Manhunt
In the UK a little over a week ago, a 17-year old boy named Warren LeBlanc murdered his friend Stefan Pakeerah, 14. He used a clawhammer and a knife, used to smash the younger boy's skull and cut him open. The victim's mother claims the killer was 'obsessed' with a game called "Manhunt" for the PS2, also now available on Xbox and PC. The mother of the victim is calling for the game to be banned in all of the UK, which has resulted in the game being sold out in every market everywhere. New Zealand already had the game banned upon the release date, as they had for the "Grand Theft Auto" series.
"Manhunt" is a game where you play a character named James Earl Cash. He's a man being put to death by injection, and in the opening cut scene, he is assumed dead by the end of it. He wakes up from darkness to find himself in a new setting, with someone talking to him through an earpiece. That someone is a man called The Director, or Starkweather as he is also known. He's actually voiced by Brian Cox, who some of you may remember as Stryker in "X-men 2." He tells Cash to wake up, he's not dead yet. He is explained that he's been put into a game-- he must roam through an abandoned part of Carcer City, and he must do as the Director says, or he'll never make it out alive. He is told to walk out a door and into the streets, where he'll meet the first of many victims to come.
As Cash, you pick up weapons as you walk trying not to cause noise and startle the thugs that walk around the scenarios. Every weapon as a range of executions to it. When you sneak up on someone from behind, you lock your crosshairs on their head, and you get into execution mode. Your crosshairs will turn green, meaning that is just a straight-up killing. Then they will turn yellow if you wait longer, and the execution will be a little more grusome. Once it hits red, your victim will die a horrible, horrible, horribly painful death. Example: Green, with a plastic bag is throwing it over their head and suffocating them. With a bat, you will just knock them across the head to the ground. On yellow, with the bat, you might end up clubbing them a few times, spraying blood. I think you actually end up choking them with the bat on their throat. On red, you club them to the ground, then position them so they are kneeling, and you end up using their head like a tee ball-- sending their brains all over a wall like a paint canvas, leaving a shell of a head, maybe even an eyeball flying into the screen.
When you execute thugs, the screen angle changes to a cinematic mode, so it's like watching a movie when you are putting these guys down. You can use a melee attack and fist fight, or use glass or bats or whatever and fight them, but you don't get a full score to unlock and get 5-stars for the level unless you use executions.
You fight your way through the levels, executing, decapitating, crippling, stabbing, shooting and hiding. You use stealth to hide in the shadows, waiting for the thugs to walk past you so you can jump out from behind them and choke them off with a piece of wiring, or use a sickle to cut open their stomach or scrotum with (I'm serious, you can come up from behind, swing it under-hand into their genitals between their legs, then rip it towards yourself). If I didn't die of that, I'd kill myself as soon as I could.
Weapons range from things like sickles, knives, wooden bats, metal bats, copper wiring, handguns, shotguns, assault rifles, chainsaws and the like to things like broken glass shards, broken splinters of wood and plastic bags. You can use the head you take off with the wire and throw it at an unsuspecting thug to show him you're here, or throw it against a wall to create noise and send someone running towards it. You can pick up the body you've just choked the life out of and hide them in the shadows so their buddies don't find it and get excited.
So, to those of you who have read or seen the book or movie "The Running Man" by Stephen King, and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards and Richard Dawson of "Family Feud" as Damon Killian, this game should sound very familiar!
Back in November, I purchased on the day it released, "Manhunt" for the PS2. I had waited since the winter before for it's release, and I was able to get it for a discounted price with my nerd hook-ups. While the game didn't live up to the year-long anticipation I stupidly built up for myself (as I am doing right now for "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas"), I loved it. It's still a fun game, and a game I won't be giving up anytime soon.
Yeah.
So why did I bother to update with this useless trash about a video game? Well, I wanted to explain the game to you all. Most of you, probably all of you, heard nothing about this horrible crime in the UK. That's ok, I had to search for it. There has been a new twist that developed in the last day or two that involves finding a copy of the game in the VICTIM's room, not the killer's, and that their meeting may have involved drugs, not "Manhunt" at all. "Manhunt" however, was the first to get recognized as the reason why this crime happened.
Most of you, especially the girls, think anyone who would play this game is a little messed up. Well yes, you'd have to be to enjoy this game. Your sense of humor has to be a little out there. But most of us understand that this is entertainment, like a movie. This 17-year old moron did not. I'm hoping that everyone who hears about these crimes does not relate everyone who has bought and enjoyed these games to the moron(s) in these articles. So far Rockstar Games has been blamed for 3 deaths 'related' to things from their games, the other 2 coming from "Grand Theft Auto."
While this post was pointless, I had fun making it, as I had to sell my PS2 last month because of money problems, and I miss my gaming terribly.
Parents: know what your kids are playing and watching, and if you should know if your kid is mentally stable to play these kinds of games, especially if he's old enough to go to the store with enough money to buy it.
Articles on the crime:
http://www.thisisguernsey.com/code/showarchive.pl?ArticleID=011721&year=2004&category=news
http://p2pnet.net/story/2024
http://www.xbox365.com/news/news.cgi/article/EpAEEEFpkphUkJCHjE3020
http://www.cubed-3.co.uk/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2573 - "Manhunt Banned"
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13173069,00.html
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=pub&aid=3916
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/manhunt/news_6104067.html
http://p2pnet.net/story/2071
http://ps2.ign.com/articles/536/536062p1.html
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13179477,00.html
Screenshots:
http://www.jucaushii.ro/imgcateg_590.html
"Manhunt" is a game where you play a character named James Earl Cash. He's a man being put to death by injection, and in the opening cut scene, he is assumed dead by the end of it. He wakes up from darkness to find himself in a new setting, with someone talking to him through an earpiece. That someone is a man called The Director, or Starkweather as he is also known. He's actually voiced by Brian Cox, who some of you may remember as Stryker in "X-men 2." He tells Cash to wake up, he's not dead yet. He is explained that he's been put into a game-- he must roam through an abandoned part of Carcer City, and he must do as the Director says, or he'll never make it out alive. He is told to walk out a door and into the streets, where he'll meet the first of many victims to come.
As Cash, you pick up weapons as you walk trying not to cause noise and startle the thugs that walk around the scenarios. Every weapon as a range of executions to it. When you sneak up on someone from behind, you lock your crosshairs on their head, and you get into execution mode. Your crosshairs will turn green, meaning that is just a straight-up killing. Then they will turn yellow if you wait longer, and the execution will be a little more grusome. Once it hits red, your victim will die a horrible, horrible, horribly painful death. Example: Green, with a plastic bag is throwing it over their head and suffocating them. With a bat, you will just knock them across the head to the ground. On yellow, with the bat, you might end up clubbing them a few times, spraying blood. I think you actually end up choking them with the bat on their throat. On red, you club them to the ground, then position them so they are kneeling, and you end up using their head like a tee ball-- sending their brains all over a wall like a paint canvas, leaving a shell of a head, maybe even an eyeball flying into the screen.
When you execute thugs, the screen angle changes to a cinematic mode, so it's like watching a movie when you are putting these guys down. You can use a melee attack and fist fight, or use glass or bats or whatever and fight them, but you don't get a full score to unlock and get 5-stars for the level unless you use executions.
You fight your way through the levels, executing, decapitating, crippling, stabbing, shooting and hiding. You use stealth to hide in the shadows, waiting for the thugs to walk past you so you can jump out from behind them and choke them off with a piece of wiring, or use a sickle to cut open their stomach or scrotum with (I'm serious, you can come up from behind, swing it under-hand into their genitals between their legs, then rip it towards yourself). If I didn't die of that, I'd kill myself as soon as I could.
Weapons range from things like sickles, knives, wooden bats, metal bats, copper wiring, handguns, shotguns, assault rifles, chainsaws and the like to things like broken glass shards, broken splinters of wood and plastic bags. You can use the head you take off with the wire and throw it at an unsuspecting thug to show him you're here, or throw it against a wall to create noise and send someone running towards it. You can pick up the body you've just choked the life out of and hide them in the shadows so their buddies don't find it and get excited.
So, to those of you who have read or seen the book or movie "The Running Man" by Stephen King, and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards and Richard Dawson of "Family Feud" as Damon Killian, this game should sound very familiar!
Back in November, I purchased on the day it released, "Manhunt" for the PS2. I had waited since the winter before for it's release, and I was able to get it for a discounted price with my nerd hook-ups. While the game didn't live up to the year-long anticipation I stupidly built up for myself (as I am doing right now for "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas"), I loved it. It's still a fun game, and a game I won't be giving up anytime soon.
Yeah.
So why did I bother to update with this useless trash about a video game? Well, I wanted to explain the game to you all. Most of you, probably all of you, heard nothing about this horrible crime in the UK. That's ok, I had to search for it. There has been a new twist that developed in the last day or two that involves finding a copy of the game in the VICTIM's room, not the killer's, and that their meeting may have involved drugs, not "Manhunt" at all. "Manhunt" however, was the first to get recognized as the reason why this crime happened.
Most of you, especially the girls, think anyone who would play this game is a little messed up. Well yes, you'd have to be to enjoy this game. Your sense of humor has to be a little out there. But most of us understand that this is entertainment, like a movie. This 17-year old moron did not. I'm hoping that everyone who hears about these crimes does not relate everyone who has bought and enjoyed these games to the moron(s) in these articles. So far Rockstar Games has been blamed for 3 deaths 'related' to things from their games, the other 2 coming from "Grand Theft Auto."
While this post was pointless, I had fun making it, as I had to sell my PS2 last month because of money problems, and I miss my gaming terribly.
Parents: know what your kids are playing and watching, and if you should know if your kid is mentally stable to play these kinds of games, especially if he's old enough to go to the store with enough money to buy it.
Articles on the crime:
http://www.thisisguernsey.com/code/showarchive.pl?ArticleID=011721&year=2004&category=news
http://p2pnet.net/story/2024
http://www.xbox365.com/news/news.cgi/article/EpAEEEFpkphUkJCHjE3020
http://www.cubed-3.co.uk/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2573 - "Manhunt Banned"
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13173069,00.html
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=pub&aid=3916
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/manhunt/news_6104067.html
http://p2pnet.net/story/2071
http://ps2.ign.com/articles/536/536062p1.html
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13179477,00.html
Screenshots:
http://www.jucaushii.ro/imgcateg_590.html