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rewindfrequency · 6 years

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Manhunt 2 Review

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Manhunt 2 Review

Developed and Published by Rockstar Games

Played on: PSP/PS VITA

Also Available on: PS2, Wii, and Microsoft Windows

Daniel Lamb and Leo Kasper have been imprisoned in the Dixmor Asylum for six years under the brutal conditions of the Pickman Project. But today they finally have a chance to escape. The patients of the asylum revolt, throwing the place into chaos. The cell door is open for Daniel Lamb, and his former partner Leo Kasper eggs him on to leave. This is Daniel’s chance to finally uncover what the Pickman Project did to him and what it plans to do to others. You will have to jump between time periods in Daniel’s memory and play as both him and Leo Kasper to uncover the truth.

The first thing I have to say about this game is that the story is great. It explores the human mind and how it can be manipulated and controlled. This game has no story connection with the first Manhunt. Manhunt 2 is considered a psychological stealth horror game. I have to disagree with this categorization. After playing through the entire game it’s more like an action game with stealth elements thrown in. There are two types of gameplay styles. Stealth exploration is the first. This form of gameplay dominates the first few levels. You sneak from the shadows, which are large dark spots of the level that enemies can’t see you in, and kill the hunters (the people looking for you) one by one. This is by far the best part of the experience gameplay-wise. In these levels most of the time you're only given one use weapons such as a pen or a shiv. You use these weapons to take down sometimes as many as five foes. The items respawn in certain areas so don’t worry about running out. When in the stealth levels you don’t have to sneak. You can actually walk right behind the enemy and kill them. But this is only for the handheld version. As you take down enemies you get their weapons and have more fighting power over your opponents. These levels are often in tight spaces and force you to isolate and distract your hunters to prevail.

The rest of the game is a mix of stealth and cover-based shooting with some levels being entirely cover-based action sections. Now, I’m a big fan of cover based shooters, but this one is just bad. The game will boil down to shooting galleries where you use a lock-on aim mechanic to tear your hunters to pieces. I rarely died or took heavy damage in these levels because they’re just to easy. This part of the game is downright boring. The cover system is clunky, not allowing you to move back and forth quickly. To vault over cover is painfully slow. This game tries to be like Gears of War and fails miserably. Speaking of that lock-on aim, it not only makes the game too easy in some sections, but makes it harder in others. When using a shotgun, for example, you will fire at the nearest enemy. But in some cases depending on the height of your cover, the lock-on aim will fire at enemies far away. I can’t hit those enemies with a shotgun. Even worse is that since the game wants to be fair, they make you miss shots. And with some guns you can miss dozens of times. The pistol is complete garbage. It takes forever to have the firing reticle on a hunter and once you do, you miss a few more times before landing a hit that does little to no damage unless they’re two feet away. This is by far the worst part of the game and it’s the majority of the gameplay. This is why I don’t consider this to be a stealth psychological horror game. If stealth is a secondary feature and shooting dudes while behind cover isn’t scary, then it fails to meet its own classification.

But don’t worry, there is more gameplay to be had. If you are in a stealth section and get caught, you can fight your opponent hand to hand or use a melee weapon. This is terrible. Your character moves slowly and throws their punches even slower. Want to block after throwing a punch? Too bad. The game won’t let you. You have to sit there and take a beating. In hand-to-hand combat expect to lose at least half of your health. There is no justification for how sluggish it is. In later levels of the game, you can get a weapon like a shovel or crowbar and completely dominate your opponent. Even though the combat is still slow, now you can actually get out alive.

All the gameplay I mentioned above it severely hindered by the game's controls. Even when playing on the VITA you are still only allowed to use one analog stick. This makes the game almost impossible to play. That’s why you need the aggressive lock-on aim system. How can I make tight turns to avoid being spotted when I only have one analog stick to move my character and adjust their field of view? How can I move quickly from cover to cover in the shooting sections when I only have one analog stick to do it? This right here makes the game extremely frustrating and at one point almost unplayable. In Level 11, “Origins,” you have to shoot targets that are immune to lock-on aim. So you have to enter free-aim mode. This is awful when you only have one analog stick, especially when you have guys shooting at you and there is an incredibly short time limit to shoot the damn thing. The “boss battle” later in the level is impossible to beat without exploiting a glitch. You can’t shoot a scientist that you need information from so you have to pick up a tranquilizer gun to subdue them. But the scientist shoots you with his tranquilizer gun while you try to get the other tranquilizer. You can’t pick up items while tranquilized. Oh, and you have a very short amount of time before the boss instantly kills you and the level goes back to one of its poorly placed checkpoints. The only way I even beat this boss battle is by exploiting a glitch. I stood in a corner where the scientist couldn’t see me. Then I ran out and grabbed the gun before his AI could react. I shot him from the corner and then I won. The corner wasn’t even a shadow. And even if it was he saw me run to the corner. The controls in this game are ridiculously bad and ruin the entire expirience.

Now let's talk about the atmosphere. Like the first Manhunt, this game is meant to be gritty, dark, and over-the-top violent. Like I said before, the first four levels get it spot on. From the asylum, to Daniel’s burned down house, to the red light district, this game gets dark and gritty right. But the rest of the game is just running through neighborhoods shooting the cops. This is a very strange game because of its wishy-washy level and game layout. Why would you ruin your gritty atmosphere with random shooting in a brightly lit test lab or residential street. Overall I feel it fails in this respect because it throws away its gritty roots for more mainstream shooting galleries. As far as violence goes for the console versions, most of the brutal executions are blurred or taken out completely with the scoring system for how brutal you are taken out entirely. This was due to the ESRB originally giving the game an A for adult rating which would have technically banned the game because no major console manufacturer allows adult only games. But the PC version has all of the content in it.

Glitches are another common occurrence. There were many cases I would try to pick up a new weapon and it wouldn’t work or I would try to pick up a body and that wouldn’t work. But there were two glitches that really pissed me off. The first is that enemies wouldn’t spawn in immediately. They would randomly appear while I was sneaking and I would have to restart the checkpoint after they ganged up on me. And I know they randomly appeared because the mini-map tells you where the enemies are and there icons came into existence out of nowhere. The other is taking cover. If you can even get your character to get into cover. Sometimes the enemy bullets will phase through objects and hit you anyway. This really shocked me because this looked like a competently made game. The graphics and sound are of PS2 quality which is amazing for a PSP game. There are times, mainly during the shooting sections, that there are ten enemies on the screen with no slowdown whatsoever. This is definitely a strange game.

Overall I feel that my experience with Manhunt 2 was soiled due to the device I was playing on. But even when you take that into consideration, I still feel that the game isn’t very good. If the game advertised itself as a stealth action game or an action game with stealth elements then I wouldn’t mind the constant shootouts and gunrunning. But that’s the problem. It advertises itself as a stealth horror game and uses the Manhunt name to attract gamers into buying it. While the story is great, you can always just read the Wiki and not have to spend a dime on the actual game. The controls on the handheld versions make the experience unplayable in many respects and makes this the worst platform to play on. But I hate saying that because even with its piss poor controls and various glitches the game looks incredible for a PSP game and can handle a great deal of processing stress with the wide open environments and enemies. I don’t feel good about hating on this game, but I have to judge it based on what it is. If you want a gritty game on your Wii or you want to complete your PS2 collection and see this game at a low price, give it a shot because it is going to be far superior to the PSP/VITA version.

I am giving Manhunt 2 on the PSP/VITA a 3 out of 10

Pros:

A gripping story about manipulating the human brain

PS2 quality graphics and sound design on a handheld

Cons:

Terrible controls

Boring shooting galleries

Painfully slow melee combat

Glitches galore

A boss battle that can only be won by luck or glitch exploit

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#Game Reviews #Manhunt 2 #Manhunt 2 review #PS VITA #PSP #Gaming #Games #Reviews #Horror games #Action games #Stealth games

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