Manhunt

"I'm the director, and were gonna play a little game"

You assume the role of James Earl Cash, a convict on death row dragged out to some sick movie set, and only let loose to be prayed upon by hundreds of psychos and murders. Some sick director has plans for you...

This Review has been broken down into sections, Story, sound, graphics and gameplay. Please enjoy.

Story - 8 - A sick director has ejected you from death row only so he can watch you and other killers play a deadly game of cat and mouse. This story concept my seemed overused now days but Manhunt pulls this one off in a gloomy stylish way. While the plot really has no perks, it's still interesting to watch it unfold.

The characters are very well designed and all have distinct personalities about them, this adds to the storyline and helps it elevate its greatness. The story is forgettable, but still neat.

Sound - 9 - One of the main high points your going to notice in manhunt is that the sound and BGM are very well composed. To begin, the music always seems to set the atmosphere for a brutal killing, and the tunes can even sometimes be quite frightening! The voice acting in this game is top notch, the characters have GREAT sound and dialect in their tones as well as very well thought out vocabulary, all adding up and making the SFX in Manhunt feel much more enjoyable.

Another kicker is the basic game sound effects. All of Manhunts weapons sound very crisp and loud, and the Assault Rifle sounds very realistic! As soon as you find a good melee weapon however, the sound of squirts and sprays will spill out of your speakers! While at the same time your enjoying this display of gore, your going to get to hear the good old' wet sounds, but this might turn off gamers that have issues with a gore factor of things.

Graphics - 7 - Manhunt on the Playstation 2 was gritty and had a muddy look to it, but this game ported over to our Xbox, provide for a slightly smoother complexion. All the character models are nicely detailed and there are plenty of them, all ready to be disposed of. As far as the weapons go, they look descent for a game of this caliber, but they just don't look as good as Max Payne or most other 3rd person action shooters on the market. The overall best parts of the graphics are the environments which are littered with all kinds of small details and make the atmosphere really sink in. In the end though, the game has no polish and just really isn't flashy, but luckily that fits the mood of MH.

Gameplay - 8 - The game is solely based on stealth, and provides you in a very awarding way! Have you ever wanted to kill some dude with a plastic bag? Well, now you can. The gameplay is really quite simple as all you do is sneak around and execute these freaks with wide variety of gruesome weapons. Each weapon has a bought 3 murder screens and goes into like a filtered home video and you just see James, tearing these convicts apart. This type of stealth also has some basics, like distractions, well, this game you can use your own distraction tools. The best one is more than likely one of their buddies heads! Later on the game shifts and you'll start finding Firearms and guns lying around.

At almost an instant the gameplay changes and thugs and armed SWAT teams begin a full on killing spree. However, the shooting gets old quite fast, you pretty much will blow off their heads every other shot so after like two solid missions you will have been killing so much that it will bore you fast. Luckily Manhunt saves itself by making this portion rather short, this way you can remember the better times easily without the thought of a torrent of decapitations.

Rent/but - Worthy of your Xbox Collection, but it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/15/05