Manhunt 2 PS2 Impressions

May 17th, 2007, 21:31 Posted By: Shrygue

via Kotaku


I was surprised to find Manhunt 2, due out July 10, on hand at the week's SCEA events. Pleasantly surprised. While we couldn't actually play the game ourselves, we could watch it be played. It has a neat, scratchy look to it and some interesting effects that I initially thought were graphic glitches. In particular, items you can interact with tend to glow and skitter about nervously, instead of sitting still. That's because, I was told, the main character has some "issues" and that's played out, in part, with these visual tics.

Of course, the main way the character's issues are played out is in the way, the extraordinarily brutal way, he kills people. He can, of course, do standard kills with weapons, but he also has the ability to sneak up behind someone and do a cinematic kill. The brutality of the kill depends on how patiently you can stay behind your victim holding a kill button. The longer you hold the button the more brutal the kill will be when you perform it.

Most of the weapons you can use for these kills have several different kill animations that you can trigger, depending on how long you hold the button. Once you pull off one of these executions the game slips to a cut-scene that shows the kill and then jumps you back into play. It was a little jarring, but the version were were looking at was pretty dated.

The developer on hand said the Wii version looks a bit crisper and that the jump to execution cinematic isn't as clunky. From the brief time I watched the game I'd say that Manhunt 2 will be a worthy purchase, but perhaps not as fun as the original.


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