Review By: J. Michael Neal
Developer:	Rockstar North
Publisher:	Rockstar
# Of Players:	1
Genre:	Urban Survival Horror
ESRB:	Mature
Online:	No
Accessories:	Memory Card, USB Headsets
Date Posted:	3-2-04

Stealth kills aren’t as simple as moving into position, however. In order to execute a stealth kill, you must be armed and you must hold the attack button before releasing it. The longer you hold it, the more gruesome the kill (seen from the Director’s eye view of a nearby surveillance camera). The more gruesome the kill, the more likely you are to receive three “Fetish” stars at the end of each level, or “Scene”. Get three stars and you unlock game art. Get five, the three Fetish plus one for Time and the fifth for completing it on “Hardcore” mode, and you unlock mini-games and a variety of codes. One special code, however, can only be deciphered by recording then playing a hidden audio message, presented at the main menu after you complete the game as a garbled whisper, backwards. Pretty cool, huh?

The problem with going for the most violent kill, however, is that every second you wait to unleash your attack brings you closer to being discovered. If the guy stops and you don’t and end up bumping into him, he turns around, he hears you, or someone else sees you, the jig is up. Therefore every stealth kill becomes a gamble as you test how long you can remain a step away from someone without being noticed.

If there are multiple hunters in the area, things get even trickier. You’ll need to lure each hunter away from the pack one at a time while being mindful of how long you have to “charge” a kill in order to get the “third tier”, or most gruesome kills, without exposing yourself for too long. Your best bet here is to use throwable objects like bricks and bottles to distract and separate the group, and then pick them off one at a time. The trick is to always remain quiet and always remain hidden, only stepping out of the shadows briefly to perform a well-timed stealth kill before stepping back again. Don’t forget to hide those bodies either, as hunters will instantly go on alert if they see a fallen comrade lying around. As you can imagine, remaining hidden while obtaining third tier kills becomes more and more difficult as the game progresses.

If you do make a noise while sneaking up on someone, or tread too loudly while in the presence of nearby hunters, you will give yourself away, and you do not want to give yourself away. Dieing is very easy in this game and health items are few and fair between, though save points are frequent and evenly spaced. Some sounds are unavoidable - moving quickly across the floor; walking on leaves, dirt, or gravel; landing after any sort of fall; bumping into a seemingly innocuous object; breaking out a window; but if you can, you must avoid making noise at all times. If you don’t, you’ll quickly find your role reversed from cat to mouse in this game of hunter and pray. Once you’ve been found out any nearby hunters will appear as a bright, flashing red arrow on the radar, indicating that they’ve seen you and they will not rest until you are dead. When faced with this you’ll have two options – stay and fight or run for the hills. If you choose to fight, you had better have some firearms with you, as taking on five guys with nothing but a crowbar isn’t saying much. If you run, you had better have enough left in your stamina meter to out pace your attackers and make for a real safe hiding spot.

Early on in the game you are almost always forced to run. This game is very methodical when it comes to making new weapons available, and you won’t have the full weight of the game’s arsenal behind you until halfway through. In the meantime you’ll have to make due with nail guns, tranquilizer rifles, and “disposable” one-use weapons, which means that most of the time you’ll be empty handed or out of ammo and have to avoid confrontations until you can get your hands on something else. This severely limits your offensive capabilities and makes stealth kills your only real option. While this creates a great feeling of “look at my shiny new toy” whenever you get your hands on a more deadly weapon for those of us with the fortitude to crawl through the first few levels, anxious gamers who expected GTA-style instant gratification will probably opt-out before then. This is a game that rewards patience, subtly, and a delicate thumb. Not many gamers go for that kind of stuff. If you are among them you may find Manhunt sluggish, disappointing, and unforgiving.

Once heavy weapons become common place hiding becomes a matter of choice. You can go commando when you need to, and if you aren’t concerned with getting the full Fetish rating, you can easily walk through a level Rambo style blasting everything in sight. This may help some of you action-seekers open up to the game, but be warned, you still won’t get much out of it. Manhunt is meant to be a stealth game and playing it like Max Payne strips it of its enjoyment. If you don’t take the time to get the third tier kills, to slowly pick apart groups of hunters no matter the size by luring them away one by one, to hide bodies so they aren’t detected, to walk softly and stick to the shadows, you won’t get anything out of this game.

If you are afraid the “skulk, shoot, skulk, shoot” gameplay will get tiresome after a while, don’t be. There’s enough variety throughout the game to keep things fresh from start to finish. Each of the 20 levels offers a different experience and as soon as you think you’ve seen it all, the next level loads and presents you with a brand new set of everything – weapons, missions, hunters, setting. You’ll visit abandoned zoos, mental institutions, factories, slums, and shopping malls just to name a few. You’ll face everything from skinheads to paramilitary groups, each with their own hunting style, group tactics, and weapons preferences. You’ll be posed with a number of distinctive level objectives. Some will have you in wild shoot-outs from start to finish, others will force you to avoid conflict or face dire consequences, and still others require escorting or lugging heavy objects about. Not to mention that around every corner hides the threat of some new terror or disturbing moment, and that’s often enough to keep you going.

Also keeping things interesting is the look and feel of the game. As you can probably gather already, this is a very atmospheric game. A lot hinges on keeping the world of Manhunt immersive. Carcer City is a place you do not want to be and James Earl Cash’s shoes are not a pair you want to fill, and the game has to translate this visually. Luckily, we are talking about Rockstar North here. They could rise to the task in their sleep. Manhunt is incredibly unpleasant to look at, but in a good, intentional way. It has the look of a gritty, grungy, 8mm film, bathing everything in rust tones and noise filters. It feels like playing the long lost cousin of the killer videotape from The Ring. Once you remove the noise f/x (which can be done from the options screen) you’ll see the game is actually quite a looker.

The color pallet, while definitely favoring the browns and grays, isn’t afraid to dot the world with vibrant pigments every now and then. Character models are large, detailed, and full of personality, from Cash himself to the wide variety of hunters you’ll face. Environments are incredibly distinctive and memorable, with each square foot being different than the one before it. The lighting is superbly noir, with dark-darks, bright-brights, and very little in between. Animations are very natural yet highly expressive, thanks to some excellent motion capture work. Little touches, like carrion birds that come to feast on the dead after they’ve sat for a while, rats crawling around the splat when you step on them, taunting messages written on walls or hunters themselves, bruises and bloody noses on characters who’ve taken damage, and “surveillance cam” views complete with distortion lines are nicely done. This may be running on the same engine as GTA3 and Vice City, but it easily out-shines anything seen in either game - this is far and away the best example of Rockstar’s “total package” art direction I have ever seen. This is a game created by a team at the top of their class and few, if any, companies could have pulled off this look so well.

Don’t worry about whether a game running on a modified Vice City engine has the controls to handle a game of this kind. Although the games bear some skewed family resemblance here and there the controls share little in common. And thank God too, because Grand Theft Auto’s strength never has and never will be its on foot controls. One can only imagine playing a stealth game with a set-up like that. This game’s controls are tight all the way and give players a wide range of movements and abilities with minimal effort. Cash walks by default, with analog input dictating whether he creeps or strolls, while R1 shifts him into a sprint. The digital pad lets Cash peer to the right or left, sticking his neck out and shifting the camera so players can get a good view around obstacles and corners. This move comes in extremely handy for players who want to maximize their stealth game and make sure the coast is absolutely clear before venturing further, or if some daring soul who wants that fifth star and tries to play the game on Hardcore, which removes the radar and doubles the strength of each hunter. For further camera control, use the right analog stick to switch into a first person mode or direct a firearm while aiming. The aim button, L1, also acts as the auto-face button while holding a melee or throwing weapon, which helps to make tracking enemy moments very easy while stalking them, especially when used in conjunction with the strafe buttons, L2 and R2. Press L2 and R2 at the same time and you do a 180 turn around. All major actions, picking up objects, kicking trashcans, lifting and dropping bodies, pulling levers, climbing obstacles, hugging walls, crouching against low barriers, or interactive with the environment in any way, are done with the triangle button. Circle scrolls through your available weapons, and square and X uses them, expect in the case of ranged weapons, in which case X fires and square reloads.

There are also a few handy little maneuvers you’ll want to get accustomed to throughout the game. Like any stealth game worth its salt, you can peek around corners once you reach the edge of a wall you’re creeping against a la Metal Gear Solid, but you can also jump out to deliver a crushing blow with a melee weapon. Once you’re in position you’ll see Cash raise his arm in anticipation – tap the attack button and you’ll lunge out from around the corner and swing. If it lands, it’ll stun an enemy for some time. This is a great tool for early on in the game, when you have to fight head on but have no real powerful weapons. Similarly, you can jump out from around corners and behind objects with a firearm Time Crisis style, but this is done with the aim button. You can also use the aim button to ready your weapon before opening a door, in which case the X button will prompt Cash to kick it down, and continued use of the X button will cause him to walk in shooting, a great way to surprise a group of unsuspecting hunters.

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