Review: Manhunt 2 (Wii)

In GTA you can always use the example that you don’t have to mow down innocent pedestrians and you can ignore the nearby prostitute, or kill her and then take your money back. And the character you play is always perceived (mostly in GTA IV) as an anti-hero, with only the worst of the worst meeting a grizzly demise. So we now come to Manhunt 2, the most notorious of Rockstar's releases. And for once, we can’t come up with anyway of defending it. 

Gamestyle understands that video games don’t create killers, and someone would have to be a deranged individual to commit crimes inspired by what he’s seen on his console. However if you’re trying to explain this to your average Daily Mail reader then you’ll need a reason, yes a reason why you are committing the crimes in the virtual world. Unlike the original Manhunt, in this sequel we just couldn’t find one.

You play a patient in an insane asylum, who has no memory of his past. After escaping, you along with another patient are on the run and looking for answers. The escape from the asylum highlights the controls using the wii-mote and mostly the kills you can perform. By creeping up on unaware victims you can press the A button to perform an execution as long as you have a weapon equipped including items like scalpels and bats. These executions have three levels of ferocity, each activated by holding the A button for longer periods of time. This is where we’re guessing the censorship comes in. The whole executions have a horrid filter over them with quick cuts and shaky camerawork. It adds a whole snuff movie feel to the game, something which we’re not exactly enamoured with.

What really irritated Gamestyle right from the start were the standard controls. This is primarily a stealth game and to sneak around in any game you need a good control over your character, something which is lacking here. The wii-mote is totally unsuited to this style of game play. You can hide in the shadows easily enough but performing any type of movement is a lesson in frustration. Running is overly sensitive and the camera is incredibly useless. It falls apart even more when you engage in combat. If you’re discovered, then prepare to enter a fist fight. All you have to do is lock onto your target and then flick the nunchuk or wii-mote to unleash some punches. There’s little in the way of skill and some sections it’s easier to just forget about stealth and go in punching everyone out the way. Making stealth even more difficult is the amount of noise made whilst running and the ineffective radar. It’s as if your character is wearing boots made from iron as it attracts everyone around you even if they’re a mile away. The radar doesn’t help with icons representing the enemies popping up out of nowhere and no way of telling of they’re on a higher floor or not.

Manhunt 2 feels like no care and attention went into it whatsoever. Even for a Wii game the graphics are spectacularly bad. Character models seem to have been ripped straight from an old last generation GTA game (with added grain) and countless times after downing an enemy their face would disappear through a wall, which is one of the many graphical glitches in the game. It’s just incredibly ugly to look at it, with one level set in an underground nightclub being particularly bad thanks to the dancing ‘strippers’ who flail their arms around as if trying to hit an imaginary moth.

While we didn’t want to wade into the violent video game debate, it’s hard not to with a game like this. Revelling in the violence it’s no wonder that even Rockstar's own employees believed they were taking a step too far. The real problem with the game though is just how horrid the experience actually is, with very few redeeming features (the musical score and sound effects being the only ones we can think of). This belongs at the bottom of the bargain bins to rot for all eternity.

Rating: 3 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver