Welcome back, Hunt: Showdown. It’s good to see you again. So, what have you been doing with yourself since 2014? Preparing to deliver the kind of undead terror-fest gamers haven’t seen for some time, by the looks of the beta.
Hunt was first introduced as Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age. The announcement was made back in June 2014, and the team at Crytek USA shared a little of their vision for the title. The concept was a spiritual successor to Darksiders, and it all sounded super promising. When the Crytek subsidiary went bust shortly afterwards, it looked as though all hope for Hunt might vanish along with it.
In May of last year, though, the game was re-announced, under the banner of Crytek proper. Now going by the name of Hunt: Showdown, the game kicked off a closed PC beta test on January 31. Man, is it a sight to behold.
As previously mentioned, Hunt was intended as a Bloodborne to Darksiders’ Dark Souls. A major player in that series’ development, David L. Adams, was head of the now-defunct Crytek USA, and was also instrumental in shaping this new title. As he told Eurogamer back in 2014, co-op action would be the crux of Hunt, as would character customisation and that trademark Darksiders touch. It’s a shooter, Jim, but not as we know it.
As fans of the series will know, Darksiders and Darksiders 2 were strictly singleplayer affairs. In the first, the player took the role of War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and in the second, we instead played as Death. There was no scope for co-op multiplayer, but the team is making up for that now by giving us a great, intense dose of just that.
As you can see from the footage (coming at us from Pc Master Race), the beta places us in a dilapidated wooden region. Our friends are close, and our enemies… well, not quite as close, but they’re much, much uglier. Darksiders’ enemy design is as beautiful and varied as it horrifying, and there’s no letting up in that regard here. It’s a brutal and visceral experience, offering grisly close-quarters combat as well as ranged gunplay.
The ability to briefly see where your enemies are coming from, found footage style, is sure to make you feel some kind of way. It’s especially immersive when coupled with the lack of a huge blinking radar map on the HUD. But hey, enough reading. Check out the footage for yourself, and get a taste of just how frightening an experience this is shaping up to be.
As GameSpot reports, there’s no sign of a release date announcement just yet, but it does seem that Hunt: Showdown is going to be a PC exclusive.
