Hunt: Showdown

[Whiskey_chaser]

Me and a few friends picked this up in a psn sale, one of them had heard good things, and my god, it's amazing. Quite possibly one of the best online multiplayer experiences i've played in a loooooong time.

So the premise is, it's a bit like a Battle Royale, in that three to four teams are dumped on one of two big maps. Instead of areas getting smaller, you have to use 'dark vision' (world goes dark, sparky bits are highlighted in the distance) to find three clues that point you to a boss fight. You then have to kill the boss and extract. The kick is you're all trying to get the same final objective, and if you do kill the boss, you have to banish it, a defending process that takes a couple of minutes, then you pick up two bounties which light you up on the map like a Christmas tree.

What also makes this standout is that the map is littered with loads of zombie enemies that each throw a new way into how you approach areas. This is a game where you have to be stealthy, because the audio is absolutely fantastic. Approach a dying horse? Better put that bastard down quick because its going to start neighing like a motherfucker. Flocks of bird fly away from you, giving your position away. Stealthily planning out an approach to a hunkered down group of enemy players, only to have a flamer charge at you and explode can make things go south fast.

The setting is great as well, think Resident Evil 7 meets Red Dead. It's hard as nails, and there's perma-death on your characters which adds to the tension, but the whole thing has given us some of the biggest laughs i've had in a game in ages.

It's not going to be for everyone, didn't think it'd be my bag to be honest, but I absolutely love it.

[Sly Reflex]

I've watched friends play this a lot on PC over the last year or so and although it's not my cup of tea, you forgot to mention how good the weapon reloads are. They're so detailed and since you're using old timey weapons there's a lot of handling. According to the gun nut of the group, the details from the weapons are out of this world as well.

[DisturbedSwan]

I played it when it was in Beta on PC ages ago and had a lot of fun with it. 

 

I didn't quite get what I had to do because it was obviously in a rougher state back then but you had to pick up these orbs then, kill monsters and avoid being killed by other players. I didn't ever find out what happens if you get all the orbs and 'complete' the level so to speak though.

[Whiskey_chaser]

On 25/03/2021 at 14:38, Sly Reflex said:

I've watched friends play this a lot on PC over the last year or so and although it's not my cup of tea, you forgot to mention how good the weapon reloads are. They're so detailed and since you're using old timey weapons there's a lot of handling. According to the gun nut of the group, the details from the weapons are out of this world as well.

 

It's not something I immediately picked up on, but yeah, now you mention it there's a lot of care put into all the weapons. The melee in this game feels great, swinging a sledgehammer has some real weight and heft to it, and it feels brutal when you make contact.

 

On 25/03/2021 at 16:15, DisturbedSwan said:

I played it when it was in Beta on PC ages ago and had a lot of fun with it. 

 

I didn't quite get what I had to do because it was obviously in a rougher state back then but you had to pick up these orbs then, kill monsters and avoid being killed by other players. I didn't ever find out what happens if you get all the orbs and 'complete' the level so to speak though.

Yeah, you essentially look for clues (glowing blue glass like craters on the ground - uncracked if you're the first to discover it, but the glass cover missing if someone's been there before), kill the boss and then get to an extraction point where your character survives for another round and get's trait points, which you can use to buy certain mods such as 'Gator Legs' which let you move quicker through water (one of my favourites because the water devils in this game can ruin your day).

The PVP in this is just spectacular though, it's like a really tense Western standoff.

[Whiskey_chaser]

I think this might be one of my favourite online multiplayers in a long time. It's just so dramatic. Had a couple of amazing games last night. There's a new boss tied to an ongoing event and he's a bastard to kill. Me and a mate were playing double's only matches so we found the clues, made our way over to the boss where my mate got sniped. After creeping around for 10 minutes trying to find the sniper (again, the audio is so good, you can pinpoint a sparrows fart in this from 50 meters away so suddenly dropping and going quiet to stalk someone really get's the heart going), I managed to revive him, where we took out the two men that were about three shots away from killing the boss.

Easy boss bounty, we bunkered up and sat in silence, only to hear the squelching of feet outside the barn we were in. Spying someone through the crack in the woodwork, I opened fire, killing one of them through a wall and my mate head shotted the other. Easy extraction.

On a second game, another joined us. Again, we found the boss but I stayed back and up high as another team had just killed it and I watched my team mates try and breach. Traps had been set and they both died on entry. I stayed still and watched. Another squad showed up and all hell broke loose. I sniped three players and managed to revive my squad, almost getting fucked over by a wasp zombie in the process. We then had a manic chase across the map as the sole survivor of the boss fight tried to extract with their bounty. We encountered the last squad on the way where we took them out in a crazy firefight that attracted half of the undead on the map, then got to extraction to see the bounty carrier we were chasing get mauled by dogs ten meters from the boat.

This game. This fucking game. I absolutely love it. Wins feel like something you really have to fight for, and the learning curve is balls hard (doesn't help being noobs in a three year old game) but there's a real 'fuck yeah, we actually did it' feeling to it when you do, and the losses are normally so dramatic that you don't mind anyway.

[Whiskey_chaser]

I've now hit around 50 hours on this and think me and my team are actually pretty competent. We still get our arses handed to us on a plate but can handle our own in a fight now.

Bosses are a second thought now. We now spend our time creeping around the map listening for any sound of other players and the moment we hear a gunshot we go hell for leather at them.

Also found this review that summarises my thoughts on the game perfectly:
 

He nails it with this comment - this game is about managing sound. Once you know what you're doing, every action you take is about working out how much noise you'll make.

Good community behind it as well. My teammate had a message congratulating him on an epic gunfight after one game (they spent a good ten minutes duking it out, tense as hell to watch).
 

[Whiskey_chaser]

I'm now up to 70 hours on this. Can't remember the last time a game grabbed me so much. I've started watching people stream it and check the reddit daily. Nothing else comes close to the atmosphere in this game. Every gunfight is so tense and each match is rife with 'Battlefield' moments. I could play (and have played) this all day.

Had a bad few games yesterday then had three back to back games where we obliterated everyone/thing. Such a buzz when you wipe out all the teams on a map, steal a few bounties, kill a boss and then have free roam of the map to unload on any enemies in your way.

Also - fuck the dogs in this game.

[Whiskey_chaser]

So, after having a bit of a break from this I started playing again recently. Saturday night I was pretty much out of Hunt dollars (the currency you use to recruit hunters and equip gear) so rolled a free one. Gave him a trusty Vetterli rifle and a pistol and had five of the best games i've ever played back to back. I was a killing machine. FINALLY got a hunter up to level 50, pinging me a PSN trophy which has probably been the one i'm most proud of getting as this game is about as unforgiving as it gets.

So, roll on tonight. Me and two pals sign in with free hunters just to have a laugh. Roll on another cracking few rounds, one of which I went one against three, killed two, failed the third kill so he revived both his team mates and then squad wiped them. That's a second hunter maxed out. Three more and i'll have the hardest trophy to get in the game.

[Sly Reflex]

I actually thought you were playing this on PC.

[Whiskey_chaser]

10 hours ago, Sly Reflex said:

I actually thought you were playing this on PC.

Nah, my mouse and keyboard skills are far too weak for a game like this. It supposedly plays very different on PC because of how easier it is (in theory) to headshot people. Gunfights are over much quicker as a result, where on console their a lot scrappier and more like something out of a western film.

[Whiskey_chaser]

I'm approaching 200 hours with this game now. I finally got my fifth hunter to lvl 50 for the trophy, which is probably my proudest gaming achievement since beating Bloodborne.

I still absolutely love everything about this game. It's given me some of the most memorable multiplayer moments ever. They've also updated the console versions so PS5 (and I assume Series X) now run at 60fps which just makes a great game even better.

This game is a hard sell, as you need a dedicated bunch of friends to play it with, and it's REALLY unforgiving for the first 20 hours or so, you will die, a lot. But oh boy is it worth it. I'd say this is easily now in one of my top ten games of all time.