Hunt: Showdown is a multiplayer shooter set in the cursed swamps of an alt-history 1900th century Louisiana, made by the famous Crytek studios. It is a truly gorgeous game, as one would expect, and it is unmistakeably a battle royale, though it bills itself as a “competitive first-person shooter bounty hunting game” with heavy survival horror elements. There is no minimap or hud, and pulling up the map tabs the player out of the game, like accessing a pip boy in Fallout without the immunity granted by freezing time. It has all the classic features of a battle royale, and a few twists – there’s no wall of fire closing in on you, matches can run up till 45 minutes, and there are PvE elements in multiplayer.
The map is littered with various zombies that groan and wheeze grotesquely, giving away their locations, and there are several variants that range in ability and difficulty to kill, from lurching bee-hive rotters to heavily muscled grotesques that can eat up entire bags of ammo. But the most dangerous are the Monsters, of which every map has two. To find them, players have to find 3 Clues that, when added up, mark the location of a monster on the players map. Once the monster is found and killed,which is a pulse-pounding endeavor in and of itself, and a multi-minute ritual is completed where players have to do a king of the kill style defense of the corpse, bounty tokens are spawned, 2 from each monster. Each player can carry one, and bringing one of these bounty tokens to the extraction points on the map and getting out alive wins you the game. But you can also kill a player and loot their corpse for their token, allowing you to scavenge your way to victory.
Hunt: Showdown delivers a strong remixing of the battle-royale formula to excellent effect, but it is in the attention to detail and atmosphere that makes the game truly excel. I hadn’t played the pre-launch, but there was a staggering level of information to absorb from the game – the distance of enemy players from the far off thunder of blackpowder weapon discharge, the type of weapon fired by its sound, whether that branch you heard snap nearby was you, your team mate, or something else. Every time I played I felt I was learning something new, from finding out that zombie mobs won’t spawn until another player is nearby, to finding out that all in game communication – voice chat and text – is visible/audible to anyone nearby. It’s a game that absolutely rewards investment and experience, but also punishes it – after you get your account to level 13, when one of your ‘Hunters’ dies they are gone forever, along with all of the weapons and abilities you may have purchased or upgraded for them.
I’m not an avid shooter player, or someone who usually finishes horror games – but I kept coming back to Hunt: Showdown. Not because I was very good at it, but because each time I loaded into the swamp I had a different, heartpounding adventure. This game really is rewarding to people who invest their time into it, and it provided a multiplayer survival-horror zombie shooter battle royale experience unlike any other game I’ve played. Hunt: Showdown is singularly unique, exceptionally well made, and an absolutely terrifying blast that I can’t recommend strongly enough to anyone who may have grown bored of the standard battle royale.
Score: 9/10
Check Out the Hunt: Showdown Legends of The Bayou DLC Trailer:
For more information, please visit here: https://www.huntshowdown.com.
Hunt: Showdown is available for $39.99 for PC via Steam.
Steam Review
I'm a huge nerd and PC gamer. I have my own rig and recording set up, and while I'm mostly a fan of RPG's like Fallout: New Vegas and the Witcher 3, I also play RTS's, shooters, narrative games, etc.
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