I don´t want to spoil your gaming enjoyment, but I simply cannot understand how anyone can find it enjoyable to kill people in the most realistic way, and get points the more violent the killing! There is elements of mercilessness and downright hate in it. Why this? What has such things to do in a game that is supposed to entertain? Are we back to old Rome, where violence of the most brutal forms will please the jeering crowd? I thought we had advanced further, higher since 2000 years ago! The way I see it, we are all supposed to be civilized, or our society will not last. And don´t give me the excuse, or explanation, that everyone else is doing it already in all kinds of other games. Other games to my knowledge do not reward you in this way for killing more and more violently.
Manhunt sickens me, and I just hope for you people who have played the original, and who plan to play the sequel, that it all makes sense in some good and not bad way. I have heard that some people are helped getting rid of anger and so not goes and do it "for real" by playing such games. Why do they harbour such anger, that they have to simulate smashing people? I have had my rage, and it always only comes out in the way of giving people a good telling in their face (in my head, and sometimes for real allthough rare in order to avoid fighting), but never ever to the extent of smashing them in an orgy of sadistic rage.
The way I see it, that game will increase a persons acceptance of violence in hitherto in games unseen hideous ways. Not only because the player who buys and plays through it accepts maiming and smashing other people for a reward, but also because playing it in the game constitutes the same as to go and do it for real - on the m e n t a l level. How can I say that? Because: everything a human body can do to another human body of evil starts in the brain. If you kill somebody in the street for real, you do it through the control of the brain. If you play it in a game, it is the same. Here the conscious CHOICE to hurt somebody starts. On the MENTAL level! Being Link in the Legend of Zelda series is to me far from the same, since the killing part is done by nesscesity alone to save Hyrule and not by pleasure. Manhunt is a game about killing for fun! There is NO reason for the kills other than for fun! Understand it any which way you want. I believe I am right.
And allthough not necessarily making a next-day killer out of a person who revels in it, it will certainly leave its mark on the player in various unpredictable ways. And this has been proved. By among other: IGN. They ran an article series back in 2005 which made mention of psychological tests that proved beyond doubt that violent media makes people violent ( I have it printed out, so I can give you the link to it if it still exists), and this had been tested to death and found credible. So games that encourage a player to go and do horrific things to people in the game, are games that makes a certain man by the name of Jack very angry. And I am one of those people who do understand him so well.
I am just glad it is not me who plays such games.
The very reason why I started to play Nintendo games in the first place was because of the bright, beautifull sprites, the fun in the gameplay, the music, and the wonderfull Nintendo atmosphere somehow there in every one of their games. But the way I see it Manhunt is a step in the wrong direction, a game which is living proof that some people´s entertainment choices have changed in a very dramatic way from how it all used to be once upon a time...