Manhunt arrived in a manner as sudden and brutal as any of the game’s own encounters. Minimal early noise and scant preview coverage saw it slip from the shadows and lead an impact on players that felt largely unspoiled, in a manner that feels rare among the modern gaming scene’s increasingly industrious PR machine and always-on, always-connected observers. Its shocks were many, not just of the tabloid kind but subsequent commentary and word of mouth, filled with both blessings and curses, carrying it on to a status of both infamy and high esteem.
Many games revel in the entertainment power of violence, but few are so starkly honest and frank about it. There is no murky morality here, no murder for the sake of a higher cause, no justification borrowed straight from Hollywood’s own excuses for homicidal sprees. Death-row convict James Earl Cash is roused after a mock lethal-injection procedure, a freshly purchased pawn involuntarily plunged into the sickly savage world of snuff director Lionel Starkweather. From here on in, Manhunt is a game about a killer, forced to kill killers in a harrowing gauntlet overseen by a bloodthirsty psychopath.
Aside from the bit-part presence of a reporter out to expose Starkweather’s deranged circus, staged within districts of the fictional Carcer City, there is simply no ambiguity here. The Hunter gangs that stalk Cash throughout the game’s first half, the corrupt police and SWAT teams, the Cerberus mercenaries that act as Starkweather’s closest guards – every direct casualty of Cash’s unforeseeably effective starring role in this horrific setup is a culpable part of it. And while the game ends with the predictable toppling of Starkweather’s grisly regime, it’s never in the name of justice, only survival. No lessons are learned, no air is punched, no innocence preserved; the greatest questions to be asked are of yourself, and why you’d ever push through such a doomed, remorseless and exhausting marathon in the first place.
Our Manhunt review from 2003 makes for interesting reading today, and gives a sense of the controversy that surrounded the game at release.
It’s the tension, of course. There’s vicious entertainment and voluntary discomfort to be had in other media, but here there’s no pillow to hide behind or paragraphs to skip – you have to end it yourself. Manhunt’s course is strung tighter than an Achilles tendon, never stopping for breath, rarely halting to expound. Cash treads one downtrodden urban killing field after another, his every move and assassination recorded by Starkweather, from filthy streets to a deserted zoo, from dilapidated shopping mall to trainyard, from jail complex through to a nerve-splitting showdown against the elite troops that defend the grounds of Starkweather’s home. And it’s all framed by Rockstar’s sturdy eye for attention to detail, from the difficulty settings (fetish or hardcore) to an instruction manual posing as a catalogue for Valiant Video Enterprises, the underground distribution label for Starkweather’s messy death flicks.
There are other reasons why it would leave some frayed – those who saw its cruelty and GBH purely as petty exploitation, those who see relentlessness as repetition, or those left the wrong kind of cold by its trim but reliably precise stealth mechanics. Its toe-to-toe combat system was nearly useless, as much down to Cash’s vulnerability as its simplicity – standing off against more than one assailant would often, quite plausibly, result in death. So, the wealth of Cash’s bodycount came via Manhunt’s snuff cam, death sequences enacted upon unwary Hunters as they were trailed, CCTV camera cuts that made the player’s own actions coincidental with the sadism and suffering requested by Starkweather. While this fetishistic voyeurism could begin to wane, Manhunt had a surprise reinvention up its sleeve, several levels in. Or, rather, tucked into the back of its trousers – the introduction of gunplay, and a twitch-headshot technique, turned confrontations on a sixpence – shootouts decided in a sudden, desperate flashpoint of gore instead of ambling ambushes.
If Manhunt is a ’70s-grade splatterfest spin on The Running Man, then its only one-liners come from the unnerving showbiz mouth of Starkweather himself – both goading and encouraging, direct to Cash’s earpiece via the splendidly cast voice of Brian Cox. It’s a game suffocated by a blitzkrieg of a synth-led soundtrack, warmly malevolent during more peaceful moments but revving up into a serrated thrash as Cash steps from being undetected into line-of-sight exposure. And, in a neat touch, the sound design could literally involve the player via a headset, into which Starkweather’s commentary and instructions would be fed, with the mouthpiece allowing a shout to distract Hunters, or even attract their unwanted attention with an accidental cough or overly deep breath. Combine this functionality with Manhunt’s sole boss encounter – the memorable Piggsy, an obese maniac whose lair is stumbled upon en route to Starkweather’s stronghold – and be left in no doubt of Manhunt’s capacity for overwhelming dread and bleak horror.
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