Headhunter
Developer - Amuze
Publisher - SEGA
Director - John Kroknes
Producer - John Kroknes, Stefan Holmqvist
Designer - Peter Johansson
Writer - Philip Lawrence
Artist - Johan Lindh
Composer - Richard Jacques
Genre - Action Adventure
Dreamcast Release Dates - November 16, 2001 (Europe); Unreleased (Japan); Unreleased (North America)
Additional Releases - Playstation 2, March 22, 2002 (Europe), May 14, 2002 (North America
Current Average Price - $60
Headhunter is a third-person action adventure game with stealth elements, shooting and melee combat, an inventory system, and light elements of open-world exploration and motorcycle racing. The player travels around the city on a motorcycle, stopping at various locations to explore mission areas and complete objectives (for example, passing a virtual reality simulator to increase hunter’s license ranking, laying siege to criminal hideouts, or infiltrating corporate labs).
The game packs all of these different elements onto two GD Roms. And these disparate game styles surprisingly work really well together.
The game strikes a tone that’s clearly influenced by action films of the 1980s and ‘90s (think films like Total Recall, Demolition Man, and RoboCop). While many of the elements that it lifts from these works can come off as campy and obvious, if we just give in to the narrative and don’t think too hard, Headhunter serves the player an engaging and interesting story.
The player controls Jack Wade, a bounty hunter (the eponymous headhunter) in a near-future United States in which crime syndicates rule the streets, corporations rule the government, and everything’s for sale (including human organs). At the beginning of the game, Jack awakens to find himself tied to an operating table in a laboratory unable to recall any of the events leading up to his awakening. He escapes the lab, but loses consciousness soon after. Again awakening, this time in a hospital bed, he’s visited by his former boss, Chief Hawke, who fills him in on some of the missing info.
Jack is the number one headhunter in operation. He’s spent his life tracking down criminals for the government-like ACN (the Anti-Crime Network), and sending them to the nation’s massive underwater prison. Here the prisoners are left to fight for their freedom in life or death tournaments that are broadcast to the nation for entertainment purposes. The losers of these tournaments have their organs harvested for use by the wealthier citizenry.
Just prior to Jack’s awakening, a man named Christopher Stern (the head of the ACN) was found murdered. Chief Hawke wants Jack to regain his hunter’s license and investigate the crime. Jack does this with the help of Stern’s daughter, Angela. Together they climb the ladder of the city’s criminal syndicates, discover who murdered Stern, and uncover a plot that exposes the rotten core at the heart of the ACN (and by extension, the nation).
Gameplay
When the game was new it was often compared to Metal Gear Solid. This comparison was never going to end favorably for Headhunter, even if Eurogamer’s Tom Bramwell considered the setting and story of Headhunter to be superior to MGS in his review. He described Headhunter as “a masterpiece of modern videogame development.” I can’t necessarily agree with that assessment. Headhunter was indeed an impressive technical accomplishment in its era, but it wasn’t a masterpiece (and it’s neither a masterpiece now).
It’s a good game. A fun game, with some interesting ideas. And for what it is, a campy and fun action adventure game, Headhunter is great. No need to oversell it.
But see for yourself. I’ve recorded a full longplay of Headhunter, which can be viewed on this page or on the GG Dreamcast YouTube channel.