Manhunt (video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  Manhunt, a stealth game from Rockstar North, reached the PlayStation 2 in November 2003 with a premise that few players had met before. You control a death row inmate who is forced to star in snuff films, killing gang members while cameras record every move. It was a violent, claustrophobic game set in a decaying city, and it split opinion almost from the first day.

  Why did people inside Rockstar itself feel uneasy about it? How does a game sell only modestly and still end up banned, confiscated or recalled in several countries? And why did a murder in an English county drag its name into the headlines, even though police and a judge rejected the link? The answers begin in the shadows, with the way the game actually plays.

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• 2. Shadows and Plastic Bags

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  Twenty levels, which the game calls scenes, make up the core of Manhunt, and four bonus scenes wait for players who earn enough stars. After each scene the game grades the player from one to five stars. Unlockable material opens up once a player reaches three stars on a certain number of scenes.

  On normal difficulty, named Fetish, a scene can earn at most four stars. One star rewards finishing quickly, and one to three reward the brutality of the executions. On the harder setting, Hardcore, a fifth star is added for simply completing the scene. Face-to-face fighting earns nothing, so the game pushes players toward the kill from behind.

  Shadows are the main tool for that. Each scene is dotted with dark spots, places where enemies cannot see unless they watch the player step in. A standard trick is to hide there and tap a wall. A nearby hunter comes to look, turns away, and becomes an easy target.

  There are three grades of execution. A hasty one is quick and not very bloody. A violent one is considerably gorier, and a gruesome one is an over-the-top, blood-soaked killing. The player chooses. Once an enemy is locked on, the reticule shifts from white to yellow to red over time, marking the three grades.

  The weapons list runs from plastic bags to baseball bats, crowbars and a range of bladed items. Firearms appear later, for moments when an execution is impractical. Painkillers restore health, and a stamina meter drains during sprints and refills when the player stands still.

  On the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox, a microphone adds another layer. Connected through the USB Microphone or Xbox Live, it lets the player's real voice lure enemies and carries the director's commands into a headset. Even a cough can bring a hunter running. Those hunters belong to gangs that each claim a corner of a city called Carcer City.

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• 3. Carcer City

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  Carcer City is a dilapidated rust belt city, thick with corruption and crime, and it shares a fictional universe with the Grand Theft Auto series. Violent gangs prowl its streets, all of them eager to find and kill the player.

  The story opens with a news report in 2003. A journalist named Kate Miller, voiced by Stephen Wilfong's co-star in the cast list, announces that death row inmate James Earl Cash has been put to death by lethal injection. In fact he was only sedated. He wakes to a voice in his earpiece that calls itself The Director, played by Brian Cox. The voice promises freedom, but only if Cash kills hunters inside special zones watched by CCTV.

  His first targets are the Hoods, a gang of dangerous criminals and corrupt police officers. Afterward the Cerberus, the Director's personal security unit, abduct him and move him to another part of the city. There he faces the Skinz, a white power skinhead gang, and the Wardogs, a sadistic paramilitary group. Next come the Innocentz, split into the Skullyz and the Babyfaces, and then the Smileys, a gang of former asylum inmates.

  Then the Director betrays him. He orders the deaths of Cash's family, whom he has abducted, and plans to kill Cash as the climax of his film. Cash survives the trap and vows revenge.

  Ramirez, the Director's right-hand man, leads the remaining Wardogs after him, and they trap Cash in a game of cat and mouse. Cash kills Ramirez and his men. The journalist then rescues him and reveals the Director's name, Lionel Starkweather. He is a former film producer from Los Santos who now produces for a snuff film ring.

  She has enough evidence to convict him, but she needs Cash to take her to her apartment to fetch it. Meanwhile Starkweather blackmails the corrupt police chief, Gary Schaffer, into sending officers to kill them both. The pair evade them, and Cash sends the journalist out of the city with the evidence while he goes after Starkweather.

  Police and SWAT chase him through the subway and streets until he is cornered in a train yard. The Cerberus rescue him, but only to execute him at Starkweather's mansion themselves. Piggsy, a chainsaw-wielding maniac kept chained in the attic, breaks free and distracts them. Cash tricks Piggsy onto a grate that collapses under his weight, then takes the chainsaw and kills him with it. He clears the remaining Cerberus and uses the same chainsaw on Starkweather in his office.

  Media and police arrive as the journalist exposes the snuff ring and the police complicity, and Schaffer is prosecuted for corruption. Cash, however, is nowhere to be found.

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• 4. A Line Rockstar Crossed

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  Work on Manhunt began at Rockstar North in 2000, using the RenderWare engine that had already powered the Grand Theft Auto games. A former employee later described a team that had weathered plenty of controversy over Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City. This game felt different to them. Those earlier games, he said, offered an excuse: the play was untethered, nobody who was not a bad guy had to be hurt, and the whole thing was parody.

  In 2007, former Rockstar employee Jeff Williams said that "there was almost a mutiny at the company over that game." He explained that it was all about the violence, and realistic violence at that. In his words, "We were crossing a line."

  Outside the company, the early signals were more admiring. In September 2003, GamesMaster published a preview praising a "warped subtlety that questions game reality" and a harsh, violent experience punctured by something "trippy and darkly comic."

  Rockstar announced the game at E3 in May 2003. An October release date slipped, and the PlayStation 2 version reached North America on the 19th of November 2003, followed by Europe on the 21st of November. In its first month in the United States it sold 75,000 copies. That was only a fraction of what Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City, both also distributed by Rockstar, had sold.

  Despite those weak numbers, Rockstar ported the game to Windows and the Xbox. Those versions came out in North America on the 20th of April 2004 and in Europe on the 23rd of April. The company backed the launch with merchandise, limited editions and pre-order bonuses. The extras included official soundtracks, a Piggsy figure and a handheld voice changer.

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• 5. Praise and Frustration

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  On the review site Metacritic, the PlayStation 2 and PC versions earned generally favorable scores, while the Xbox version drew mixed or average ones. The game was nominated for Console Action/Adventure Game of the Year at the 7th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. In Britain it won a Gold sales award from ELSPA, which marks at least 200,000 copies. By the 26th of March 2008 the Manhunt series had sold 1.7 million copies worldwide.

  Many critics singled out the game's nihilistic tone and its violence as something unique. GameSpot wrote that, "like it or not," the game "pushes the envelope of video game violence." Game Informer called its premise frightening and found the play so polished and fierce that it was thrilling. IGN praised the challenge it offered seasoned players. Edge gave the PlayStation 2 version eight out of ten, saying it held more than shock and awe and offered more freedom than Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid 2, the games it most resembled.

  The Chicago Tribune went furthest. It called Manhunt "the Clockwork Orange of video games," a game that holds your eyes open and asks whether this is really what you enjoy watching. Its verdict was that Manhunt was "the most important video game of the last five years."

  Toronto Star writer Ben Rayner took a more defensive line. He called the game disturbing as entertainment and cultural artefact, but said the evening news and a reality show were disturbing too, and he opposed any ban. He noted that nobody had tried to ban SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs, where stealth and killing play an even larger part.

  Not everyone was won over. Eurogamer called the shooting frustrating, saying the reticule often ignored an oncoming enemy until it was nearly in front of the player. GameSpot said the artificial intelligence was much worse in the more action-oriented levels. And 1UP.com complained that players quickly tire of the violence, the quirks in enemy behavior and the repetitive level design.

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• 6. A Murder in Leicestershire

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  On the 28th of July 2004-14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah was murdered in Leicestershire, England, by 17-year-old Warren Leblanc. Early media reports claimed that police had found a copy of Manhunt in Leblanc's bedroom. The victim's parents, Giselle and Patrick Pakeerah, said the game had influenced Leblanc and played a role in the killing.

  ELSPA offered sympathy to the family but rejected any connection. It pointed out that the British Board of Film Classification had rated the game 18, so it was never meant for minors. Some vendors, including Game and Dixons, removed it from shelves. Rockstar repeated that the game was for adults and denied any link. Speculation about a ban pushed demand up at physical and online shops, and Giselle Pakeerah said she was disappointed by the surge of interest.

  On the 30th of July 2004, American attorney Jack Thompson, an outspoken opponent of video game violence, claimed he had warned Rockstar before release that the game could inspire copycat killings. On the 2nd of August it was reported that the Pakeerahs had hired him for a £50 million wrongful death claim against Sony Computer Entertainment and Rockstar.

  The same day, police officially denied any link. They cited a drug-related robbery as the motive and revealed that the game had been found in Pakeerah's bedroom, not Leblanc's. When the investigation ended, police again said they had found too little evidence to connect the game to the crime. The judge who sentenced Leblanc to life placed sole responsibility on him.

  The case returned with the announcement of Manhunt 2 in February 2007, which the Pakeerahs condemned. Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, stated that the judge, defense, prosecution and Leicester police had all refuted any connection to the game. Thompson claimed Take-Two had lied and that police were wrong about whose game it was. His attempt to have Manhunt 2 banned did not succeed.

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• 7. Bans and Bills

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  U.S. Representative Joe Baca, sponsor of a bill to fine anyone selling adult-themed games to players under 17, singled out Manhunt. He said it was telling kids how to kill someone with vicious, sadistic and cruel methods. The Globe and Mail went further, calling it "assembly-line, ritualistic slaughter" and warning that any sharp 12-year-old could finish the whole game in one sitting.

  In New Zealand, the game was banned on the 11th of December 2003, and possessing it became an offence. Chief Censor Bill Hastings said players must at least acquiesce in the murders and might even move towards enjoying them, which he called injurious to the public good. In 2023 the Office reconsidered the game and classified it R18.

  Australia first allowed it with an MA15+ rating. In September 2004 the Australian Classification Board reversed that decision after an appeal by Attorney-General Philip Ruddock. The reversal effectively banned the game and forced a recall of every copy still in stores, though 18,000 units had already been sold.

  In Canada, Hastings met officials from the Ontario Ministry of Consumer and Business Services in Toronto on the 22nd of December 2003. The result was that Manhunt became the first video game in Ontario classified as a film, restricted to adults from the 3rd of February 2004. Elsewhere in North America there was little or no trouble. The British Columbia Film Classification Office reviewed the game and judged the ESRB's Mature rating appropriate.

  In Germany, the Amtsgericht in Munich confiscated the PlayStation 2 version on the 19th of July 2004 under § 131 StGB, which covers the representation of violence. The court said the game presents killing people as fun and glorifies vigilantism. All other versions were indexed.

  Thailand joined in during August 2008. After a taxi driver in Bangkok was killed by an 18-year-old obsessed with GTA IV, the government banned the sale of GTA and labeled numerous other games, Manhunt among them.

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• 8. Afterlife

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  Manhunt arrived on Steam in January 2008, carrying a flaw that took years to understand. The retail version had two layers of copy protection: the SecuROM system and several game-breaking mechanisms that activate whenever SecuROM is missing. To ship without third-party protection, Rockstar re-released the game using an existing crack by Razor 1911.

  When this was uncovered in 2010, the company quickly issued a new version with only SecuROM removed. Its own mechanisms stayed in place, so Steam kept selling a broken game. Before 2023, stuck gates and doors that blocked progress were put down to compatibility trouble on newer operating systems. The real cause turned out to be protection measures still running inside an official release.

  In November 2009, players who pre-ordered the PC version of Manhunt 2 received the first game free. On the 14th of May 2013 it came to the PlayStation 3 through the PlayStation Network's PS2 Classics category. The PlayStation 4 followed on the 22nd of March 2016, with 1080p resolution and trophy support.

  By then the game had built a cult following. A Vice article in March 2016 listed it among Rockstar's very best. Game Informer called it a "dark, underappreciated masterpiece." VentureBeat cited it in October 2011 as an example of the best of gaming horror. It appeared in the 2010 book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die, and IGN placed it at number 85 in its Top 100 PlayStation 2 Games that same year.

  Manhunt 2 reached the United States in October 2007 and Europe in October 2008. It kept the stealth approach of the original, but its storyline has nothing to do with the first game.

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