Manhunt - Another Rockstar action/stealth game
"For loads more on Manhunt - including an interview with developers Rockstar North and exclusive screenshots - check out GamesMaster's massive seven-page feature in their September issue, on sale Wednesday 6 August.
After speculation stretching back as far as April, the first details of Rockstar North's first game since Grand Theft Auto: Vice City have finally been revealed.
Manhunt, which is due to be released on PS2 in October, forgoes GTA's vehicular-based mayhem and instead offers third-person action-adventuring-murdering whose level of violence purportedly makes Vice City look resolutely chirpy in comparison.
The game takes place in Carcer City (think Wakefield in a power cut), which is run by a world-class sicko who goes simply by the name of The Director. Players assume the role of a hapless chap called James Earl Cash. One minute he's a prisoner on death row; next The Director has faked his execution and kidnapped him.
This is where it all gets a bit Running Man. Cash is abandoned, unarmed, in Carcer City's grimy underworld, where his fight for survival against hired posses of bounty hunters (who have names like The Hoods and The Skins) is designed solely for the purpose of entertaining The Director, who voyeuristically watches from afar via a string of CCTV-style cameras (hence these lo-res teaser trailers).
While there's very much a survival-horror vibe to proceedings, Manhunt looks to be far grittier than any of the zombie-based ilk and is, in fact, based as much around stealth as it is around clobbering people upside the head.
The reason being that, having just been dropped into the middle of an urban nightmarescape, you're completely unarmed and must rely on whatever weapons you can scavenge during your bid to stay alive and, ultimately, escape from the confines of The Director's reality-TV-show-gone-bad.
So making use of shadows plays a central role in the game, as does sound: enemies can pick up on each noise you make. Although we've yet to see it, there will reportedly be Metal Gear Solid-style radar at the bottom left of the screen that highlights just how much sound is emanating from you - and, just as importantly, the sound of your enemies, enabling you to track them.
The game expands on the ability in Metal Gear to tap walls in order to attract your foe's attention and allows you to fling objects such as cans or bottles in order to distract your opponents. In addition, you're also wearing a radio with which The Director can contact you - ostensibly to remark on your advancement through Carcer City although, more pragmatically, to set objectives for each stage of the game.
There is a total of over 20 weapons for you to stumble across - each of which is capable of producing its own uniquely gory kill, from a crowbar-induced broken neck to being carved up by a meat cleaver to Death By Plastic Bag (we're sure you can picture it). Each fatality is shown in grainy close-up, from the perspective of The Director himself. Big Brother was never like this...
Source: Gamesradar"
More info:
"A raft of new information about Rockstar North's new title Manhunt has come to light; and it seems death by carrier bag was just the beginning. For those of you who haven't chanced upon Manhunt before, this delightful title features convicted felon James Earl Cash in the lead role, as an inmate of Death Row who is given a last-minute reprieve, of sorts.
When the hour of his execution arrives, Cash's lethal injection turns out to be all a charade and the shaven-headed tough guy finds himself the plaything of mystery man and sick little monkey The Director.
This would-be Peckinpah has taken a deserted city, filled it with surveillance cameras and sub-human scum intent on doing Cash an extremely physical discourtesy, and is now sitting back to watch the ensuing, carnage-splattered hi-jinks. That description, however, is probably all too jolly. Manhunt, it's safe to say, is dark.
Cash finds himself in the unlovely surroundings of Carcer City, an urban sump-bucket bereft of normal citizens, populated instead exclusively with "hunters" - naturally, you're the quarry.
Cash's one vague hope of sanctuary is to locate the Director and take his freaking head off, but that's no easy task; not only is the Orson Welles of snuff monitoring your every move, he's also got a direct ear-piece link to you through which he can give you instructions and even advice, a la the codec system in Metal Gear Solid.
The game also employs a similar stealth-based gameplay formula to MGS, with sound playing important a role as vision; you'll need to use shadows, peer round corners, even use a radar. Imagine Hideo Kojima as a Faces of Death fan rather than the James Bond devotee he is, and you're not far off Manhunt.
As you play through the game you can top up your health bar by picking up painkillers, and there's also a stamina bar which will fall as Cash sprints; obviously you can only run at full speed briefly.
We're promised an electro style soundtrack - think of John Carpenter's Escape From New York, a movie which appears to have partially influenced the gameplay - which reacts dynamically to what's actually going on on-screen.
You can also hear the Hunters describing in gruesome detail exactly what they're going to do to you once they catch up with you. Your radar won't reveal Hunters should they remain completely silent, but it will at least emit a warning pulse should you be making too much noise yourself.
You can also duck or press up against a wall as you stalk your prey (or attempt to dodge a kicking) and you can disorientate hunters by tapping a wall Solid Snake-style, or throwing objects as in Splinter Cell. Hiding the bodies of downed Hunters by dragging them into the shadows is also a necessity if you want to avoid giving yourself away.
Slaying your enemies is obviously an important part of the game; each time you do so the death is viewed in leering fashion from the vantage point of a surveillance camera.
Essentially, top someone and you'll see exactly what the director sees, making for all sorts of pseudy questions about the nature of voyeurism in videogames and such like. Rest assured, this game looks set to court controversy in an even more sustained way than the GTA series.
Apparently you begin the game without a weapon, and the first such tool you'll chance upon is a plastic bag - not perhaps the most obvious device with which to take on a squad of whacked-out punks, but certainly one of the queasiest. Sneak up on an unsuspecting hunter and pop the bag over his head before he's registered your presence, and then sit back and "enjoy" the video footage.
Other weapons include: crowbars, baseball bats and a "blackjack" which can be used both to batter your opponent and then snap his neck to make sure you've done the job properly. Indeed, there seems to be a lot of neck-snapping, though we're promised plenty of other ways to hunt the hunters; a total of twenty weapons will feature in the finished game.
The gameplay isn't all stealth. Later on you'll get your hands on a shotgun, at which point the action becomes noticeably more frenetic as you find yourself attempting to blast your pursuers in ever more graphic style as you find yourself exploring a deserted prison building.
And we're promised that things will get much, much weirder with the Donnie Darko-style revelation that as the game progresses, you'll encounter a giant white fluffy bunny, though whether the rabbit signifies redemption or just insanity is a tough call right now. Comic relief? Or just proof that Rockstar reckons it can throw any old nonsense into a game these days and the kids'll lap it up? Whatever, we'll have more on Manhunt as soon as is humanly possible..."
Screens: http://www.the-magicbox.com/game072803a.htm
Also this month PSM has a big feature on this game with more pictures and stuff.
Hmm, Sounds pretty cool. Hard Target meets MGS :nod:
