In Headhunter, you play as Jack Wade, a bounty hunter who wakes out of a coma with amnesia. He is hired by Angela Stern, the daughter of the recently assassinated head of the ACN, which is in charge of capturing the criminal element through the use of bounty hunters, or Headhunters. Under her employment, Jack must find out who had Angela's father killed, while at the same time finding out what caused him to lose his memory. The story is set in a Robocop-like near future where criminals are rated like stocks and the more you capture, the better your Headhunter license and rewards can get.

The gameplay aspects of Headhunter are a mixture of different games that came before. Before starting out, you'll need to train at L.E.I.L.A., a virtual reality simulator that will show the player new techniques that they can use throughout the game. The average stage involves a good balance between stealth (like Metal Gear Solid), gun battles with assorted thugs (Siphon Filter) and hunting for items to unlock doors (Resident Evil) to further along the story. Players will also have to use the motorcycle to get from one location to another and to gain enough skill points to earn the next level in your license.

Graphically, the game looks decent. The levels are fairly large and have enough detail to make the environments feel like they have life. The character models are okay, but tend not to feel too realistic, which is only made worse by the fact that they don't seem to move too realistically. In fact, Jack runs like he's on the moon. Even though they manage to tell a good, although clichéd story, the cutscenes look like they were built for the PlayStation a few years ago.

While the driving levels are fairly large, you'll quickly find that unlike Grand Theft Auto 3, there's nothing to explore, so all you can do is drive to the next location in the story. And since the skill points awarded for driving really fast with the motorcycle feel unneeded, the whole motorcycle aspect could have been dumped and the game wouldn't have lost much. Also, once you start moving from one area to another to find keys to unlock doors, you'll begin to notice the healthy load times (anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds).

While the separate parts of the game are not greater than the games they borrow from, the total package is fairly well put-together. Packaged with a story that won't win awards but is at least entertaining, the average gamer should enjoy the game. Don't expect too many new gameplay elements, but if you liked the games mentioned before, you should check this out.

- - Kinderfeld