are in the same universe) look like that Cypress Creek place that Hank Scorpio runs in The Simpsons.
It's 1980s video nasties, it's 1970s grindhouse, it's Preacher, it's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it's The Warriors, it's John Carpenter's entire movie career distilled into one awesome stealth game with the guts of a GTA, the soul of a Metal Gear and one twisted fucking sense of humour. Manhunt is Rockstar's way of saying to all those Daily Mail prudes "you think GTA is fucking violent, banging hookers off-screen? Take a look at this scythe castration!"
I love it to death, for its boldness, it's brutality and its incredible vision towards scaring and thrilling the shit out of you with every silent step and carrier-bag asphyxiation. You don't, as certain lawyers would suggest, have to be a basket-case to play this game. You don't have to have fantasize about gutting your co-workers, and you don't have to "lie around masturbating in your own feces", to quote Brad Pitt in Se7en. You just have to appreciate good horror, and good stealth gaming.
The atmosphere is helped by the vocal talents of Emmy-award winning actor Brian Cox, who snarls and screams out words of derision and encouragement as The Director, directly into your ear if your using the USB headset. It's a stealth game that dares to ask you 'what if you aren't the hero?' You're not some government agent snapping terrorist necks for your 'fat reward and ticket home' - you are a bastard. Everybody in this game is a bastard, except for the one woman in the storyline. A comment on the male ego, perhaps. It's no random decision to set three whole levels in an abandoned zoo, free of the animals. This is a zoo for violent men to hunt each other in caged surroundings whilst somebody else observes them through a camera lens. For the Manhunt.
MANHUNT - PS2, Xbox, PC, released November 2003 (UK)
What's the story? James Earl Cash is a convicted murderer, facing the ultimate price for taking a man's life - the death penalty. Instead of being administered the lethal injection though, a tranquiliser inoculation sends him to sleep. When he wakes up he thinks he's in Hell - ironically not far off. A mysterious voice on the end of his headset tells him that he's been given a second chance. "Do exactly as I tell you, and this will be over before the night is out", he's promised. Cash is urged to step quietly through sectioned-off areas in Carcer City, in the dead of night, and brutally murder the roaming gang members in the bloodiest fashion possible, for the cameras. For this, you see, is the Manhunt - an epic snuff film organised and arranged by an ex-Hollywood (Vinewood?) mogul so powerful that he even has his own private guard of hired mercenaries working for him. There is no escape, and there is no bargaining. The cops are in his pocket, and the gangs are his pawns. The show must go on.
There are various gangs: The Hoods (basic street mob, cowards if isolated), Skinz (trash-dwelling self-righteous white supremists), the Wardogs (dumbass army guys), Innocents (mainly Mexican murderers and psychos), the Smilies (Insane asylum residents), CCPD (Carcer City's finest), and the Cerbeus Unit (The Director's private guard).
Defining moment: Deliverance, the final level. Scariest gaming moment ever. You can take your Pyramid Heads, Eternal Darkness bathtubs and Resident Evil dogs and windows, because Piggsy has this genre covered.
Manhunt 2 - PS2, Wii, PSP, out July 2007.
^----Actual image photographed from a HMV store.
Imagine my face when I heard Manhunt 2 was coming. Just imagine the smile of sheer delirious fucking joy on my impish face, when I saw that news. Like this:
IGN article
Official Site
The new hunt begins soon.
Discuss, Hunters.
Making a Manhunt thread is pretty tough on me, mainly because I'm such a total fucking crazy-in-love geek for the first game that it'll take some serious restraint for me to not descend into batshit loco fanboy mode once I get talking. Suffice to say that it's one of the most personally important games I've ever played, and there's barely been a week that's gone by since November 2003 that I don't boot this masterpiece up and bathe in it's atmosphere, like a carefree baby frog frolicking freely in a spring fountain in some nature reserve like the Animals of Farthing fucking Wood or some such. The game oozes horror. And not in the supernatural, zombies, aliens and mutants type of fantasy horror that's so easy to recreate in a Resident Evil sort of fashion. I'm talking human horror. The evil that men resort to when they're at the end of their fucking rag, when survival is the only thing that matters, when they're alone with a machete in a city choking under the drugs, sex and violence that runs rampant, reflecting the human condition. The horror of five men with baseball bats hunting you down in some godforsaken fucking warehouse in the arse-end of the some rust-belt industrial town deep in America's heartland. Carcer City, a hellhole so bad it makes the other GTA cities (yes, they are in the same universe) look like that Cypress Creek place that Hank Scorpio runs in The Simpsons.
It's 1980s video nasties, it's 1970s grindhouse, it's Preacher, it's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it's The Warriors, it's John Carpenter's entire movie career distilled into one awesome stealth game with the guts of a GTA, the soul of a Metal Gear and one twisted fucking sense of humour. Manhunt is Rockstar's way of saying to all those Daily Mail prudes "you think GTA is fucking violent, banging hookers off-screen? Take a look at this scythe castration!"
I love it to death, for its boldness, it's brutality and its incredible vision towards scaring and thrilling the shit out of you with every silent step and carrier-bag asphyxiation. You don't, as certain lawyers would suggest, have to be a basket-case to play this game. You don't have to have fantasize about gutting your co-workers, and you don't have to "lie around masturbating in your own feces", to quote Brad Pitt in Se7en. You just have to appreciate good horror, and good stealth gaming.
The atmosphere is helped by the vocal talents of Emmy-award winning actor Brian Cox, who snarls and screams out words of derision and encouragement as The Director, directly into your ear if your using the USB headset. It's a stealth game that dares to ask you 'what if you aren't the hero?' You're not some government agent snapping terrorist necks for your 'fat reward and ticket home' - you are a bastard. Everybody in this game is a bastard, except for the one woman in the storyline. A comment on the male ego, perhaps. It's no random decision to set three whole levels in an abandoned zoo, free of the animals. This is a zoo for violent men to hunt each other in caged surroundings whilst somebody else observes them through a camera lens. For the Manhunt.
MANHUNT - PS2, Xbox, PC, released November 2003 (UK)
What's the story? James Earl Cash is a convicted murderer, facing the ultimate price for taking a man's life - the death penalty. Instead of being administered the lethal injection though, a tranquiliser inoculation sends him to sleep. When he wakes up he thinks he's in Hell - ironically not far off. A mysterious voice on the end of his headset tells him that he's been given a second chance. "Do exactly as I tell you, and this will be over before the night is out", he's promised. Cash is urged to step quietly through sectioned-off areas in Carcer City, in the dead of night, and brutally murder the roaming gang members in the bloodiest fashion possible, for the cameras. For this, you see, is the Manhunt - an epic snuff film organised and arranged by an ex-Hollywood (Vinewood?) mogul so powerful that he even has his own private guard of hired mercenaries working for him. There is no escape, and there is no bargaining. The cops are in his pocket, and the gangs are his pawns. The show must go on.
There are various gangs: The Hoods (basic street mob, cowards if isolated), Skinz (trash-dwelling self-righteous white supremists), the Wardogs (dumbass army guys), Innocents (mainly Mexican murderers and psychos), the Smilies (Insane asylum residents), CCPD (Carcer City's finest), and the Cerbeus Unit (The Director's private guard).
Defining moment: Deliverance, the final level. Scariest gaming moment ever. You can take your Pyramid Heads, Eternal Darkness bathtubs and Resident Evil dogs and windows, because Piggsy has this genre covered.
He's an obese naked guy with a hollowed-out pig's head over his own. He's cannibalistic, screamingly bleeeeeeeeeeblblblblblblb insane and chases you relentlessly with a chain saw in the game's climatic scene. With the ability to disappear from the radar (and your senses) by simply turning off the weapon, he's one of the most memorable antagonists in gaming history. The set-design of the level looks like something from a Nine Inch Nails vid, your main character is completely (well, almost) defenceless, and the game delivers the ultimate gratification when you defeat the psycho and take the chain saw for yourself, gleefully dismembering a few assault-rifling toting mercenaries before busting down the door of the Director's editing room and giving him the definition of 'stomach pains'.
Manhunt 2 - PS2, Wii, PSP, out July 2007.
^----Actual image photographed from a HMV store.
Imagine my face when I heard Manhunt 2 was coming. Just imagine the smile of sheer delirious fucking joy on my impish face, when I saw that news. Like this:
Play.com sez:
An experiment at a secret research facility has gone catastrophically wrong. Daniel Lamb and leo Kasper are the only surviving subjects. The Pickman Project will stop at nothing to hunt them down and stop the truth from getting out.
Demented screams echo around the dank asylum that has caged you for the last six years. You open your eyes. A white-coated body slumps to the floor through your shaking hands. A bloody syringe slips from your arm. Waves of confusion and paranoia crash over you. You have no idea who you are or how you got here.
The door to your cell is open. One choice. One chance. They took your life. Time to take it back.
IGN article
Official Site
The new hunt begins soon.
Discuss, Hunters.
Lightning Shield! on
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Your article makes me want to go out and buy the original for some strange reason.
I think...I will
I loved the first Manhunt so much, although I never did finish it. Manhunt 2 is so purchased on day 1.
Also that Manhunt 2 cover :^:
Where Madness and the Fantasical Come to Play
That said, pretty good game, if ass hard at times. How the hell people played hardcore mode, I'll never know.
No, but I do like to pretend.
I always play hardcore. I'm like fucking Houdini at this game - I can get out of any situation. I'm not even some mad skillz gamer (never do more than normal on Guitar Hero), I just know the game inside-fucking-out. The only levels that still surprise me are the last five or so. 'Wrong Side of the Tracks', you never know what the hell is going to happen.
Nice OP, though.
I bought the original release day, along with Freedom Fighters and FFX-2. After playing it all the way through, alone in the dark of my basement, headset filling my head with gristled whispers, I decided I'd never bother playing through another worthless RPG again. It so altered my attatchment and emotional connection to gaming, there are very few other games that come close to making me feel anything. I love stealth gaming just for that reason, the immersion of having to hide and the actual sensation of fight or flight moments.
Nothing was sweeter for me than the Burtonesque Starkweather courtyards or the morgue of the insane asylum- truly a beautifully ugly game. I don't know that I could play it religiously, even with some online multiplayer or challenge modes included again. Prolonged exposure to the game would likely warp me even further.
Playing this game with a few friends actually inspired us to go out and shoot snuff films for the rest of that winter. They're pretty insane. When I told them a sequel was coming they clowned on the nerdy anti-hero, but I think he's perfect- exactly the sort that takes an axe to a freaks neck in a stealth kill. As much as I ended up identifying with Cash, the subplot with his family and his treatment of the Reporter- I never really felt for him outside the survival instinct. I dig the asylum patient however. I wonder if he wasn't a Smiley?
Suffice it to say, I am adequately stoked for the sequel. Its the one thing I care to buy a Wii for, I'm honestly shocked they're making a sequel at all, considering the first recieved heaps of critical acclaim but not amazing sales. The Chicago Tribune even called it one of the top five most important games ever made, so I'm glad Rockstar is bothering to franchise it. I just hope it holds up, story wise, design wise, gameplay wise, mechanics wise....
I might have to break this out again, I loved the stealth but didn't much care for the gunplay levels, aside from being a slight diversion and fresh change to the gameplay, I'd rather spend the shooting time playing Red Dead Revolver as a total Rockstar whore.
To me, real horror is atmospheric and psychological. Rarely does it involve removing someone's testes with garden implements for no fucking reason.
...
o_O
Manhunt was banned in Australia, which sucks ass on a stick.
Funny thing is, it was banned after like 5 months of sale.
why the hell is rockstar releasing this on the wii?
it seems they may not reach the target audience for this one to me
I realize the above probably sounds like pseudointellectual bullshite, but it's the best way I can think of to explain it. It opened an internal dialogue about violence in my heart, and reaffirmed that it isn't the way to go.
Oh, and fuck Jack Thompson.
I was going to post "insert obligatory 'wii is teh kiddie' remark here" but I guess you beat me to it.
:roll:
Yeah, that was really clever. Mario is definitely aimed at the 18+ crowd.
I loved this game but I never beat it
I got to some part with like a mansion or something and like SWAT dudes.
That isn't what makes Manhunt scary or unsettling. Well, okay, the violence does make the game unsettling, but that's rather secondary to what I'm talking about.
Yes, the violence does make the game rather uncomfortable a lot of the time, but the atmosphere is what has always kept me from finishing the game. There is an ever-present sense of foreboding and unease and the atmosphere is just dark and creepy and unsettling. It remains one of the most atmospheric games I have ever played and even if I abhorred a lot of the rather graphic violence, it's still one of my favorite games, finished or not.
Manhunt really is more than people give it credit for. I won't say you should try it no matter your biases, but maybe you should take a closer look. It really isn't all gore and violence and stabbing people's eyes out with shards of glass.
I could never get in to the game, I don't know if I gave it a fair shot or not. To me it just seemed, sneak in shadows, walk behind someone with button held. Let go. Over and over and over again.
I'll undoubtedly still rent the Wii version, and after all the positive comments may go back and give the xbox version a chance. The only thing that bothers me about the Wii version is that it'll just be the PS2 one with motion controls tacked on. Like Spider-Man.
And that upsets me.
::Edit:: I can vouch for the atmosphere though, it could get tense at times.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Mostly I find the game is about setting the mood, letting yourself get into the game, immersing yourself with the sound up, sitting in the dark, playing all night long, and just exploring the environments while playing headgames with the various gangs (that way you hear all their fucking awesome dialogue) and allowing yourself to feel the fear.
I play every stealth game that comes along and this ranked right up there in between Splinter Cell co-op and MGS3 throwing snakes at GRUs in the forest.
I haven't played manhunt, never got around to it, but I doubt I'd need anyone to tell me what to do.
I'm one of those people who was really frustrated that I couldn't kill every friendly npc in HL 2. >.>
(Please note, this is in video games)
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Buh? The game is really clever in that it makes you question why you are doing what you are doing the entire time. The antagonist is in constant communication with you, telling you how great you are the more violent the death you've acted out is. I mean it makes you question the thrill you get from the killings - you ask yourself, "Am I enjoying doing this? Does that make me the same as the Director?" and then you kind of twig - I am, in a sense, the director. This game doesn't have to be gory, I'm making it so. Fucking cool for a game to do this to you.
Unfortunately, the morons just played it for the splatter and the internal dialogue passed them by completely. Politicians watched as kids played along going "huh huh, cool" in abject horror. And now, Manhunt 2, instead of taking the achievements of the first one over to the sequel, make the schlock horror title the media portrayed the first one as. Who knows, I may be wrong, but everything that I've read about the sequel saddens me a little.
Everything in Australia is cushion covered compared to america...
...
I felt that way for about two days, before I came back to it because I wanted to see how the story would progress. And then I realized that the game is actually quite great: you see, it's trying to make you feel uncomfortable and despicable, not to mention scared and high-strung. It's a very strong, solid take on the whole "anti-hero" aspect; sure, I've played a bastard in many other games, but rarely did I actually despise my character. I mean, consider another Rockstar favorite - GTA. Sure, in those games I beat up old ladies and stole cars, but who cares? It's good fun. Contrast that with the horrifying methods of slaughter in Manhunt, and the fact that it takes itself seriously, and the next thing you know, you're taking it seriously too.
I love the backwards message to it that's being described in this thread. If you get the whole message you can appreciate it, but if you can't read between lines and see the whole picture you're leaving yourself with a really shallow perspective and you'll hate it because you think it's "mindless".
So far Rockstar hasn't put anything out that's mindless. Not even Table Tennis.
I'm really a wuss in scary games, though, so I don't know how well I'd handle it.
I didn't mean wii is a kiddy system, I just meant right now it's geared toward casual gamers, and admittedly to children as well. I don't know if the people who pick this up are going to see it for what it is supposed to be. It's like Sin City, where people who didn't understand what the movie was based off of walked out of the movie theater. At least that happened a lot where I was living at the time.