Manhunt: Hannibal’s bloody tale -DAWN Science; July 24, 2004

July 24, 2004

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Manhunt: Hannibal’s bloody tale

By Hamza Mudassir

SILENCE of the Lambs is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. The whole movie has this gritty atmosphere that makes your skin crawl every time you see it. Somehow with a grainy reel and some clever camera tricks the movie managed to create this slick, yet sick, aura that pulled you deep inside hannibal’s bloody tale. I remember that one of the scariest moments in the movie was when Agent Starling walks into Buffalo Bill’s home, and the serial killer attacks her from the shadows. I think I screamed like a little girl when that happened. Manhunt is all that and more!

In case you are wondering if you are playing one of the good guys who would rescue people and put an end to the hannibal’s life , then you are mistaken big time.

Developed by RockStar North, the gurus behind developing the GTA series, and who are notoriously famous for letting the gamer go bad.

You are playing John Cash, a psychopathic killer on death row. He is miraculously saved by a movie director to do his bidding to star in a new reality show, based on guess what, killing! This director has created various set assignments for you to perform within a night. He has also hired thugs and gangs to hunt you down, and vice versa. So it goes like you are the prey as well as the predator. And while all this action is taking place, people are being entertained.

Focus

The director’s camera is focused on you and it traces your every move. You view the game via this shaky, grainy camera. It sounds weird, but this adds a ton of atmosphere to the game. As you squint on the monitor, you character smoothly sneaks around the given set pieces, including warehouses, crane stations, abandoned buildings, etc. You name any scary movie, and its sets would be here.

The sound is chillingly accurate. On a 6.1 sound system, each step resonates and accurately clues you in on your opponent’s location.

Fatality

All you gamers must remember the “Mortal Kombat” series and its trademark fatality moves. Manhunt borrows the concept and amps up the brutalization to such an extent that the game was given an 18+ rating by the ESRB.

The game revolves around its trademark “finishing moves”, which to sum up means sneaking up behind your opponent and then mutilating him in such a way that he cannot be recognized , even by his mother. For these finishing moves you have different weapons ranging from polythene bags, baseball bats, small rods, swords, knives etc. Anything you can possibly think off could be used here in a demented way.

There are three levels violence for each finishing move (for each weapon), and the level is decided by how long you have held the mouse button while tracking down your enemy from behind. Here is how it happens. You press the Ctrl key and slowly start following your unknowing enemy.

As soon as you are in a good enough range, a target reticle will start appearing near the head of the enemy. At this point you press and hold your mouse button. In the meantime, this reticle will turn from green to white. This is your cue for the first level. Hold it for another second and it turns yellow, and be more patient and it turns a healthy red in colour. When you reach the appropriate level, leaving the button will change the camera angle and a very brutal fatality will be performed on the opponent. When you complete the sequence, you can hear the director laugh and rejoice. And it makes you wonder who the real psycho is here. Make no mistake; Manhunt can take down any other game in goriness any given day. You almost feel sorry for the poor bugger whom you just bludgeoned with your baseball bat. In fact, the first few hours of the game are usually spent with a large dose of guilt over the “survivor” that you have become.

Hunted

The irony here is that your opponents are nearly as smart as you are, and are going to hunt you down if you don’t get to them first. This makes the game go above just pointless killing, as the game pushes you in a very tight corner once your opponents find you. These folks are as bad as you have been and include oddballs like KKK members, other red necks, gang members, secret police, etc. So in a twist, you are perhaps doing a favor to the society by dishing out justice to these baddies. This game takes the meaning of sneak them up to a whole different level.

Reminiscent of the “Splinter Cell,” you hide in the shadows, waiting for the right time to come out and then bam! Shadows are critical for your survival. Even one opponent is enough to take you down and make you restart. And don’t even think about going Sultan Rahi on a group of these baddies, you will be on the restart screen faster than you can say “oops.” Keep this in your mind: You need to perform fatalities in order to survive the show, and to try to escape it.

Gameplay

The game has no free save option. This means that only when you are finished with a level will you be able to save. This makes the game tremendously frustrating for the impatient types. You die within seconds and you have to restart from a token “save point” which gets erased once you have quit the engine altogether. Thus many of you will be banging your head against the monitor for quite some time. You could use cheats, but then again it makes the game pointless.

Controls are one of the highlights, and make the game very enjoyable. The engine is a modified “Renderware” engine (the one used in “GTA Vice City”) and runs great on nearly all machines.

Conclusion

Once you get over the fact that you are killing people brutally in order to survive, you will enjoy Manhunt quite a lot. In fact, pulling off a fatality produces a wave of satisfaction, not because it is sadistic, but because it is very difficult to pull off. This “feeling” will remind you a lot from the game, “Mortal Kombat,” which had these near impossible button moves to remember and pull off.

Ironically, the point of most “action” games is killing your opponents. It is just that Manhunt makes it a point to be noticed. And once you have gotten past that, you will find a game which is quite engrossing as well as entertaining, and will keep you up for many late hours. To sum it up, Manhunt is the Hannibal Lector of games, a villain whom everyone loves, no matter how nasty he gets.

Hardware requirements

Minimum: Win98 or WinXP, 1 GHz MHz Intel or AMD processor, 192 MB RAM 2.3 GB hard disk space, 4x speed CD-ROM, 32 MB GeForce 2 or Radeon video card, DirectX 8.1.

Recommended: WindowsXP, Pentium 4 1.5 GHz processor or AMD equivalent, 256 MB RAM, 2.3 GB hard disk space, 24x speed CD-ROM, GeForce 3 video card, Hardware Accelearated sound card, DirectX 8.1.

Reviewer’s system: Windows XP, AMD AthlonXP 2200+, 512 MB DDR RAM, GeForce 4 Ti 4800 SE 128 MB video card, SB Live! Sound card, DirectX 9.0b, Settings: 1024x768x32 bits, Maximum detail level, mouse and keyboard for controls.

DSDC rating: 88 per cent

The writer is a scholar of MBA programme at the Lahore University of Management and Sciences (LUMS), Lahore

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