Monday 02 October 2006
Even the most unsellably weird games tend to spin off a sequel - or five - so putting our heads together to come up with a list of one-offs that deserve a reappearance was harder than we'd thought. Still, here are our 12 picks that either changed the gaming world too quietly for anyone to notice, had a heart of gold buried under a ton of faults, or are just plain teasing us by not going for that magic '2'.
Manhunt
PS2, Xbox, PC (2003/2004)
It might be certifiable under the Mental Health Act 1986 to want more of this bleak exploitation flick epic, but its real-world survival-horror (that still leaves us uneasy of train yards and back streets at night) is so powerful that it deserves a next-gen coat of muck.
With improved enemy AI and numbers, plus larger stretches of urban decay unbroken by between-mission loads to let your heart rate settle, playing Manhunt 2 would be like running a marathon in the psychological Olympics. Chased by psychopaths. What do you mean, that doesn't sound like a good thing?
Above: Riffing on '80s cinema, Alice in Wonderland, Grand Theft Auto and more, Manhunt was so much more than a video nasty
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
PS2, Xbox, PC (2004/2005)
Psi-Ops introduced telekinesis in the best way possible: the first boss used it to levitate train carriages and throw them at you. Maybe it looked too much like every other third-person shooter in the moments when you weren't surfing over broken bridges on chunks of levitated metal - or perhaps gamers just weren't ready to be battered with physics.
But now everyone is, so it's a shame there's no Psi-Ops 2 to let you tear levels apart then tie them back into a big bow like Magneto was an amateur. On the up-side, at least its developer is now bringing us John Woo's Stranglehold.
