Manhunt

Manhunt
Developer(s)	Cockstar North
Publisher(s)	Cockstar Games
Release date	November 19, 2003, 8 months after the invasion of Iraq by the USA
Genre	Stealth, psychological horror
Platform(s)	PlayStation 2 Microsoft Windows Xbox

Manhunt is a 2003 stealth psychological horror game by Cockstar Games. It is the first entry in the Manhunt series. It was released for Playstation 2, Xbox, and Microsoft Windows on 2003. It takes place in Detroit, where a nice fella James Earl Cash has to kill several people for the enjoyment of Dan Schneider

The game received reviews from several critics, including praise for it's excellent story and graphic violence, although it received criticism for being repulsive and making people puke from the amount of blood that is on screen. It received criticism from several governments for its extreme violence and teaching young children to kill their classmates. It is currently banned from several countries It later got a sequel, Manhunt 2, which has nothing to do with the first game. The failure of Manhunt 2 lead to Cockstar Games to delegate the franchise to being referenced in Grand Theft Auto Online every Halloween. Now, just like every other fan of Cockstar's dead franchises, the small amount of fans still hold out for another game in the franchise, stating that every possible reference could be a hint towards Manhunt 3.

Gameplay

The game consists of 20 levels. There are four main difficulties: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. Depending on how many enemies, known as hunters in the game, players kill they can get up to five stars. These stars turn gold if players can kill every hunter within the level. Occasionally, players might have to do an objective, for example: Picking up a can of gasoline, finding a crowbar, pulling up your pants, play with your worm, and beheading someone. If a player fails an objective or gets killed they will have to restart for the stage.

To carry out executions, players must go behind an enemy, usually undetected. Players usually do this by hiding in the shadows, distracting a hunter by slapping the brick walls, wait for them to arrive, and lock on to them. Players can use lures as well, but no one does that. Depending on how long players lock on to the enemy, the execution get more and more gory. There are 3 main executions, each being obtained by getting to a certain color on a player's reticule when locking on. In order, the level of violence goes from white (hasty), yellow (violent), and red (gruesome). These colors were chosen by developers due to racial stereotypes against Asians and indigenous people.

Over the course of the game, players can use a variety of weapons, such as plastic bags, glass shards, wires, wooden spikes, chainsaws, metal bats, wooden bats, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, tranquilizer rifles, axes, blackjacks, crowbars, hammers, knives, machetes, meat cleavers, nightsticks, sickles, handguns, nail guns, revolvers, and sub-machine guns. Should players take damage, their health depletes. Players can heal themselves by only taking painkillers by the bottle, both in-game and real-life. Players also have stamina, which determines how long they can run. If stamina depletes, players can activate star power to fill up the stamina bar, which is done by tilting the controller or hitting the star power button. On Playstation 2 and Xbox, a player can use a microphone to affect the game. Dan Schneider will talk in your headset, instead of the main speakers. Along with this, any noise you make into the microphone also affects the game by creating sound. Players can use this to distract enemies, but if the player is stealthy, they must avoid coughing, sneezing, screaming, moaning, and rambling

Synopsis

Setting

Manhunt is set in Detroit, a dilapidated rust belt city rife with corruption and crime. On the prowl around the city are numerous violent gangs, who seek to find and kill the player. The game is set in a shared universe with the Grand Flop Auto series.

Plot

In 2003, Detroit, a journalist reports about a nice fella James Earl Cash, also known as the Witchetty Man, a death row inmate who has been recently executed by lethal injection. However, Cash was only sedated, and awakens to an unknown voice referring to himself as "The Director , who gives him instructions through an earpiece. The Director promises Cash his freedom, and a million dollars worth of Zimbabwe money, but only if he murders "Hunters" – gang members sent to hunt him – in special areas around Detroit filmed by CCTV. Cash's first victims are the Hoods, a gang of criminals and police officers patrolling an abandoned area of the city. After eliminating them, he is abducted by the Cerberus, the Director's personal security, who take him to another part of Detroit.

While the Director monitors his actions, Cash is forced to kill more criminals across various abandoned locations, encountering a Nazi skinhead gang called the TERFs, a sadistic Airsoft military LARPers called the Wardogs (who have kidnapped Cash's family to use as bait), a unimportant gang of Hispanics and pedophiles, and a group of "based schizo sigma male" inmates called the Smileys. Eventually, the Director betrays Cash and threatens to kill his family. Cash pleads with the director by offering a sealed day one copy of Weezer's self-titled album, also known as "The Blue Album" signed by Rivers Cuomo, only for the Director to get angry and state that he is the world's biggest Weezer hater. As punishment, The Director kills Cash's family and then attempts to riddle Cash with bullets as part of his film's climax. However, Cash get angry, and quits the set, planning his ultimate revenge..

The remaining Wardogs, led by the Director's right-hand man Private James Ramirez from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, are sent to re-capture Cash, and they manage to trap him in a game of cat and mouse. However, Cash prevails and riddles Ramirez and his men, before being rescued by the journalist reporting on him, who reveals that the Director is Dan Schneider, a former film director from Los Santos who now produces for a snuff film ring. The journalist has acquired enough evidence against Schneider to get him convicted, but needs Cash to escort her to her apartment to get it. Meanwhile, Schneider falsely tells corrupt police chief Gary Schaffer that Cash and the journalist are of African descent, leading Schaffer to send his men to riddle Cash and the journalist, but the two manage to avoid them. After retrieving the evidence, Cash tells the journalist to leave the city with it while he goes after Schneider.

Pursued by the police and SWAT throughout the subway and the streets, Cash is eventually corned by them and is nearly riddled. He is saved by the Cerberus, who riddle the police and take Cash to Schneider's mansion so that they could riddle him themselves. The Cerberus are distracted when Piggsy, a former child actor chainsaw-wielding maniac who wears a pig's head and is normally kept chained up in Schneider's attic, breaks free after being fed meat with E. coli in it. Cash escapes and confronts Piggsy in the mansion's upper levels. Unable to riddle him directly, Cash uses emotional manipulation to convince that Piggsy needs to give him the chainsaw and commit suicide. After slaughtering the remaining Cerberus, Cash finally confronts Schneider in his office and kills him with the chainsaw.

Later, the media and police arrive at the mansion as the journalist exposes Schneider's snuff ring, child abuse and police complicity, leading to Schaffer being criminally prosecuted for corruption. Cash then wakes up, revealing it was all a bad dream. Relieved, he listens to his favorite Weezer album.

Development

The game started in the mid-nineties as a competitor to Postal, because of this, they had to make the game as violent as possible. One developer said the game made him sick and he puked all over the computers and they had to restart development. They didn't think this would go over as well as Grand Flop Auto because there was no way to "rationalize" it because the developers at Rockstar Games are woke soyboys who piss themselves at the sight of blood.

Manhunt was announced at E3. During its first month on sale, the game only sold 75,000 copies in the United States because the people of the USA are uncultured swines who don't understand what a masterpiece is. Cockstar also released exclusive merchandise, limited editions and pre-order bonuses such as official soundtracks featuring James Earl Cash moaning ASMR, and a Piggsy figure signed by Dan Schneider himself.

Reception

The game was praised by some viewers as the greatest stealth game of all time, but some thought otherwise. One review by IGN stated "The game made me scream from amount of terror. I cried and puked everywhere in front of my kids and my wife made me clean it up" Metacritic says this game is 5/10, mainly because most reviewers say the camera and shooting suck big juicy round bouncing hot balls. Despite this slander, this game got some occasional good reviews. For example, GameSpot stated that this game was "one of the games by Cockstar" and that "the violence was very funny". Dave Meltzer gave it a 3.5/5 stars, saying it would've been a 5/5 if you could play in Tokyo Dome.

Controversy

Manhunt is very violent, which got the woke cuck soyboy liberals to get mad at it. Former Cockstar employee Jeff Williams stated that "This game caused me to nearly kill all my coworkers and myself because of how traumatic it was" and that "this game made us sick down to our souls." Jack Thompson got really mad at this game. My dad says this game is very inappropriate so I'm not allowed to play it. The character of Dan Schneider would eventually inspire the real life Nickleodeon director Lionel Starkweather, who would groom several children during the production of shows like Drake & Josh, iCarly, and Victorious.

International Reaction

Governments and Various States. have banned Manhunt due to its graphic content, such as New Zealand and Germany. These actions have led to tourism decreasing in said areas. Manhunt was implicated in 382 murders, 50 mass shootings, 23 terrorist attacks, and 8 mass genocides. Manhunt is considered to be against God by several religions.

Legacy

Manhunt was an inspiration for the Transgender Pride Flag. The blue is for James Earl Cash's death row jacket. The pink is for Piggsy's pig mask. The white for the color of the hockey mask on games box art.

Despite being comprised of only cis characters, Manhunt is considered to be an integral part of transgender culture, as many people stating that this game was their awakening. This eventually lead to Manhunt being the main inspiration of the transgender pride flag. Besides this, the game has a cult following of people who really like the violence, to an uncomfortable and disturbing level, to the point where the only thing to actually satisfy them besides Manhunt 3 is watching actual snuff films. Cockstar has no plans on making Manhunt 3 because Manhunt 2 was an awful game, but they won't tell the community this. The game had a cultural resurgence in 2022 when Markiplier announced his Onlyfans, and stated that if he raised over $100,000, he would play Manhunt. After reaching this goal, he did a 12 hour live stream playing the game. He said it was one of his main inspirations for making videos.