What is Manhunt? Furious ruthlessness, liters of blood, litigation, release bans in many countries and caustic comments from politicians are just an incomplete description of the project. An incorrigible subject. But whatever they say, Friv2Online Games Studio knows under what sauce to serve crime-themed Friv games. The film is loaded, the victims are in their places, the audience is waiting for brutal murders. Camera! Motor!
The original, released back in 2004, was far from ideal, but the scandalous fame did its job. Like the main character of Postal 2, James Earl Cash flooded the neighborhood with ketchup and left behind mountains of corpses, but he could not oppose anything to the boring gameplay, except for spectacular executions. Dr. Daniel Lamb, following Cash's precepts, will follow a similar path. But with some changes: instead of a prison - a psychiatric hospital, and instead of an invisible sadist-director - Leo Kasper - a madman, a well-known murderer and Lamb's second self.
Our scientist, by the way, is not a gift either. He took and sent to the next world his beloved wife. Just. A common household quarrel. For which he ended up in a clinic for especially dangerous criminals. Although he did not kill her. Confusing business, isn't it? Split personality is a terrible thing. Leo, driven by the goal of completely subjugating Daniel's mind, saw the professor's wife as a hindrance to his daring plans and got rid of her. Here are the deplorable results of a strange experiment in which "something went wrong." Never contemplate experiments with the psyche! This is fraught with dire consequences! And why settle for the unenviable role of a guinea pig? However, the debts will not push this yet. So the former luminary of science has to sit in the ill-fated hospital, taking sedative pills and droppers. He would stick there until the end of the century, but an unexpected breakdown opens the door to freedom. Electronics is such an unreliable thing.
Run away? What for? Where to? Friend Kasper knows the answers: he will teach you how to live anew, and how to kill you will teach. The three degrees of violence known from Manhunt have remained intact. For fans of spectacles, as before, it will be necessary to hold down the left mouse button longer. True, from the prefix brothers it became known about the amazing humanism of the local atrocities. Oh, those harsh censorship scissors! But the arsenal of tools for executions should become wider. A syringe will be added to the bag, glass shard and bat. Another undoubted plus is the interactive environment: almost any object can be used for execution. For example, pour gasoline on the "client" and set it on fire. In addition, the primitive "stealth" from the first part will replace a more serious approach to playing locks, akin to the realistic "sandboxes" of Splinter Cell... Isn't there a dark corner nearby? Create it yourself. Break the light bulb and don't be afraid to get noticed. Darkness is your best friend. It's nice that the Friv game does not impose one single correct way of passing. Of course, the use of firearms has never been acceptable for stealth action, but in Manhunt 2 you will be able to hold a gun in your hands. And nowadays fashionable shooting from behind cover should bring some variety to the gameplay.
The primordially Hollywood techniques adopted in the original should not fail either. Despite the shabby picture, the Friv game has something to surprise. Digital noise, variegated interference, distortion of reality and other elements of psychological thrillers will help smooth out the lack of textures.
It will not be easy to survive in the gloomy alleyways. The hunters, familiar from the first part, walk in herds through the controlled territories. Going into hand-to-hand combat with them is not an option: thugs do not like to joke - they will finish off, "mom" will not have time to say. But strangling with a telephone cable, drowning in the toilet or knocking out the brains with a metal pipe is inhuman, but effective and tasteful. Fans of James Cash's "creativity" will be delighted. As for the rest, the labels of unprecedented cruelty, hung by especially quivering personalities, seem far-fetched. People don't like it when they savor killings from spectacular camera angles and paint splashes on the lens. Even though the victims are not ordinary passers-by, as in Postal 2, but ordinary criminals. He killed a dozen drug dealers or skinheads - cleared the street of dirt.
From this perspective, it is all the more surprising that the developers were in no hurry with the release of the project on the PC. Released in 2007, the sequel on PS2, PSP and Wii never made it to the PC. Who is to blame for the painful porting process? Friv2Online Games Studio politics? Or problems with rating? It is completely unclear. But the fact of long-term receipt of the coveted tag "17+" remains. To soften the harsh censors, the most violent scenes had to be cut out. However, in the conservative Great Britain, even this seemed not enough. The complete taboo on selling in the United Kingdom was lifted only through lengthy negotiations.
Perhaps such scandals even play into the hands of the big bosses of Friv2Online Games Studio: Manhunt 2, which has traded modern graphics for insane murders and a ridiculous story, has nothing to stir up interest in itself. However, it is impossible to say now how good (or bad) the second chapter will be. Too much time has passed since the console release. We can only wait. And the wait, judging by the information from a trusted source, is not so long.
