before we begin, sorry for no recent update but i was busy with this one particular game and thinking about what sort of review i should give to it. enjoy:
so, i did mention manhunt series beforehand in my other post about video games. since then i wanted to give it a try so bad because i have already played all of the other games mentioned in my post except this one. if you do want to check the game out yourself i recommend you DON’T PLAY THIS GAME, UNLESS YOU ARE FINE WITH GORE.
About:
Manhunt 2 is one of the first few games in psychological horror genre and Rockstars only shot at creating a horror game. although it was said all over where you’re buying this game that it contains gore, extreme violence, sexual content and etc; a lot of people and critics complained about the amount of gore this game contained. being one of the very first games to have this much gore inside of it in the year 2007.
the infamous gameplay design:
just like any other horror game, manhunt 2 is nothing like an average game. it has a massive amount of darkness, creepy atmosphere and anything a horror game needs with this one particular difference you are the psychopath. the game wants you to be stealthy, clearly by in many missions with giving you a small amount of ammunition, a good for nothing health bar that has not much health, the worst combat system Rockstar ever created and many more. the game wants you to stalk people around while and it wants you to lurk in the shadows and kill any light around for being more stealthy,preparing a stealth EXECUTION not a stealth KILL like assassins creed or metal gear solid where you just press one button and the character uses a knife or a hidden blade to just kill the enemy and done. the stealth executions consist of three levels, a hasty kill, a violent kill, and a brutal kill. the game rewards you for the last one, being the brutal kill, with giving you something like style points ( can’t really make any sense out of that thing)and the worst part of all, each time you execute an enemy your “friend” Leo applauds and cheers because you have killed someone saying lines like ” it feels good to own someones life doesn’t it?” “I’m proud of you brother, you’ve become a bigger killer than I could ever be!” ” they won’t call you a weakling now.” or stuff like that to make the player feel good for killing people who are innocent. these lines are so plain and without context that anyone could feel extremely repeatable to them. the main character being
the characters and story:
Daniel Lamb is a total average by any means;a normal, afraid, nerd, weak, young man who got stuck with a friend like Leo. waking up in an asylum you know from the beginning that something is wrong with you, I personally could guess the games biggest secret from the beginning and i don’t really know if I’m too smart or rockstar can’t hold a secret. Leo being Daniel’s other character, Daniel being a doctor turned manic because of an experiment he volunteered himself for, the fact that no one in the game is actually a bad guy and you are the only bad person behind all of it. i could almost prove that nothing in the game is actually like what it seems because Leo is a paranoid serial killer that doesn’t have a stable mental state to tell the difference between right and wrong and Daniel being experimented all the time, having his mind erased and brainwashed, he already has many hallucinations in the game. both of our protagonists are mentally ill and unstable so it is totally normal for them to hallucinate and become killers who think are doing the right thing. that is the whole story of manhunt 2. nothing special. the end of the game is where Daniel fights back Leo to get his body back only to find it futile and having his mind totally erased by a doctor that is there just for the sake of having a character to do something and starting a whole new life with a new name a new house a new business everything. i mean while you are having a plot-twist for your great finale you should at least make sure that you can keep a secret for your game because when you fail doing that, you will ruin everything. there are only two characters that were created perfectly, Daniel Lamb and Leo, the rest, no. so i mean it is really funny to think that you spend around 40 missions playing this game for hours trying to be good at it and when you look back you only see a few lines describing what you have done. that simply means not a very good story or a very good character design.
the hidden meaning:
now i have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why the hell would rockstar creat this game while he knows that it will be controversial or while he can already make better games with a lower budget. the answer is that rockstar wasn’t stupid when he decided to make manhunt 2, it was the exact opposite all along. the purpose of manhunt 2 wasn’t to turn weak kids in schools who get bullied to serial killers. Manhunt 2 was created to inform the people playing rockstar games that this is all a game. you can clearly see the resemblance of Gta inside this game, the cursor, the cops, the shooting and a lot more. the story behind manhunt 2 was that you the player are in fact Daniel lamb and Leo is a rockstar game or a rockstar game protagonist for this matter. a protagonist of an action game created by rockstar is usually a sociopath that kills many people for what he thinks is right. in gta games you are a total serial killer just take a small peak into your stats in the video game and see how many people you have killed, civilian or cops or criminals, now you the player aren’t in fact all that good in the game just like Danny, because you have seen how easy the game gets when you are playing as leo but how hard and for this matter Realistic it gets when playing as Danny. Danny is being taught to kill by leo and so his training continues until he realises that the only bad person all the time was leo, himself. and now he has to destroy the demon inside of him. just like you turning into an angry boy or girl and fighting against what you think is right just because you have done it in a video game. (now i now that the statement i made about you dear gamer is incorrect but that is how other people how are against video game’s think of us.) rockstar created Manhunt 2 to tell the world that he is against the fact of turning people into cruel and violent. that was the whole point of creating manhunt 2 but to do so he had to show how bad violence really is in a realistic way, and because how blind the newspapers and critics and everyone who is thirsty for creating gossip is, they only saw the violent parts and considered the whole game to be made for teaching kids how to be a serial killer. like using medical drugs and not reading the symptoms and effects.
notice how the cursors are all the same
notice how both of the cars have the same model
the entire ‘domestic disturbance’ mission in manhunt 2 is a clear reference to gta series were you get away from cops or you keep killing them with shotguns or pistols or anything.
that being said I think i have proven that manhunt 2 was all in fact a road of redemption for Rockstar because of the whole violence controversy that revolves around Rockstar. they created this game only so that they could inform the players that this is all a game and in real life trying to be like Leo, aka any gta protagonist, is only going to make you miserable and make your life filled with mishappens. it will make you a serial killer. in the end of the game we have a very strong line coming from leo that is saying his last words, saying that:
Daniel: I can be you, but i have a choice. A CHOICE! And I choose to be me. Leo: heh heh. who the hell wants to be ‘Daniel Lamb’?
clearly as mentioned above talking about the fact that daniel is us the player and leo is the rockstar protagonist. who the hell wants to be the one who he is all the time? you will get bored with yourself when you are being yourself in real life and being yourself in a video game. an average man, who doesn’t kill who doesn’t break rules or anything outlaw. you want to be Leo because it is more fun in a video game. that is why there is violence. that is why there is killer characters.
Shady Writes 