Cyber Manhunt 2: New World offered me a chance to try something a little outside of my comfort zone. It’s a game that I would normally avoid as it’s specifically designed for the PC, but grabbing a Steam Deck has made me more curious about these types of games, so when a code was offered to me, I thought, why not?
I mentioned that I played this on a Steam Deck, and although it works just fine thanks to the track pad, there is a section that did not work on the Steam Deck, so I would 100% recommend playing this on a desktop or laptop. I had to resort to seeing the last fifteen minutes of the game on YouTube, so it’s not ideal.
Cyber Manhunt 2 is a sequel to the 2020 original game Cyber Manhunt, both developed by the China-based studio. They consist of a small team that has been working together on all three of their released games since the studio was founded in 2019. Cyber Manhunt was positively received on launch, with strong reviews from publications and Steam.
Cyber Manhunt 2 turns you into an AI companion to Ashley Grayson, a member of the senior team at Titan who specialises in artificial intelligence. You are there to help Ashley with her job, and it’s not long before you put to work to investigate a person who has just broken into Titan’s building wearing a suicide bomb. It’s up to you to find out why this person is doing this and to aid the police in stopping them by supplying helpful information to them about the individual.
You have a number of tools to hand to help you do this, including ones for hacking, phishing, a WhatsApp clone called Hi Talk, email, and a browser. You have to snoop around these people’s personal information and messages to find clues and piece together exactly what is going on. This involves scouring news articles, emails, messages, and the awesomely named Facebook replacement, Toothbook. Important lines of text will be highlighted in red when you hover the cursor over them, and you will start to build a case file once these clues have been added. If you find a picture, you can scan it for important information and search the web for similar pictures, which sometimes leads you to other involved parties. Embezzlement, conspiracies, suicide, and backstabbing are a taste of the types of subjects you’ll be dealing with, with a little bit of coercion thrown in for good measure.
Some sections will call upon you to hack into certain people’s phones, where you dig for clues through their various phone apps, with some kind of mini-game involved to gain access to a certain app. For instance, the first time I did this, I needed a passcode to unlock the photo app, and the clues were in a photo that was stored on the phone. Other types of mini games I came across while playing the game had me matching sound waves to piece together some audio, suveiling a suspect by using security cameras, putting on a voice filter, and pretending to be someone on the phone, and you know what? It all felt pretty cool.
In all of us is this fascination with what we do not know, and that fascination manifests to the highest level when we find information we are not supposed to know about, and I think this was a driving force for me in the game. I appreciate that these are all fictional characters, but it still brought that curious emotion to me while I was snooping around in places I shouldn’t be. This is mostly down to the excellent details the team has put into all of the writing and design of the game. They went into great depth in all aspects, and there were times I felt like I was using a real desktop and reading real messages.
Once you have collected enough clues, you run an interfere where you have to put everything you’ve learned together and come up with the facts on what actually happened to move on. This usually happens two to three times per chapter. You can hang around and find hidden secrets if you fancy it, or you can submit your findings and move on to the next case. As this game is in early access right now, chapters 1-3 are available, with five included in the full game, with chapter three concluding in a very interesting manner.
Not only were the presentation of the desktop and the apps well designed, but the character models and voice acting were also well done. I liked the comic book-style drawings to depict characters in photos and videos, as they did bring the story to life for me, which static or no images would not have. The voice acting is all American, which is done well, but it does throw you slightly off as the currency in the game is in euros. It would have helped if they used European voice actors, but it’s a minor quibble. There’s decent backing music too, which can get quite cinematic in places, and overall, I did enjoy it, even if it did get slightly repetitive by the end of the chapter.
I did struggle with some of the puzzles in the game or what to do next in general. Some clues can be a two- or three-word sentence, which I missed a few times, and it got frustrating checking all the messages and emails again to find out what was missed. In some instances, it wasn’t clear what to do next, and you really have to scour the case book to see what you may have missed. You really have to pay attention while playing this; otherwise, you will overlook something and make it harder for yourself further along in the case.
Overall, Cyber Manhunt 2 fascinated me. The well-implemented stories and tools all worked well together, and it did highlight the way in which our personal information can be found and used either for or against us in real life. It also showed me that the rise of AI in the real world will make it scarily easier over time. With that in mind and with the well-plotted stories and high presentation values, Cyber Manhunt 2: New World makes for an ultimately entertaining and informative experience.
Release Date: Out Now in Early Access
Platforms: PC
Price: £8.50
Many thanks to the publisher for the review copy
Version Tested: PC (via Steam Deck)
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