Cinematic only as peak Rockstar could do. Much as Max Payne is inspired by John Woo and GTA Vice City was by Scarface, Manhunt is clearly inspired by the gritty horror movies like Texas Chainsaw and the New French Extremity movement (which at the time was starting to find it's footing), and wears it like a glove throughout. Some of the best stealth gameplay you can find for this era, also gets brutally hard in the final stretch. Takes a bit for the story to get going, but once it does, it's a smart relentless reverse-slasher, a self-statement on violence in media and a gritty horror-crime thriller with a brilliant musical score, although more story on it's bones would have been recommended. Heard 2 has more story, so can't wait to get around to that soon

Manhunt is extremely controversial, and for good reason. It's hyper-violent and disturbing, forcing you to sneak around and execute enemies in brutal ways. The story is bleak, the atmosphere is oppressive, and it definitely makes you question how far is too far in a video game. It can be disturbingly effective at what it does, but even if you're into horror, the excessive and repetitive violence becomes numbing. Manhunt is a hard pass for most, and only for those with a strong stomach and an understanding that its brutality is intended as a commentary, not simply entertainment.

Atmospheric dread candy. Not quite the Edgelord driven mindless horror you're thinking (not this one at least) but it finds a pulse on a reverse-slasher cold-blooded thrills. Ingeniously harsh on difficulty to a slight degree of realism, tailors you to engage on stealth takedowns than face-to-face combats since you won't go far against crowds of goons, with a highly janky and inconvenient combat for you to absolutely praise thy heavens at the sight of firearms.
Gunplay is clunky but ensures a challenging hardship given how receiving gunfire drops your health significantly, facing off mobs of goons to increasingly more powerful firing squads face an equal amount of difficulty as you'd drop dead as easily as your enemies. Bombastic action doesn't mesh too well with this antiquated cover shooter shtick but it grooves to grindhouse horror messiness by the fantastically bonkers finale where you navel-gaze towards squads of tactical forces.
The takedown system is a neat way to face the player's fascination towards violence- It's not truly necessary to perform them as vicious as they're sold, and yet, these avoid monotony to the player's gameplay (at least until you realize there's just one animation for each gravity of execution). I kept finding amusement at the simplicity of a plastic bag.
It's an imperfect and janky action-adventure of sorts but i truly admire the asphyxiating tension and nihilistic premise as a framework for a morbidly Noir quasi-survivor horror exploitation film playing you as the hero. Carcer City stands as some of the most inhospitable worldbuildings ever imaginable by Rockstar Games right next to hospital spawnpoints on GTA.

Manhunt was great.
It was dark, psycho, full of violence and gore.
It had many great moments. Killing enemies with a plastic bag brutally always feels great, or with any weapon from a brick to a chainsaw. You also had 3 types of executions with every weapon, they really made sure this game gets banned in as many countries as possible:)))
It also had lots of stealth which made this game tense, the shadows were your friend.
The soundtrack was very unnerving, unsettling, haunting and disturbing, you could've cut the tension with a knife because it was so thick.
Great boss fights too, i think i finished this game about 5 times and i still want to do another playtrough.
What makes this game truly special is the fact that there are 0 fictional elements, nothing supernatural just a horror and madness where humans are the monsters.

i can really tell that this game set the foundations for a lot of stealth-oriented games that would come out after its release, but standing on its own, manhunt is just pretty okay.
as you could guess, the stealth is very good, the gameplay does revolve entirely around it after all, although it does get kinda boring kinda quickly after you’ve done your 30th execution which boils down to hitting a wall or waiting for an enemy to pass by a dark area and then trailing behind them whilst holding the square button until you can brutally murder them. the game does keep it fresh by introducing new enemy types or “gangs” that have their own quirks that changes the way you should approach a level, but that doesn’t change how sick you’ll get of holding down the square button for 10 seconds behind each enemy in the game.
the story is. there, I guess? it exists mainly to just move you on and explain why different gangs are showing up but not much else. it’s not interesting in the slightest, although let’s be real nobody’s playing this game for the story, they’re playing it for the controversy.
I don’t get it. I mean I kinda get why this game was controversial but nowadays it really is nothing special. there’s no shock-value in the bloody and gory executions, likely due to heavy distortion and censoring with the VHS filter and just the PS2 models in general.
manhunt is just okay, and that’s fine. I’m glad it laid the foundation for games like the batman arkham series and the only good parts of any assassins creed game and maybe the octocamo in mgs4 but not really (but it kinda is if you deep it??)

note: DO NOT purchase this game on PC/Steam!!! i know for a fact that the game is broken to shit on there and you will have a better experience emulating this or playing it on actual PS2 hardware. as someone who emulated it, I faced zero major bugs aside from ones relating to my emulator settings, so MAKE SURE you do not pick up the Steam or Rockstar Games Launcher versions of this game!

Primeiro de tudo fica o aviso: se tu for jogar no PC, saiba que a Rockstar disponibilizou, por algum raio de motivo, uma cópia PIRATA do jogo na Steam. E, pra quem não sabe, as cópias piratas de Manhunt tem bugs propositais antipirataria, então boa sorte correndo atrás de fixes pro jogo.
Mesmo ignorando esse fato, eu queria muito dar 4 estrelas, no mínimo, pro jogo, mas não dá não. O jogo é muito bom, é divertido, mas ao mesmo tempo é mal polido, ultrapassado e tem uma ausência de chekpoints irritante que realmente tira a graça do jogo, você é obrigado a repetir trechos longos e legitimamente difíceis diversas vezes. Eu dei muito rage quit nesse jogo até zerar por causa disso.
Mas a falta de polimento grave e a escassez de checkpoints em um jogo que necessita deles é o que me impede de dar uma nota mais alta, fora isso, o jogo é muito bom e merecia se tornar uma trilogia.