Hunt Showdown game review

Hunt Showdown - The best of all the Fortnite and PUBG type games out there.

How many games give you nightmares after playing it for just 30 minutes?

This is a gorgeous, but incredibly tense and scary game. It must be over a year old now, but free for four days this Easter weekend, after adding lots of new better features and changes. It was free last June, then last September, and now.  If you need to compare it to something, it is sort of a PUBG game, only with much more dangerous monsters covering the map you have to avoid or work through, before fighting it out with other humans, by yourself, or in a group. And the graphics are from Crytek, who make the Far Cry and Crysis games, so this isn't cartoony graphics. It's raw horror.

This is no run and shooter, but a stealthy game. You don't hunt so much as stalk, if you want to survive.  And you can end the game by reaching an extraction point, as opposed to having to kill everybody. Also, you are competing with other players, but will likely have to join up with them to collect the Bounty required to win, that is guarded by what I'd call a Resident Evil boss battle. There are now four randomly chosen from each game.

This has an interesting setting, post US Civil War, in a Louisiana bayou filled with zombies and demons. You can dodge and hide from the slower moving zombies. But not the demonic canines. Or the zombies that send out a swarm of poisonous wasps to attack. Or the ones that throw leeches from their bodies, or even fire.

Fire in this game is amazing, both to look at and how it follows physics. If you are on fire, it spreads to the zombies who ignite each other, the grass, buildings; it even stops at water.

You have a variety of weapons, but none let you mow down even the intermediate enemies with impunity. And the more powerful weapons aren't silent, which is a big deal when trying not to be noticed by the enemy. And once you've killed the boss and are running for an escape spot, everyone else sees a guide as to where you are.

Those easily addicted to loot based games will fall hard for this. Some who love horror too. But it's fun, and that should be the main draw for everybody.

I played this on an Xbox One, as you need a really strong computer to play it with maxed out settings, and the Crytek engine works well. There is some stuttering during one boss fight with a giant spider rapidly running along the walls and ceiling at you. I'm shuddering just thinking about what that did to me the first time I saw it in the tutorial. Or really each time afterwards.

The graphics are obviously beautiful, but the sound design should also be commended. And now I'm wondering how much more terrifying the game would be if I had a great surround system set up for my console. You rattle chains and steps on leaves that crunch. You always have your ears open as much as your eyes when working your way through a heavily wooded area approaching a bounty, wondering if other players are hiding waiting for someone to come along. Scaring a bunch of crows feeding on a corpse is terrifying as everyone will turn and see them taking flight and know something just disturbed nature.

For achievement collectors, it's not too good. You should get an easy 90 or so points, just playing it while free for 2-5 hours, but after that it will take some dedication and luck if you want to steadily earn them all. You do stuff like kill a lot of monsters, complete bounties, rise in levels, etc., over all your games.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=803IUEgOBfE

Original Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH9Gm36sJng