Ian Fairies wrote:
I disagree with any criticism of this game. It's one of the greatest games ever made.
It defied gaming convention by making you stand still and observe. It's kind enough however to let you try a run, bodge it up but let you run back to the safety of the shadows. I can't think of a game before Manhunt that asked so much of the player. I can't remember a stealth game around the time this came out that did a proper stealth game. MGS was flirting with it but had the ridiculous boss fights and cut scenes. Manhunt stuck to its guns throughout the lengthy playtime.
It was brutal, it had bags of atmosphere, it was oppressive but most of all it was awesome.
Just when you're getting worn down by bagging enemies you're given a pistol and suddenly you're allowed to be loud and brash. You make you're way through the prison slaughtering guards. They peer into the shadows and for the first time you can be confrontational. They crane their necks into the darkness and you blow their faces clean off. You were the weak and hunted but you become the hunter with empowering weapons.
The scenery tells the story as you make you try to make your escape. It's The Running Man, isn't it? You're part of the game and you're trying to outsmart the game you're trapped inside.
And just as you do, the SS-inspired storm troopers arrive and once again you're underpowered and hunted again. You turn it around of course as you make your way back inside the game but it's a thrilling story told in a grimey bleak setting. It's the 90's horror version of The Running Man. The director is one of the best characters we never see in a game (more astonishing from his underwhelming normal appearance at the end of the game).
It's a PS2 game that captured the atmosphere of its story perfectly. Utterly captivating.
Absolutely couldn't put it any better Ian.
I'm not going to go as far as to say that anyone who didn't like this game is
wrong, but I will say they didn't let it get under their skin, because once it manages that you can't get rid of it until you've finished it, escaped from it, almost
purged it.
I'd be lying if I didn't admit to committing some of the most violent executions with a grim, awful, primal pleasure - almost as catharsis for what the game was daring to make me endure.
Truly a peerless game, and one of my strongest abiding game memories of all time.