The awaited sequel to the indie game Cyber Manhunt is here. Cyber Manhunt 2: New World is a point-and-click game focusing on hacking. You play as an AI who is tasked by a tech corporation boss, Ashley Clayton, for the mega company Titan. She will ask you to deduce information from various people involved in the company to settle inner-company investigations. The game works by assigning someone for you to research and find information on to gain a further understanding of a conflict at hand. The game is primarily set on a computer screen where you have access to various apps such as emails, a messaging platform, a search engine, a password cracker, a data farmer and so on. You’ll be tasked with finding enough information that you can get to the bottom of an investigation.
Also a disclaimer, most screenshots are taken from the first chapter to avoid spoilers. Photos may give away a plot detail so if you want to experience the first chapter of this game fresh, you have been warned.
Narrative
New World’s story is immaculately delivered. What begins as a button-clicking marathon of typing in various details evolves into an intense story where every character mentioned feels important. The storytelling is fantastic it goes in so many different directions with its twists but none of them come across as something that doesn’t check out. When there has been a terrorist attack on Titan Head Quarters, it’s down to you to help uncover what’s led to this. Your opinions on a character will fluctuate objective by objective. It is a fantastically devised plot which keeps you guessing who is truly at fault. What makes this whodunnit storytelling more thrilling is the realistic nature of the conspiracies and crimes at hand in the corporate industry. All of the wrongdoings are from people driven by a lust for money or power, safety or revenge. Much like a Knives Out film you learn along the journey of finding out who a culprit is, you don’t have much of a like for any of these characters. It is quick to see the social commentary at play here. Cyber Manhunt 2: New World looks at the invasiveness of technology, the dangers of greed and lobbying in the corporate and tech industries and how perfectly honest men can become terrorists. The story is by far the most compelling aspect of this game.
Gameplay
The point-and-click nature of this game is handled very creatively. There are an array of different methods to find the information you’re looking for, going through the messaging platform, ‘hitalk’ and hacking into accounts was one I enjoyed the most as they function as a spawn of gossip. The gameplay does feel quite slow and dull to begin with, but once you become more familiar with the interface you can get through these sequences much quicker. New World feels quite repetitive at times going back and forth between the same applications and surfing through them for new information. However, the brilliance in storytelling does take this dullness away as the game goes on. Finding out a crucial bit of detail in an email can keep you on the edge of your seat as you frantically search to put these pieces together. And while the process can be quite dull, it does succeed in making your work feel very satisfying. Putting the evidence together you have farmed and coming up with a theory to solve the case from it was really cool. Normally after solving a case, you get these cool drawings and animation which will develop the story.
Most information is found by scouring various texts and compiling fact files about the characters. However, occasionally you’ll need to make an intuitive deduction about something. These moments are really rewarding and I wish we could’ve seen more. Particularly when dialogue is an option and you have to say the right thing to get the information you want from someone. To someone with experience in hacking or coding, this game might feel quite simplistic but to the average gamer, it comes across as fairly well put together and satisfying. One critique I would have for this game though is I did experience fairly frequent crashes, in particular when entering the investigative phase where you are called to make a decision on your evidence – the screen would often freeze. However, the game has a useful and regular autosave, so it doesn’t ever set you back much, aside from the time taken to restart the game.
Verdict
If you love a good whodunnit and a bit of research and puzzles in between, Cyber Manhunt 2 is an excellent game worth picking up. I have not played the first game so I can’t judge how it fairs as a sequel but I would say that I didn’t need any prior knowledge to be completely immersed into the plot of this game. This a really well-put-together game on the whole, it’s very clear a lot of thought went in writing this story and it’s a concept that could be reused again and again in different scenarios or environments– something I’m hoping the developers at Aluba Studio are planning to do.
