'Manhunt'. The name can barely be thought about without conjuring up Daily Mail headlines. If you're Rockstar, one of the most controversial labels in gaming, it would seem like a shame not to follow up on the kind of press the first game got, wouldn't it? And so it is that Hallows Eve sees the arrival of Manhunt 2. The game is not a straightforward sequel to the first game. Instead, it is more. "a spiritual sequel" if you like, with the player this time around taking on the character of Dr Daniel Lamb - a Gordon Freeman-esque nerdy scientist character who seems to have been banged up in a mental asylum for a number of years - for reasons that, when you kick off the game, at least, are none too clear. In any case, our man Danny seems to have volunteered himself for some dodgy treatment as part of a top secret weapons experiment he was involved in, the side effects of this being the reason why he's found himself banged up in the Dixmore nuthouse hospital for the criminally insane for years. That is, until a freak electrical storm causes the hospital's security system to go haywire. The lunatics, it seems, are taking over the asylum. Which is where the game starts. Lamb needs to sneak his way past guards - not to mention other crazy inmates (one of whom decides to urinate on poor old Dan) - by creeping carefully down the corridors and sticking closely to the shadows, keeping a close eye on the radar at the top of the screen which will alert you when guards are less likely to be aware of your presence. You don't earn notoriety for you franchise without having a bit more than just corridor creeping, however. Sneaking will only get you so far before you have to start killing in any number of ways using shotguns, syringes and other nasty stuff. A new feature to the series are the 'environmental kills' which refer to the various ways in which Danny makes use of objects around him (toilets, telephone cables, fuse boxes and so on) to take out his unsuspecting victims with ever more gruesome glee. This is the stuff that survival horror is made of, and definitely not for the faint of heart.
