Be Excellent To Each Other

Quite a decent article at Eurogamer today:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... ve-manhunt

Did anyone play this back in the day? I played it through on PC, it was a few months after it was released so the initial hoo-haa had died down, but I really didn't have high hopes for it, and was expecting some sort of brainless shockathon.

Turned out it was a massively involving game, I wouldn't say entertaining as such, it was dark, gruelling, and unrelentingly challenging. Absolutely merciless too, quite harshly checkpointed and would kill you off in the blink of an eye.

Played it through to the end and never went back to it, but was glad I'd 'experienced' it for want of a better way of putting it. I clearly remember it getting so intense in places that I had to pause the game and have a little walk around the house to collect myself.

I thought it was fantastically dark and well-conceived, one of my favourite gaming memories from the PS2 days; occasionally frustrating, but unmatched for ambience at the time when played alone with the lights off. When Piggsy charged me from the shadows for the first time I dropped the controller in fright.

I had it for the PS1, but I thought it got boring quite quickly.

Salmon-fixed.

I never finished it as I got stuck trying to get into a room on the last level which had about ten enemies. No matter what I tried I couldn't coax them out, and if I opened the door I got mashed instantly. Ho hum.

PS2/Xbox/PC, dude.

That's odd, I didn't have an Xbox or PS2.
Um... Must have been on the PC then.

I disagree with any criticism of this game. It's one of the greatest games ever made.

It defied gaming convention by making you stand still and observe. It's kind enough however to let you try a run, bodge it up but let you run back to the safety of the shadows. I can't think of a game before Manhunt that asked so much of the player. I can't remember a stealth game around the time this came out that did a proper stealth game. MGS was flirting with it but had the ridiculous boss fights and cut scenes. Manhunt stuck to its guns throughout the lengthy playtime.

It was brutal, it had bags of atmosphere, it was oppressive but most of all it was awesome.

Just when you're getting worn down by bagging enemies you're given a pistol and suddenly you're allowed to be loud and brash. You make you're way through the prison slaughtering guards. They peer into the shadows and for the first time you can be confrontational. They crane their necks into the darkness and you blow their faces clean off. You were the weak and hunted but you become the hunter with empowering weapons.

The scenery tells the story as you make you try to make your escape. It's The Running Man, isn't it? You're part of the game and you're trying to outsmart the game you're trapped inside.

And just as you do, the SS-inspired storm troopers arrive and once again you're underpowered and hunted again. You turn it around of course as you make your way back inside the game but it's a thrilling story told in a grimey bleak setting. It's the 90's horror version of The Running Man. The director is one of the best characters we never see in a game (more astonishing from his underwhelming normal appearance at the end of the game).

It's a PS2 game that captured the atmosphere of its story perfectly. Utterly captivating.

The sooner these fuck off from all forms of media (consider that a lot of dubstep effects seem to be a audio version) the better. Top Gear is testing an awesome new car! Let's have tons of stupid visual distortion as if we had to film it on a mobile phone camera!

I think the worst was the new S-Class where each section was punctuated by a scrolling title with flashing imagery behind and a loud distortion sound.

Apparently I made a thread about Manhunt 2 which remains one of a very few games I never completed after being utterly devastated by how shit it was. Fastest trade-in I ever made too. 1 day. http://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/forum/viewtopic.php?style=19&f=3&t=2334&p=129997&hilit=Manhunt+2#p129997

If anyone knows of a nice site that tells be how to jail break my PSP and download Manhunt 2 as it was intended to be played I'd be very grateful!

The eurogamer thing aptly sums up why I'd never play it.

"why do you want to see the worst, nastiest kills?"

I don't.

Alluhh, next we're going to be looking at sum murders usin plastic bags. Plastic is made by refining oil, which comes from vegetation which has decomposed over millions of years. Amaaaaaaaazing. What happens is the sun shines on the trees, which is fantastic, cos it makes they grow.

Etc....

Yeah, you're better off sticking with Harvest Moon, rather than playing it and making up your own mind.

What a ridiculous thing to say.

Ok, that was a pithy remark. Sorry Mr Dave. But if you're avoiding playing it because of the negative press surrounding the violence you're missing a genuine classic (or at the very least a game with some historical interest given that same press). It might end up not being your cup of tea but you should certainly try it.

I don't tend to pay any attention to the press anyway. But it was clear from the review that thematically the game wasn't for me.

The press stuff about the violence, while not inaccurate, is basically just marketing. It's an excellent atmospheric stealth-em-up with a somewhat novel premise, which happens to have some quite gruesome bits in. Just another example of the things the press releases rave about not being the things that actually make the game good, or even being things that remotely matter, just things that will grab attention.

The Splinter Cell series started the year before.

I never played either of them. Partly, I guess, because I was probably playing Counter-Strike at the time, but partly because it just never appealed.

I watched a mate play it, same as I did with the original Resident Evil. It looked like my heart would constantly be trying to explode the entire time.

I had a feeling 'stealth' was around at the time. I just couldn't remember any others except MGS.

Thief?!

Never played it. I'm sure there's loads, mind.

I didn't think much of Splinter Cell as a stealth gamethough. Bored me senseless with its sterile story and characters.

Meh, the story and characters are supplementary; the actual game was brilliant and, for the time, looked like Jesus.

A white guy from Oxford?

I played Manhunt when it came out. It was a boring wait-em-up. Rubbish.

This confirms it was a bona fide classic, doesn't it?

Derek just preferred Fruit Hunt and Try Not To Manhunt... each to their own!

Yes I suspected it was on the list but why should that stop me?!

Besides, I quite like the idea of Try Not To Manhunt.

No, that's only if you're talking about films. I don't think there's currently enough data to say whether the 'Derek effect' applies to games as well.

I hate GTA games, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Bioshock, Mario, Halo...

So I think it still applies.

Absolutely couldn't put it any better Ian.

I'm not going to go as far as to say that anyone who didn't like this game is wrong, but I will say they didn't let it get under their skin, because once it manages that you can't get rid of it until you've finished it, escaped from it, almost purged it.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit to committing some of the most violent executions with a grim, awful, primal pleasure - almost as catharsis for what the game was daring to make me endure.

Truly a peerless game, and one of my strongest abiding game memories of all time.

Now I think I've missed something. Will it go on modern PCs?

I dug out my original install CDs, installs fine, but won't fucking run in Windows 7

I do have an old XP PC available to me but it literally runs off a power cable and a network cable, there's nothing else attached to it at all and no easy way to do so either. (Not least because the DVI cable was forcibly wrenched out one evening screws and all (thanks AE Jnr!) and utterly fucked the connector on the graphics card, so I can only RDP to it and games don't run over RDP in any sort of usable sense.)

I'm not sure want to play it again mind, but I wouldn't mind taking a little look......

You could borrow my Xbox version? It's 360 compatible.

In.

I'll get it posted asap.

ASAP!

Any chance Grim... could post the disc onto me when he's done with it, and then I'll post it onto you?

I've still got my old chipped XBox (well, two of them in fact) so I can install it to the hard drive and then play discless from then on.

I know you think I'm a proper cunt and that, but it's games innit, they transcend petty forum squabbles.

This has made its way from the shelf to the sofa - progress!

Sorry, I've put you back on my foe list, so I had to have my attention drawn to this. How would you cope with such a low resolution and inferior input method? You'll be clawing your eyes out in minutes. Also, the only thing that belongs to me that I'd be happy with falling through your letterbox would be one of my turds.


Indeed.


What a mantra! I hear Ian Huntley is into video games - let's encourage him to sign up!

You reap what you sow, I'm afraid.

You know, this is genuinely quite interesting to me, I can't imagine putting anyone on ignore here at BEEX, much less being so amazingly petty as to 'refuse access to a game' on the basis of some sort of tit-for-tat 'you were mean and horrible on the forums so you can't borrow my stuff' arrangement.

No biggy, it's £3.99 delivered off eBay.

Cheers for the Ian Huntley comment though, that's an entirely proportionate and fair response.

WTF? Are you under the impression that borrowing people's possessions is a right, rather than a privilege? Because I'm pretty sure communism's ship sailed when the Iron Curtain came down. Not wanting to lend your stuff to people you don't like isn't "amazingly petty", it's just common sense.

He really has become a parody of himself, hasn't he?

A simple 'no' would've done the job though, innit.

Unfortunately sometimes you have to spell things out, though. Especially when they're thick as pigshit.

But then we wouldn't have the image of The Last Salmon Man curling off and boxing up one of his turds?