Barbelith Underground > Games & Gameplay

I'm in the minority that thinks it's seriously overrated, mainly by a gaming press that's desperate to prove that it's grown-up. Manhunt was grabbed as their latest opportunity to demonstrate that they had deep and disturbing questions to ask about the nature of humanity, yo.

The claim that seems to be repeated most often is that the game "forces you to question your actions - why do you always go for the most violent kill?" Seems pretty obvious to me, really - you go for the most violent kill because you get rewarded for it with a higher score and unlockable content.

Plus, of course, that's the entire *point* of the game - video nasty violence, bloodletting. Taking the bad guys out quickly or avoiding contact with them would be like running through Metal Gear Solid with a machine gun equipped and your finger constantly pressed down on the fire button - entirely possible, but not exactly playing the game the way it's designed to be played. You might as well go out and buy something else that asks you to do that, as force an unsuitable game to play that way.

So I think the attempts to try and intellectualise about the game are misjudged. I don't mean that you can't talk about it in a thoughtful manner, just that, so far, people have been trying too hard to attribute it with an importance that it doesn't warrant. Even if there weren't a reward structure in there that encouraged you to go for the most violent kills, the fact that most of the enemies in teh early stages are white power fuckos meant that I felt entirely resolved of any responsibility when I chopped their heads off.

Games that do make me question my actions are things like Thief, or RPGs like Baldur's Gate or Morrowind where I can choose to act in a certain way. In those, I always find that I'm unwilling to steal from the houses of people who look like they don't have much, or who are written to follow a philosophy of life that I agree with. Even though there are no penalties for doing so, I find that if a house in one of those games is barely furnished, I won't take the few pennies or items that it has to offer. I find these games make me ask questions of myself far more than something as structured and forced as Manhunt ever could.

As far as playing the thing goes, I found it frustrating. The stealth is fine, if highly repetitive and extremely basic. What annoyed was when it suddenly decided that it was no longer going to allow me to use stealth, and that I instead had to go through a guns-blazing section that the controls were wholly unsuitable for. A misguided attempt to add some variety - it might have worked if Cash was capable of swift movement, or the aiming was halfway decent, but as it is I found myself so annoyed that I turned the game off. That was the 'Strapped for Cash' level.

I decided to give it another go a couple of nights back. Just became frustrated again. The controls weren't designed with shoot-outs in mind, so throwing the player into such a situation is a stupid decision.

It improves later, I understand. I doubt I'll ever get to discover if that's true for myself, though - far too many other games that I get far more from for me to be sticking with something that winds me up so much.