“Manhunt” manages to be more violent than any other game on the market, but aside from the joy of decapitating countless enemies, there’s just not much to the game.

Freshly released on the XBox console, “Manhunt” is undeniably interesting for about the first 45 minutes, but then is sabotaged by absolutely terrible artificial intelligence and horribly repetitive gameplay. The game ends up being, at least until the later levels, a fairly standard stealth action game, but is nowhere near as sophisticated as other games in the genre, such as “Splinter Cell” or “Hitman 2.”

The protagonist in the game is a death row inmate named James Earl Cash who is mysteriously saved from his lethal injection in order to star in a series of films in which various gangs try to hunt him down. This plot does not at all help the repetitive feel of the game, because every time Cash finishes slaughtering the gang members on a level, he is simply beaten down by a SWAT team and thrown into a new film without any weapons.

The main point of the game, however, is excessive profanity and horribly graphic violence. Anyone who is easily offended should go out of his or her way to avoid this game, and anyone who is not should attempt to at least see the game for 10 minutes to see how over-the-top the violence and language is.

For example, when Cash sneaks up behind an enemy, he can perform execution maneuvers that cut to a highly stylized gritty video sequence of Cash slaughtering the opponent with, alternatively, a baseball bat, a plastic bag or a machete. Holding the execution button longer before releasing it makes the executions increasingly violent and generally seems to involve decapitating the enemy for the most violent executions. These execution scenes are by far the best aspect of the game.

The gangs also utter almost every curse word you can think of during the course of the game, and there is a gang called “The Bigots” who include both racial slurs and swearing as an added bonus.

Outside of the gratuitous violence, the game is poor at best.

The computer is unbelievably stupid, and unlike other stealth action games, can never see Cash if he is in the shadows, no matter how close they are, unless they saw him enter. This basically makes the game consist of hiding in the shadows, making noise to draw attention of the victim and then executing him as he foolishly walks right by Cash’s hiding spot.

After the enemies get guns, the game primarily devolves into a series of shootouts in which Cash can simply hide behind a wall and wait for an enemy to rush him, then shoot him in the head and pop back behind the wall, waiting for the next enemy to rush his position.

The game is not particularly easy, however, because Cash has very limited health, and it is not all odd for a one-on-one fight with an enemy to deplete over half of his life.

It is also very long. There are 16 levels, which ordinarily would be a good thing; however, the game gets old after about the first five, so in this case, shorter would have been better. This is primarily due to the fact that new weapons are not introduced quickly enough, and as soon as all the executions have been seen with a particular weapon, there is not much left to look forward to except more of the same.

The excessive violence makes this game worth seeing, but everything good about the game can easily be experienced in 10 or 15 minutes, so find a friend who already has it. It is not the worst game out there, but coming from the developer of “Grand Theft Auto III” — possibly the greatest game ever created — it falls significantly short of expectations.