https://youtu.be/xE84fiLpqVg

Hunt: Showdown is a competitive first person shooter, based in an overgrown, beat down Louisiana. You will be facing off against 8 or 9 other players depending on whether or not you brought a companion. These other people and yourself are all scouring the map for clues that help you narrow down where the massive monsters are lurking, waiting for you to Hunt them Down. Other players are not your only imminent danger while you’re traversing the land, there are hordes of monsters around every corner.

The game does an absolutely incredible job of immersing you and giving you a constant sense of tension. There’s hardly a lull in the sounds of this world, you hear dogs barking, crows flying, zombies walking, gunshots blasting, and the majority of the sounds have an actual reason for happening. You have to be constantly be paying attention to where and why you are hearing things, were those crows from an enemy running through them? Is that zombie grunting because it just got attacked? You will always be on edge wondering these things, but not because the game is trying to trick or scare you, it’s always providing accurate information of what is happening, you just have to learn how to interpret it correctly.

Before you enter into a match you are given some options, you have a few Hunters to choose from who each come equipped with different weapons, tools, or passive abilities to aid you on your mission. If the Hunters do not have exactly what you would prefer to use, you have a set amount of money that you can use to gear your character the way you would prefer. As you level up and collect bounties from your matches you will earn more money that you can use to bring better equipment in the future. However you do not get to keep your Hunters and equipment forever. If your Hunter is killed for any reason during a match (other than a game crash) then they will be permanently lost along with anything they were carrying. This certainly can be harsh for newer players, but the developers are constantly working on ways to help ease new players into the experience, without ruining the hardcore aspects that the main playerbase loves.

Crytek are utilizing the Early Access phase of their game much better than the majority of games I’ve followed. They are pushing out updates nearly every week, with major content being added at least every month. Even just since the game started in early access it’s performing significantly better, they’ve eliminated hundreds of bugs, added a massive amount of gameplay features, equipment, passives, a new map, the list goes on. Hunt: Showdown is absolutely a very passionate project for Crytek, and they are doing everything they can to listen to the community while trying to build the game that they’re envisioning.

Hunt: Showdown is a hardcore, PvPvE (Player VS. Player VS. Environment) game that focuses on hunting down AI boss targets and escaping the match alive. Matches consist of 10 players, either solo or duo, and are limited to an hour in length. You will choose and equip a character before you enter the match, and you are able to loot weapons from other fallen players. During the match you have the ability to see “clues” at every compound on the map that all other players will also be drawn to. As you activate these clues it narrows down sections of the map and eventually shows you exactly where your boss target is, currently it can either be a large pig butcher abomination or an incredibly quick, massive spider made of human body parts. If you manage to defeat the monster and escape with it’s bounty alive, you are given a large chunk of currency that you are able to better equip your hunter in your next matches. A quick play mode was also just recently added that shakes up the typical formula a bit. You can only join it with random characters, but they’re completely free, and it’s entirely focused on PvP rather than the match being about killing a boss.

The UI functions well with few bugs, however some sections of it can be a bit confusing. They are constantly changing and improving it, but sometimes they leave areas of it untouched when they have features planned that will completely change the purpose of that menu. I have had few issues with it, but it’s certainly not perfect yet.

As for the controls, they may feel a little strange at first. Particularly the way you fire your weapon or use tools. Your character wont fire his gun just by pressing the Left-Mouse Button. You have to first hold Right-Click to raise your weapon, this will let you hip-fire by pressing Left-Click, or if you would like to be more accurate, you have to continue holding Right-Click then tap Shift to aim down your sight, then you can Left-Click to fire as you would be used to in other shooters. It seems weird at first, but you’ll find it works well for this style of game. All keys are also easily rebindable in the menu if anything isn’t to your liking by default.

Crytek are known for their impressive visuals in games and they certainly do not disappoint in Hunt: Showdown. The game looks absolutely outstanding on any graphic settings, and their thematic choice holds up very well for the gameplay. There is a large amount of detail in every area, dense forests, murky swamps, haunting churches, and no part of it seems out of place. There are a large amount of graphical options to tune the game to your liking and to improve your performance, and they are still working on implementing even more. The game’s performance is not great yet, even on a very powerful machine, but they are constantly making adjustments with every patch. One other important thing to note, is the game still does not have a field of view setting, which will certainly turn off a lot of people who would prefer to play on a higher setting.

Amongst all of the many things I love about the game, I honestly believe the audio may be my favorite part. It may seem like a strange thing to say about a videogame, but the audio truly is what ties the entire experience together. Crytek have tried very hard to make sure every aspect of the game keeps you on your toes, feeling the tension of the area around you, always forcing you to be as aware as possible. Every patch that comes to the game improves aspects of the audio as it’s not all perfect yet, but overall it absolutely is the most important thing driving the immersion of this game. The audio is also constantly relevant to gameplay, players can give away their position by crunching on branches or broken glass, gunshots can be heard from across the map if you’re not careful about what weapon you’re using. As the game advances they are also adding more ways to use the audio to play mind games on your opponents such as throwable decoys that imitate a gunshot sound where they land. I believe the audio will always be one of the most important aspects of the game and something that will continue being a driving force for the tension and ambiance.

Hunt: Showdown is one of the most unique first person shooter games on the market. Due to its hardcore nature and it not being finished it has yet to find a massive playerbase. However it provides something that almost no other games do, an incredibly immersive player vs. player experience that continues to be thrilling and tense even after having played it for hundreds of hours. Crytek have done a very good job improving the game thus far, and I am certain that when they believe the game is finished, it will be one of the best first person shooters ever made.



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