Forget GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption, I want Manhunt 3 – PCGamesN

Grand Theft Auto 6, GTA 5, and a Red Dead Redemption remaster are more than enough for Rockstar to focus on right now. But as we approach the 20th anniversary of the first game, and as I come to the end of replaying it, yet again, Im craving the return of Manhunt. One of the greatest horror games ever made, its not just scary, but shocking, smart, and legitimately squalid. Theres something to be said for the current tide of triple-A games, which compared to perhaps two or three decades ago represent a culture that has seriously broadened its appeal. But Manhunt takes me back to a time when gaming was a counter-culture, and it felt like a willingness to experiment and plumb the depths of poor taste still existed among big-name developers.

Im a bit cynical, a bit jaded, and a bit older now than I was, and it takes a lot to really get to me. But I still think Manhunt is genuinely nasty. Ignoring some of the old hysteria and hyperbole, and the reputation that Manhunt has gained as one of the most controversial games ever, this is still more brutal and nihilistic than any other mainstream release Ive seen in my lifetime.

Its a horrible cliche, and often untrue, but I think it genuinely applies with Manhunt you couldnt make this game now, or at least, it seems very unlikely that Rockstar, or any other big developer, would allocate a budget and attempt to market a game like this now.

Its not just the violence. Its the sexualization of the violence. Its the director, Lionel Starkweather,groaning into your earpiece when you open a hunters face with a hammer. Its the old mock-up website for the in-game snuff ring business Valiant Video, a place where you can buy latex gloves and gimp masks.

This is a journey to the center of depravity, a horrible adventure through some of the darkest psychosexual impulses. Your enemies are white supremacists. Your weapons are hand axes, shards of glass, and plastic bags. Stripped to their underwear and tied to a stake, you rescue your family one level, only to watch them butchered, on a VHS tape you find in an abandoned shopping mall, one level later. Its real dirt.

Its the levels with the family that really bring the power of Manhunt home, in fact. In other games, rescuing them would represent something redemptive, an optimistic kind of uptick in the story where were allowed to feel that perhaps the world isnt all bad.

Similarly, when they die, itd be a dramatic turning point, the momentour protagonist, James Earl Cash, resolves to do something topursuesomemorally cleansingvengeance. But Manhunt offers neither of these things. When he rescues them, apart from barking orders like run away or get out of here, Cash doesnt speak to his family its as if they dont love each other, dont care about each other, dont know each other. Likewise, when theyre killed, the game just continues like nothing happened. Cash keeps following Starkweathers orders. The executions roll in. None of it matters.

And that, I think, is Manhunts greatest achievement. When I see writers or game-makers or whoever it may be talking about nihilism, and how they want to explore hopelessness, immorality,or how everything is pain or something it often feels like a cop out, like theres something easier in making art about how everythings terrible.

But while its certainly nihilistic, Manhunt has a forceful conviction. It takes perhaps the first four levels before it hits the absolute rock bottom of the soul, and then it just keeps digging and digging and digging. Its committed to squalor, sleaze, and spiritual oblivion. For a game about hollowness, and the absence of even the basest humanity, its gotseriousvoice and substance.

Which is why I want it back. By broadening their appeal and softening their approach, videogames, as a commercial prospect and arguably as an artform as well, have done well in the last 20 years. Games have proven to the world to the mainstream cultural vanguard that theyve got some expressive and certainly some industrial worth.

But in doing that, theyve stopped being dangerous. Stopped being iconoclastic. Stopped being appalling. AndI missthat particular creative urge, that urge to be grungy, challenge taste, and rebel against accepted standards of artistic cleanliness. I think that urge once gave to gaming a distinctive cultural identity. And if it did, Manhunt was its apex. Id love to have it back. But Im almost certain it wont happen.

Manhunt 3 might not be coming, but the GTA 6 release date is definitely on its way. In the meantime, if youre still causing chaos in Los Santos, check out the best GTA 5 mods for 2023.

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Forget GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption, I want Manhunt 3 - PCGamesN