Manhunt 2 (Wii) Review
Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 11.05.2007
Daniel Lamb wants the last 6 years of his life back. I just want the last 18 hours of mine.
When the original Manhunt was released on the Playstation 2 console, it caused a stir of controversy due to its adulterated nature and dark, brooding atmosphere. The controls and gameplay weren’t top notch to say the least, but they weren’t exactly supposed to be. The game required players to maneuver out of some of the most hopeless situations using stealth and makeshift weaponry, relying only on killer instincts to survive. And survival was the name of the game: one of the best parts about Manhunt was taking on gangs of increasing levels of dementia and paranoia, as well as fatal abilities. Manhunt may have gathered players together with controversy, but lord did it prove its point with substance.
It’s been almost four years since the original Manhunt was released and history has since repeated itself on a greater scale. Rockstar games has made countless headlines after the very public bashings of Manhunt 2 from both the United States and the United Kingdom, where the game was largely banned from sale. Turned away by the ESRB ratings board and their contemporaries, Rockstar went back to the drawing board and managed to earn Manhunt 2 a mature rating allowing the game to be sold at major retailers in the United States. It is still banned from sale in the United Kingdom.
The stories for Manhunt 2 and its prequel are largely unrelated, but their atmospheres are all too familiar with each other. In Manhunt 2 you are Daniel Lamb, a mental patient at Dixmor Hospital for the criminally insane. You have little recollection of your past or your identity. What you do have, as the game begins, is a dead body in front of you, an open cell door, a syringe, and the friendly voice of Leo Kasper in your ear, guiding you down your bloody path to freedom. Your job is to escape the hospital and uncover your past, stealthily and brutally slaying anyone unfortunate enough to get in your way.
Graphics
Despite the four years between their release dates, Manhunt 2 looks painfully close to the original Manhunt. While both games do manage to achieve an atmosphere of dark, brooding corrosion in their locales and characters, for the most part the rendering in every object is just awful.
Bullet holes in a wall might appear embedded deep within the concrete, but a twist of the clunky and often frantic camera will quickly reveal they are actually floating suspended in front of the wall. Character individuality is all but gone here. Rather than face the unique and charismatic gangs of Rockstar’s previous Manhunt outing, Daniel spends most of his time taking on “hunters”, men in black suits who have one or two facial defects and all pretty much look exactly like each other. Collision detection in Manhunt 2 is ridiculous, and it’s often hard to tell if your character is even close enough to a window to actually break it.
I’ve already mentioned the camera, but I haven’t given it the lambasting it deserves. In the most vital and important parts of the game: when Daniel is hiding in the shadows, the camera becomes your worst enemy, banging up against walls and veering off into corners. This is especially true when hunters get in close, and players are required to hold the Wiimote steady in order to avoid being seen. That’s all well and good, but rather than allow players to continue moving about after hiding the camera often decides to follow the now oblivious hunter, screwing up your aim and equilibrium, resulting in a frantic movement for Daniel which then results in being detected anyway.
But we’re avoiding the hot point of contention here: the execution filters. In the original Manhunt, players performed stealthy executions that were shown in up close camera angles with a bit of home movie grain to them, one of the most entertaining parts about the series. In order to avoid the dreaded AO (adults only) rating, however, Rockstar has replaced that grainy camera with a trippy acid wash of reds, blacks, yellows and blues that sting the eye every time a player attempts a stealthy kill. It is literally impossible to see what is going on, and the blinding effect one receives afterward (coupled by the fact that stealth kills often place you directly in the line of danger from other enemies) means that playing the game the way it was meant to be played results in more punishment than reward.
And yes, this is Rockstar’s fault. We’ve all heard the controversy and whining about how these “artists” are being oppressed by the ESRB, but the bottom line is that Rockstar could have easily edited the stealth kills and focused more on refining the graphics rather than adding this supposedly drug induced mess. Rockstar chose an absolutely horrible route here, and its no surprise that gamers the world over have already discovered ways to hack the game and remove the filters entirely. Hot coffee, anyone?
Gameplay
To say that Manhunt 2’s control scheme and gameplay requires true gamer skill is nerdy egocentrism of the worst kind. Basically, this is a game that operates completely at random and is riddled with glitches. Some of the darkest, most shadow ridden corners of each stage are glitches and allow your enemies to see you as if you were standing in plain sight. Sometimes the opposite happens and you can hide in a shadow despite being in plain sight of your enemy literally half a second prior. Tapping on a wall to lure in an enemy will leave your desired prey frozen in place, but tap again and they will have a fix on your exact location and rush in to take you out.
This is the normal behavior for enemies by the way. The abnormal behavior comes when they see a dead body left on the ground and proceed to rush over to investigate. That part is fine, but again Rockstar’s lackluster collision detection comes into play. Now your enemies can’t get around the corpse of their fallen comrade, so they twist and turn and spin and trot in all sorts of directions, all while stuck in a single spot, making it impossible for you to move or attack. Don’t even think about going toe to toe with the opposition either. Regardless of what melee weapon you might have at your side, it will take fifteen whacks to even get your opponent on the ground, whereas a mere two of their sucker punches will have you down for at least a six count.
If there is a redeeming feature in the gameplay, it’s that the gun stages move quickly and easily. For the most part you can strafe about to avoid gun fire and move in nice and close until your targeting reticule is locked on for a nice one hit head shot kill. This becomes boring and easy after a mere few rounds, but at least it isn’t censored and it certainly moves things along. Yet even the gun play doesn’t make up for most of the frustration in the game, which comes in the form of “gotcha” moments that players can’t possibly see coming and will quickly lead players back to their last saved checkpoint after a frustrating reload. Nine times out of ten, dying in Manhunt 2 isn’t even your fault, the game just sets you up that way. This is even worse considering that you can’t skip most of the cut scenes in the game. Throw in a few obscure, difficult puzzles and a blatant misuse of the Wiimote controls too, just to round out what is a poor experience at best.
Sound
While there is nothing inherently wrong with the musical soundtrack of Manhunt 2 there is nothing terribly right with it either. Most of the music in the game consists of low ambient drum rolls and high pitched whines to set the mood for the game’s bleak looking environments and long waits during stealth kills. It’s a pretty basic soundtrack for serial murder, the kind of stuff we’ve been hearing in horror flicks for years.
The sound bytes are bad. Real bad. If they aren’t rehashed schlock work, they’re completely tinny or out of place. I think I heard the wolf howls from the courtyard stage in the original Resident Evil a few times (I’m being too lenient, I DEFINITELY heard them). More over, the gun effects that come out of the Wiimote speaker sound completely out of place. The unloading of shot gun clip sounds like a brick wall breaking in the original NES game Wrecking Crew, and the actual in game sounds are too low and cookie cutter to be anything less than forgettable.
Manhunt 2 is voice acted well at several points, or at least I believe it is. There was definitely something driving me on to watch cut scenes that unfolded a plot I had completely figured out by the end of the game’s third stage. I’ll just assume it was the voice acting, which (at least for the main characters) if of good quality and tone. There certainly wasn’t anything other than mundane voice tones to go on, but then again Manhunt 2 isn’t necessarily a supernatural game. We’ll take what we can get.
Lasting Appeal
Manhunt 2 consists of two difficulty levels and 17 stages, one of which is an alternate ending to the entire story. You don’t have to play through the game again to see the alternate ending, which I’m personally grateful for. There is no reason to play the game once you have completed both final stages on normal difficulty. That’s all.
Fun Factor
The story for Manhunt 2 is a straight up rehash of games like The Suffering, Prince of Persia: Two Thrones, or movies like Fight Club. There are even hints of Rockstar’s Max Payne throughout, and anyone who has played or seen these will find nothing original here.
Yet the story is still somewhat engrossing, and it’s a shame that it ultimately patterns out and goes nowhere. The big revelations for Danny just before the game’s final chapters are things we as players have figured out a long time ago, and the characters don’t catch up nearly fast or dramatic enough. The endings, both of them, are unrewarding and merely exist as a set up for a possible, undesired sequel.
Manhunt 2 simply isn’t all that fun. The original title in the series offered a dark ambience and some severe psychological commentary, and this sequel retreads some of those paths but by now the magic is long gone. There isn’t much to feel for any of the characters involved and at no time do we feel any attachment to them. The gameplay only serves to frustrate between cut scenes and doesn’t serve to enhance or heighten the tension in any way.
Rockstar basically gambled on their shock value and violence and ultimately lost. By filtering the violence in Manhunt 2 rather than focus on the actual graphics, gameplay and story, Rockstar essentially admitted that Manhunt needs blood and gore in order to sell. The redeeming value and the art of the series is long gone, and if we do see a Manhunt 3 its going to need some serious hype before most gamers will even consider picking up a copy.
The 411
The kills are censored. The graphics are five years old. The story sucks. The gameplay is full of glitches, and there is no payoff in the endings, just an excuse to make a sequel. Why did we care about this game again? Oh yes, controversy. The disappointing Manhunt 2 has been banned from sale in the United Kingdom. Those British don’t know how lucky they are.
Graphics
4.0
They could have released this 6 months after the original.
