Manhunt

Story

The game is set in the gritty, crime-ridden Carcer City. The story starts with a journalist reporting on the condemned James Earl Cash, a criminal on death row who was supposedly executed by lethal injection. Cash is awakened by the voice of a person coming out of an earpiece, revealing that he has only been drugged. Cash puts on the earpiece and the person, who refers to himself as "The Warden," promises Cash his freedom before the night is over, but only if Cash follows the Warden's instructions. Cash is set free in a seedy neighborhood and told to slaughter his way through the streets populated by a gang calling themselves "The Hoods" while the director, who watches the city through surveillance cameras, keeps mentioning that he has to satisfy the audience and reveals his profession as a snuff film director. Despite the director's promise of freedom, Cash is beaten up by a group of mercenaries, the Cerberus, and thrown into the back of a van. After his fight against the Hoods, he is also hunted by other violent gangs in various locations around the city. The gangs are organized by Ramirez, an ex-soldier and leader of the Wardogs, a gang of army veterans and experienced hunters. First, Cash has to face a gang of white supremacists called The Skinz in a junkyard. Then he faces Ramirez's Wardogs in an abandoned zoo, where Cash must rescue kidnapped members of his own family. After the encounter at the zoo, Cash has to fight in an abandoned mall against a gang of devil worshippers and perverts known as The Innocentz. After finding a video cassette and VCR in the mall, Cash witnesses his family being slaughtered by the Innocentz. Betrayed, Cash is forced to take on the humiliating task of escorting a drunken vagrant through the hostile streets of East Los Albos. After taking down the Innocentz in an abandoned chemical plant, Cash takes on a gang of psychopaths, the Smileys, who have taken over a mental institution. Here Cash survives the director's planned end to the snuff film. Therefore, the remaining Wardogs and Ramirez are hired to kill Cash. However, Ramirez and his gang are killed by Cash, and Cash quickly turns against the director. The Carcer City Police Department (CCPD) works for the warden; the CCPD is hired by the warden to recapture Cash or kill him. The journalist, seen at the beginning of the game, meets Cash and tells him that she is on a mission to expose the Director's snuff film industry and the CCPD's corruption, and that Cash is essential to this important task; the journalist also reveals that the Director's name is Starkweather. To protect her from the police, Cash brings the journalist safely to her apartment, but Cash himself is recaptured by Cerberus. Back at Starkweather's mansion, he is to be killed by Cerberus. But Piggsy, a demented, chainsaw-wielding man wearing a pig's head as a mask and kept chained in Starkweather's attic, has escaped and kills the investigating Cerberus. This allows Cash to work his way through the garden and the house and kill the Cerberus leader. Cash eventually reaches the upper floors of the house, where he and Piggsy pursue each other. Cash triumphs after luring Piggsy onto a trapdoor, which collapses. As Piggsy tries to hold on, Cash saws off Piggsy's hands with a chainsaw, sending Piggsy plummeting to his death. After hacking his way through the last of the Cerberus, Cash finally confronts Starkweather, whom he brutally disembowels with the chainsaw and decapitates despite his pleas. Soon the press shows up at the mansion and the journalist uncovers Starkweather's snuff ring and the police involvement in Starkweather's machinations. Cash is nowhere to be found.