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Take Two/Rockstar Links With Sega Sports, Reveals Upcoming Roster
Thanks to GameGossip for its round-up of Take Two/Rockstar Games' recently announced financial results, as the publisher reported "net loss for the quarter [of] $14.6 million", but made significant announcements in the statement including "letter of intent entered into between Take-Two and Sega Corporation to co-publish and exclusively distribute on a worldwide basis Sega's ESPN Videogames." Elsewhere, it was noted that "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for the PlayStation 2 has sold approximately 300,000 copies as of the week ending May 30, 2004, making it one of the most successful debuts of a Western video game in Japan", and some less well-known forthcoming titles from various Take Two divisions include "Spy vs. Spy for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox [and] Ford Mustang: 40th Anniversary Edition for the PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox."
No, it's not too much like Hitman, except for the stealth element. In Manhunt, your goal is basically to get to Point A to Point B without getting killed, which involves killing others along the way. Hitman is more "Kill Person A, Kill Person B, Get Out". So basically, the goal in Manhunt is to survive, the goal in Hitman is to assassinate.
Once you get past the novelty of Manhunt's gore, there really isn't much to it. There are much better stealth-action games on the market.
Stragely, some of these gore fest games tend to do really well in Japan. You just to see the kind of sicko stuff the Japanese have in their comic books to see that comic violence is actually quite popular in Japan. Not real simulated violence... COMIC VIOLENCE. GTA series and Postal2 did quite well in Japan. Postal2 was interesting on another level because (apart from being funny and over-the-top) you could actually complete this game on the hardest level without having to kill anyone (hence the creators of that game clearly pointed out that all the violence possible in the game was the responsibility of the players!). Not sure if Manhunt will be seen as comic violence though though... there is nothing comical about that game.
READY.
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I wonder, will this actually allow me to find ESPN games in the friggin' stores? Seriously, I've been a fan of the Sega franchises for sports since the DC and it gets annoying not being able to find copies in the major stores. Sometimes, places like Target won't even have the ESPN sports game, but rather EA (natch), Sony and Acclaim. Maybe Take Two/Rockstar can provide a distribution boost that will actually help.