Players take on the role of James Earl Cash, a criminal who's sentenced to death row for a crime or crimes too heinous to even mention. Given a second chance by a power-hungry man known as "The Director," Cash is not killed. Instead, he's just given sedatives and taken to the cancerous barrio of a city known as Carcer City. The municipality of Carcer is controlled entirely by the Director, a.k.a. Starkweather, who's set up hundreds of cameras in every possible place, and populated it with psycho gangs and a corrupt police force. Here, Cash is the one-man star of Starkweather's snuff films.
The object of this game is to go around killing people so that The Director can tape the footage, edit it into snuff films, and sell them on the black market. You get a variety of weapons to choose from, such as plastic bags, wire, nail guns, sawed off shotguns, and baseball bats. If you manage to sneak up behind an enemy, you perform a special execution-style killing that is more gruesome depending on how long you hold down the attack button. HOLY SHIT. For example, if you have a baseball bat and you execute an enemy by quickly tapping attack, you'll give him a nice one-two to the back of the head, and down he goes. If you hold the attack button down, though, you'll smash his head in, beat him a couple of times in the stomach as he's going down, and splatter his blood everywhere.
Your character also has an earpiece so that The Director can personally communicate with you. He says things like "slaughter this dumb fuck," "ooo I'm getting off to this, Cash," and "pretty soon there won't be anyone left to kill!" You also get to hear conversation between the Hunters (the bad guys) as they discuss how they plan on killing you. If they see you and you run away, they'll say things like "there he goes, running like a little pussy," or "come back here so I can rip your fucking face off!" Incredible.
Eric and I have only gotten about two hours into the game, but every minute has been absolutely amazing. If you have a PS2, you need Manhunt.
