2003’s Manhunt is a brutal, gritty title that occupies a strange place in Rockstar’s catalog as something that should be considered the company’s best work, yet it remains overshadowed by their own mega-hit franchises. This bleak, uncompromising meditation on the nature of voyeurism questioned the player’s participation in horrific bloodshed, and has since become something of a cult title — and PIGFACE is certainly one of its descendants.

Set in a post-industrial wasteland, PIGFACE places players in the role of a woman with a bomb in her head. Faceless handlers have assigned her to murder members of a drug-dealing gang across a handful of locations, and what little characterization the game offers has those same handlers shocked by how little pushback they receive from their living weapon – almost as if she’s as much down for all the murder as the people playing the game. The gameplay is as basic as the graphics – this looks like a Quake-era experience and feels like gritty, vicious shooters of that time, back when most titles were developed by a handful of people and when it was easier to smuggle bizarre and extreme content into even major titles.

After choosing a mission, the player picks their loadout from a decent arsenal – but in a twist that feels strange for an FPS (and may have been inherited from Manhunt) the player can only bring a single ranged weapon. This creates a bit of awkwardness, as the player is asked to decide on a playstyle before they have a sense of what the level is like, and pre-mission the briefings are not particularly voluminous. So, there’s often nothing to do but guess whether a sniper rifle or a shotgun is better for any given area, and if that doesn’t pan out, they can hope to snag a more appropriate weapon off of a dead body somewhere along the way.

The strange part is that for a game seemingly built around experimentation and taking chances, the developers punish players harshly for mistakes. Any time they fail a mission, a steep financial penalty is incurred. While guns only have to be bought once and ammo is free, healing syringes cost money, ensuring that if a player fails a particularly difficult level more than a couple of times, they’ll be forced to try again with even fewer resources, and consequently, less chance of success.

Enemy AI is also a little on the spare side at this point. I’m sure it’s a difficult to balance and all of the enemies can be best described as drug-addled wastrels, but they were remarkably unobservant and unresponsive whenever violence kicked off — enemies will watch a guard’s head get blown off with a sniper rifle, shrug, and then get right back to their patrol seconds later. Setting off explosives or blasting away with a machine gun might attract reinforcements, or it might not – enemies were largely unpredictable in an ‘is the AI broken and not responding to triggers?‘ kind of way.

Still, there’s plenty to be optimistic about here. The violence is every bit as brutal and upsetting as one would hope given PIGFACE’s obvious inspiration. There are huge blood spatters with every shot, and enemies scramble around and scream as they’re injured, making the whole thing feel doubly unpleasant.

This unpleasantness also permeates every bit of the world. Every room is full of trash and dirty needles. The player is asked to shut down drug factories, and all they find are a few drums and jars crudely linked together with hoses and tape. This game is about the absolute lowest-tier of criminal being executed by an assassin who lives in a dingy one-room apartment next to a set of elevated train tracks. It’s a celebration of the grindhouse aesthetic and seemingly pointless violence – although as the story gets developed in later updates, that might well change.

PIGFACE is in a rough Early Access state at the moment, with inconsistent enemies and no real narrative to speak of. I don’t expect the graphics to get any better – the low-end look is the point — and it’s a clear throwback to a rougher, more brutal past. Anyone lamenting that we never got a Manhunt 3 will find a lot to love here.

Assuming gameplay is rebalanced and more levels are added – I beat all five in just under an hour – this is extremely promising. Hopefully the devs manage to turn it into a more complete experience, as games this heartlessly brutal are few and far between.

Or maybe this kind of game being rare is a good thing? I’ll let history be the judge.

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Continuing my journey through the game Manhunt, this time I’m joined by my oldest friend Natasha, who both doesn’t play video games, and can’t bring herself to watch horror movies because she finds them too scary!

No one could have predicted this would be the result of our session. Enjoy!

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That’s right, I’m back for another episode of The Manhunt’n Project, in which I introduce people to the game Manhunt for the first time, and see how they react to it! This episode, I thought to myself – ‘hey, you know who’s completely unfamiliar with Manhunt? My mother.’ This is the video that resulted.

There were some great reactions, as well some interesting insights, in a digressive conversation that moves from video game violence to film violence to, of all things, tapestry violence!

Check back here for more Manhunt’n Project coming soon!

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This week I'm joined by Melissa, who goes from never having heard of Manhunt to being a huge fan of it over the course of 90 bloody and foul-mouthed minutes!

Check out the video for hypergore, pornography criticism, and so many beheadings!

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How will I accomplish this? By bringing people who have never seen or heard of the game and playing it along with them. What will multiple sets of fresh eyes think of the game? Is it still as shocking today as it was in 2003? What will more modern, possibly jaded audiences think of it? I can't wait to find out!

In the first episode, I'm joined by popular podcaster DM, who you'd think would be more prepared for the game than she winds up being! Enjoy!

Have any thoughts to share on Manhunt? Do so below, and prepare to have them discussed in a future episode!

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Finished Manhunt (PlayStation 2) today for the first time. It was an interesting experience. Although it certainly lives up to its reputation as being an extremely graphic and gory game, there was a lot more to it than just that… the story and setting (death-row convict is rescued from the chair only to be thrust into a kill-or-be-killed game of hide and seek) were engaging, and the work with tone and mood were excellent. The stark, brutal feel and incredibly bleak outlook of the game’s entire world were very well-realized. There's also quite a bit of meat to chew on for people who like to delve into meta-commentary, but I'll save that for another post.

The reason I ended up coming back to this came after so many years was that I feel a certain responsibility to experience games that are notable or important for one reason or another in order to expand my repertoire as a critic. Manhunt was certainly a title that should be examined, and I'm glad I gave it another shot. Once I got over the stupendously bad camera, the cumbersome, frustrating controls, and just accepted that the game was twice as long as it should be, there was a lot to like if for no other reason than very few games have attempted to explore the pitch-black subject matter.

I think the first Condemned game on the 360 is in the neighborhood, but Manhunt still outdoes it in terms of sheer nihilism and apathy towards humanity–it's not a place I'd like to live, but it's good to visit once in a while.

Read more at Drinking Coffeecola blog.

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Manhunt 2 is the rarest kind of videogame sequel, one that jettisons all plot elements from the first game, carrying over only play mechanics and tone from the first title. The most notable absence this time around is the first game's theme. Manhunt made a statement about voyeurism, suggesting that the player was every bit as deviant as the villainous ‘director' for enjoying the violence they caused onscreen. This time the violence is framed in an entirely different manner; instead of happening in what amounts to an elaborate film set, everything takes place in the ‘real world', or at least an extremely nihilistic interpretation thereof. The player controls a doctor named Daniel Lamb who, along with his murderous alter-ego Leo, must avoid being killed by government assassins long enough to discover just how he wound up trapped in an insane asylum with a vicious killer playing timeshare with his body.

The player is asked to accomplish this task primarily by murdering an awful lot of people. In that, Manhunt 2 differs very slightly from every other videogame available. The thing that sets it apart from other notable highs and lows of the stealth genre is that the murders are more immediate, plausible, and yes, realistic. While the Hitman slinks around garroting people to death with almost surgical precision, and Tenchu's ninja flit about supernaturally, leaving geysers of blood in their wake, for all intents and purposes, Daniel Lamb is Just Some Guy, and his weapons of choice, including baseball bats, ball-point pens, and battery-powered circular saws can be found in the average home. Even his pistols and shotguns are ordinary, everyday items, if we're including American households in the count. So when Agent 47 snipes the Vice-President of the United States from the roof of the White House, it's not controversial because a government official being shot is completely fictional, while depicting someone's head being cut open with a rusty saw could be classified as instructional.

The game is helped immeasurably by the quality of story that occurs between (and sometimes during) all of these brutal slayings. It's nothing that's going to win any awards, but everything progresses in a clear and logical fashion. Questions are raised, then answered in a satisfying manner, and it's all presented by extremely solid voice acting. The one problem in that respect is the actor playing Leo, the bad angel on the player's shoulder. From the moment the game begins, he's always there, urging the player forward to more gruesome and excessive acts of violence, taking on Brian Cox's role from the first title. Sadly, he just doesn't bring any gravitas to the role, and more importantly, just isn't scary enough for the part. It's too bad, though, because the game's treatment of Daniel's deviant personality is among the best I've seen in a long time. Especially because the character's status as a figment of the imagination isn't used as a twist or kicker. From the first moment he appears onscreen, players know exactly what Leo is, and that they're controlling a character with serious problems that extend well beyond the people trying to kill him. There's confident storytelling on display, and that deserves compliments, even if the story being told is one that very few people will ever want to hear.

The gameplay sticks pretty close to the series' previous entry, in that there's literally almost nothing to do but stalk and kill people. Sure, every now and then a key item needs to be tracked down, but beyond that, the game swings wildly from utterly competent stealth gameplay to woefully ill-conceived gunfighting. That's not to say the gunfighting is completely awkward–the Wii controls ensure that it's easy enough to sight and execute victims, but the game's movement and cover engines, while fine for ducking into shadows and waiting to slit throats, just aren't up to dealing with the sheer volume of gunplay the game requires, especially towards the end of the game. This is the exact flaw the first game suffered from, and I can't imagine anyone involved in that game coming away from the experience thinking "You know what that needed? More shooting." Only the inclusion of much needed 'firearm executions' keeps the inclusion of gunplay in the game from being a complete wash. The humor of tapping someone on the shoulder and having them turn around to see a shotgun aimed at their face goes a long way towards mitigating the terrible combat.

The Wii controls are also an incredibly mixed bag, with only one of the new ideas on display being worth anything at all. This is the hiding mechanic–when villains are peering into the shadows, looking for Daniel, the player has to hold the controller completely still to avoid being seen. This is a great idea that really goes a long way towards putting the player in the character's shoes. Especially because the camera switches over to first-person mode whenever it happens, so the villains lean right into the television screen as they search the darkness. Less successful are the ‘vicious murder' commands that got the game into so much trouble in England. In the first Manhunt, the viciousness of murder was determined by the amount of time the player spent creeping up behind their victim. Now, in addition to that time spent stalking, the player is asked to crudely mime various actions in order to see them reproduced onscreen. The motion detection works well enough, and I think there would probably be some visceral thrill to be gleaned from shaking both controllers from side to side, approximating the experience of strangling someone with barbed wire, if the omnipresent censorship didn't keep me from being able to tell what was going on.

That's right, the biggest problem with the game is just how overpowering the censorship is. When I heard that the game's violence had been toned down, I imagined simple touches, such as removing excessive amounts of blood, or tastefully panning away from the worst atrocities. After all, how may films have held onto their R rating by showing an axe swinging, but leaving the point of its impact just off camera? The solution offered here was to add a black and red filter over all of the execution animations. Whenever the player starts to do something nasty, the screen shakes badly and random shapes fly in their face, while everything gets so dark that anything but the broadest details are almost impossible to make out. This is one of the few occasions where I'd recommend playing the game on a smaller screen, because I played the game on a large HDTV, and wound up suffering from eyestrain and minor headaches. It's only natural, especially when playing a stealth game, to really get into the action, leaning forwards a little and focusing on the screen while sneaking up behind a victim. Having the screen essentially go schizophrenic at the climax of these sequences is not wholly dissimilar to having the game slap the player in the face for following the rules. The kicker is that the 'murder simulating' Wii controls, with all their thrusting and stabbing, lose any purpose in this version of the game. Every kill involves a series of steps, in which the player has to perform a new action to keep the kill going. The game offers no incentive for the gamer to play along with this, though–following the onscreen instructions only prolongs the amount of time the screen is covered in static.

In his review of The Punisher, Brad Gallaway pointed out something I had missed when covering the game–just how badly the game's inexplicable censorship crippled what little fun could be gleaned from that title. Manhunt 2 is a far better example of the same problem. Yes, it's an incredibly, borderline obscenely, brutal game, but within its own context it tells an interesting story and provides some great thrills for the player–or at least it would if it weren't so busy trying to give its players seizures. As a story, it's a minor success, but anything Manhunt 2 could have accomplished as a videogame is undercut by the changes forced on Rockstar by the ESRB. Given how willfully it wades into depravity and disgust, Manhunt 2 might not be the ideal poster child for a workable adult rating for videogames, but it's the game that started the discussion, and hopefully that discussion will lead, somewhere down the line, to someone making a game without worrying what might happen if a child stumbled upon it. Rating: 3.5 out of 10

Disclaimer: This review is based on the Wii version of the game.

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Parents, are you seriously considering buying this for your children under the age of 17? Seriously? You know that this is the sequel to the only PS2/Xbox game to feature full frontal male nudity, right? And that it's themed around dangerous brain surgery that turns regular people into psychopathic killers? And that the game moves to such memorable locales as a snuff club, porno theatre, and adult video store? And if all that hasn't dissuaded you from buying this for your children, feel free to call your local police department and turn yourself in for child endangerment right now.

Fans of the first Manhunt will find this game the ultimate mixed bag. The story is a great improvement over the first, but the voice acting is a small step down. There's a much wider variety of kills, but none of them are actually visible. If you're a fan of the first, it's worth a try, but be forewarned, there's nothing as good as the Piggsy fight to be found anywhere on the disc.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing gamers should be okay. You'll miss out on most of the incidental dialogue, but get the story delivered in subtitles. An onscreen radar means that you'll always be able to tell where your enemies are, so you won't have to rely on hearing them coming.

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Manhunt is, at heart, an interactive snuff film. Without a doubt, it's among the most unapologetically violent videogames in history. Human heads explode like pumpkins. Machetes, axes, meat cleavers are all used to disembowel enemies. Sniper rifles, when carefully aimed, can blow holes clean through heads. Wounded gang members beg for mercy, and the game gives players but one choice: deliver the death blow (an act which always left me feeling vaguely saddened). If there was ever a game that deserved the ESRB's Adult rating, this is it. (For some curious reason, it got a Mature rating.) Violence serves no dramatic purpose whatsoever in Manhunt; it's violence for the sake of violence. Adults with a delicate sensibility should obviously steer clear of this game. Manhunt, not surprisingly, is also racist and sexist. The White Trash gang, whenever they caught a glimpse of me, referred to me as a "half-breed." Another gang member, while chasing me, said, "You run like a beat-up hooker." There's absolutely nothing playful or lighthearted about the game. The protagonist kills without remorse, which makes it difficult to sympathize with him (even Agent 47 of Hitman fame has his moments of remorse).

Fans of the Tenchu, Silent Hill, Resident Evil series, or any of the recent Grand Theft Auto games might find a pleasurable moment or two in the game.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing gamers could have some trouble playing Manhunt. The cut-scene dialogue is adequately subtitled, but the in-game comments of the gang members and certain audio cues (like Pigsy's wailing chainsaw) are obviously not subtitled.

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Since the crimes are so sensationalistic, it's no surprise several books chronicling Manson and his band of hippies sprang up almost over night. Naturally, most of these affairs were written in the style of today's tabloids–any facts that can't be corroborated can still be used and if you're unsure about certain details, feel free to use artistic license and make up something that sounds good.

However, one of these books, The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion (written by Ed Sanders of the rock group The Fugs), gains more attention than many of the others. Sanders' book asserts The Family not only committed the Tate and La Bianca murders, but they may have been involved in something even more heinous–the making and trafficking of snuff films. This may or may not have been the first time the phrase "snuff film" was used–but it is almost assuredly the point where it infiltrated the collective consciousness of the American citizenry.

For those readers who aren't up on the history and terminology of transgressive cinema, the "snuff film" is a film wherein a person (or persons) is murdered in front of a camera. This film is then offered to an underground network of collectors who supposedly relish viewing these atrocities. The snuff film is not to be confused with the mondo documentary (a la the sensationalistic Italian documentaries like Mondo Cane, Shocking Africa, et al.) or the Death Tape or "shockumentary" (e.g. Traces of Death, Faces of Death, etc.). The mondo documentary and death tapes exist–you can rent them at your local video store in most instances. Snuff, on the other hand, appears to be nothing more than a clever urban legend. After decades of raids, reported findings of snuff films (which have turned out to be legitimate movies like Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, or Hidoshi Hino's Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood–a film that Charlie Sheen turned over to the FBI because he thought it was real), and sensationalistic claims of underground murder movie rings, no one has ever found a real snuff film made for distribution. Murder has been captured on tape, but never in the way that the snuff film supposedly operates–as a commercial enterprise.

And yet, the myth of snuff cinema lives on–buoyed along not only by the popular media (before Nic Cage starred in 8mm or Alejandro Amenabar made Thesis other filmmakers were exploring the mystique of snuff in Emanuelle in America [Joe D'Amato aka Aristide Massacessi], Last House on Dead End Street [Roger Watkins], Hardcore [Paul Schrader], and the most infamous of all, Michael and Roberta Findlay's Snuff with a generous assist from distributor Allan Shackleton), but by the fact that no matter how repulsive the idea of snuff cinema may be, it also seems like something that could very well be real.

The latest group of mavericks to build a piece of entertainment around the supposedly taboo subject of snuff is none other than Rockstar games. Rockstar, no strangers to controversy since the release of the Grand Theft Auto III (GTA3), have once again pushed the boundaries of what's acceptable in gaming with the release of Manhunta game that plays like a cross between Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and a 42nd Street grindhouse exploitation flick.

As Scott points out, this game isn't for the weak-hearted. Manhunt is the most perverse and disturbing game I've ever experienced. It does make GTA3 look like Sesame Street. However, my problem with Scott's score is that he's essentially penalized the game not because of technical shortcomings (which are mentioned in passing), but primarily because it offended him. Manhunt is a twisted game–but it's not a game that deserves a 3.5 rating.

Once players get past the gore and nearly pornographic violence of this title, they're treated to one of the better action stealth games to come along in recent memory. Say what you will about Rockstar and their tendency to live off of controversy, but it's hard to deny they make interesting games that do more than simply up the ante in terms of violence and graphic content. GTA is cited by the mainstream because, in it, you can sleep with hookers and then bludgeon them to death. Gamers cite it as a great game because it offered up an unparalleled amount of freedom in its open-ended design. Manhunt will almost assuredly be looked at in the same contradictory terms by the opposing groups.

While there is no shortage of things that impressed me about this game (and I'll get to those shortly), I think the thing that left the biggest impression was the game's completely nihilistic tone. Manhunt is like the bastard offspring of Nietzsche and The Marquis de Sade–had they been game developers. It thrusts players into a world that's so dark, so foreboding, and so all-encompassed by evil, hopelessness, and despair that the hero of the game is a mass murderer. Playing the game reminded me a lot of watching John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer in that there was no good in this world, just an endless darkness. This isn't a pleasant feeling, or one that many people go out of their way to experience, but it's really impressive for a game, a medium that's still in its infancy in terms of being an artform. That's not to say Manhunt is art, but it's certainly a title that is going to pave the way for growth in gaming (albeit in both good and bad ways, most likely).

Nihilistic tone wasn't the only thing that really impressed me about Manhunt, though–there are about a bazillion technical elements that stand out as well. Everything from the art design (which complements the game's tone flawlessly–I never want to visit Carcer City), the casting of the inimitable Brian Cox as the voice of the game's antagonist, to the ingenious use of the USB headset to add to the immersiveness of the gameplay (by allowing Brian Cox's character to speak directly in your ear throughout most of the game–he's like the little devil on your shoulder urging you on to greater atrocities as the game progresses) is top notch. This game isn't Roadkill–a lackluster game that tried to lure gamers in with graphic content but didn't have the gameplay to hook them. Manhunt is the real deal–one of those rare games that sports not only mature content, but also solid gameplay to go along with it.

Manhunt's main gameplay component centers on stealth. Lead character James Earl Cash must sneak around the gang-infested Carcer City while offing his enemies in some of the most brutal ways imaginable. Cash can lure his opponents away from their comrades and deal out swift and merciless death by using his environment. Tapping walls, tossing bricks, or chucking a severed head around a corner will all get the bad guys' attention–as will talking into the game's headset. Meanwhile, Cash hides in the shadows, watching his prey–and when they turn their back, he sneaks up on them and kills them. The brutality of the kill (there are three levels) depends on how long the player holds the attack button before actually committing the action. Level three kills are the most gruesome of the bunch

Each and every kill gets its own cutscene–the game switches to a grainy video camera point-of-view (further adding to the snuff film ambiance), and this is where the men are separated from the boys. The cutscenes in Manhunt capture everything in loving detail–plunging shards of glass into guys' faces, decapitation with piano wire, or beating them to death with baseball bats (amongst countless other tools of death) and are shown with an unflinching eye. The sound work only adds to the game's chilling effect

Many will question whether or not this level of violence was necessary. There's no real answer to this question–is the graphic portrayal of violence in any medium truly necessary? Truthfully, it's an aesthetic decision–not much different than Peckinpah pushing the boundaries of what could be done in cinema with The Wild Bunch.

There will be members of the gaming community and the greater community at large who will assert that Rockstar only included over-the-top violence for violence's sake and to create controversy. I can't say this isn't true. However, in my own estimation, the violence in Manhunt seems more designed as a response to the company's critics than a mere gimmick. While Joe Lieberman and company decry the GTA games for their violence at every opportunity–as though these games were the most graphic things ever created–Rockstar has come out with a new game that makes the violence in GTA seem quaint in comparison. People who were afraid that GTA desensitized them to wanton violence have now discovered they're not nearly as jaded as they thought. I'd go as far as to imagine that at some point, people who thought they were desensitized by the violence in Manhunt will discover there are even worse things out there, too (and I know–I make a living writing about some of the most twisted stuff ever committed to film; believe me, there are things out there that make Manhunt look fairly innocuous). Whether or not this is a good thing is a personal decision–but I like what Rockstar's done with this gamea lot.

The other area where the game works really well is in terms of intensity. Manhunt is a hard game–a lot of the gameplay revolves around the old "try-and-die" school of game mechanics, meaning players will wander into an area, try something, fail, die, and start again. The enemies can be unforgiving and unrelenting in their pursuit of Cash, meaning that a slow and steady approach is often the best course of action. Running from a group of white supremacists whose only goal in life is to dismember me is intense–I literally had sweaty palms at some points (particularly in the level where Piggsy–a creature you must see to believe–was chasing me with a chainsaw).

Yet for all that's good about Manhunt, it's not a game without some problems. While Scott wasn't enamored with the controls, I didn't find them particularly troublesome. What bothered me were the title's later levels, wherein the game will switch from a straight up stealth gore game to a more frenetic action shooter. Levels occasionally employ run-and-gun game mechanics that seem strangely out of place after all the sneaking around, and it's just not as much fun as stealthily taking out enemies. While the early portions of the game tend to let the player decide to fight it out if he chooses (which is rarely ever the best course of action, but players can succeed by not using stealth), these later stages force the player into shooting everything. It's a bit of a letdown, particularly when the targeting system could use some tweaking.

Another problem area is the title's inevitable reliance on "game logic." Game logic issues are those weird things that happen in a game that could never happen in real life–and I don't mean flying, or magic mushrooms, or anything like that. Instead, I mean things like hobbits who can't cross ankle-deep streams, or players who can jump over some cars but not others–things developers put in to make the gameplay work or to keep players on the predestined path, basically. Manhunt's biggest game logic problem is an essential one, but it's still a problem. If Cash enters the shadows and stands still, no one can see him, even if the enemy is standing two feet in front of him. Even more interesting is that no one in the game, not even the bad cops, has access to a flashlight. I can understand why this is, but it does occasionally ruin the immersiveness of the experience.

Finally, even though the stealth portions are the highlight of the game, there's a fair amount of repetition while playing them. Cash sneaks around, lures in his prey, kills them, and does it all over again. Sure, the different weapons and gory animations attempt to keep things fresh, but even the novelty of killing someone with a chainsaw wears off after the 20th time the player has done it. Factor in that players will be dying a lot, and hence re-playing areas over and over, and the repetition factor increases.

I don't think Scott's wrong for scoring Manhunt with a 3.5 rating. I believe he was genuinely affected by the content of the game (which is so in-your-face it can't be ignored), and it kept him from enjoying the experience. Reviews are ultimately subjective pieces, and I think Scott did a fine job of saying why he didn't have fun with Manhunt. I feel the opposite of Scott, but at least part of that's attributable to the fact that I have a keen appreciation for gore films and transgressive cinema as a whole. Yet, even getting past that, there's a solid game here, buried under all the violence and controversy–it would be a shame if stealth game fans missed it because it was overshadowed by the title's gory aesthetics. Rating: 8 out of 10

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