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For many, online games serve much more as interactive chat rooms than they do exclusively gaming experiences.
People jump on to Forza Horizon for a few hours with their friends in order to drive around mindlessly and catch up on the day. In the pandemic era, games have become more social space than ever, and as such, groups are constantly looking for that next game that will grab their attention, and keep everyone invested.
In the last year, plenty of co-op focussed games have been released, and while they may have scratched that itch for a short time, they’re lacking the tactical depth of something that’s going to hold the attention span of your group for a long period of time. Something that’s going to inspire stories that are told in group chats for years after they happen. Enter Hunt: Showdown.
In Hunt: Showdown, games see you and up to two friends enter a map, in order to hunt down a truly horrifying boss and claim your prize. On your way, you’ll encounter any number of unfriendly beings throughout the maps, with the most dangerous among them being enemy players. Make it out alive and you’ll earn experience which translates into powerful traits for your next match.
The tension of just making it out by the skin of your teeth with your best character is really hard to replicate in other games. That’s because if you don’t make it out of a level, your character is lost forever. Gone. All that XP, all that work, gone. There are some permanent unlocks, like certain weapons you can still buy, but all those traits you’ve accrued are washed away.
While this may sound hardcore, the game actually provides a great balance and an inviting atmosphere for new players.
While it can initially seem crazy when you lose a character, it actually makes it fairly easy to get a new player in your gaming group into the game, as it’s designed to be enjoyable even if everyone’s coming in with nothing. It’s not one of the many service games that expects you to have been playing it as a full-time job for months if you want even the slightest enjoyment out of it.
Another element of Hunt: Showdown that makes it unique is the game’s focus on stealth. Once you start getting to the higher levels and dealing with harsher enemy threats, learning to stealth your way around maps is a great option. Coordinating your whole group to be stealthy together is incredibly rewarding, and it’s the kind of thing you can start working on right from the start of the game.
This makes the inclusion of binaural sound design even more important and interesting: everything in the game makes a noise, which can help you to pinpoint other teams, so it will always play a role in your tactical decision-making.
Hunt: Showdown doesn’t want you to absolutely sprint through the maps at top speed and this emphasis on stealth, and the threat that enemies pose, is all part of that. It’s a genuine unique mix of mechanics, that are a lot of fun to master, however even when you’re not the greatest player in the world, there’s a huge amount of enjoyment to be had.
The gunplay is a great change of pace, and really make your group think about encounters instead of just running towards them headfirst and instantly dying. If you’re clever about it, and subtle enough, you can follow an enemy team as they get into trouble, and with a couple of well-placed bullets, wipe them out and take all of your loot. The joy of knowing that you’ve just inspired a massive argument in the opposing team’s group chat is unmatched.
Once you’ve jumped in, Hunt: Showdown can quickly become an incredibly rewarding game that your gaming group will love. It can be intense, and the scope and opportunities for teamwork in the game go far beyond what’s offered by other games in similar genres.
There will be a bit of heartbreak that first time you lose a high-level character, but every time you start again, you’re going in with the skill and knowledge of the last 10 characters. It also means that you actually care about every game, and you need to concentrate or all your hard work can quickly vanish if you’re not paying attention.
For a genre that’s usually about the gameplay that you can essentially ignore while you chat, Hunt: Showdown makes the gameplay tangibly important and incredibly rewarding.
Even if no one in your group has played it, you’ll be able to jump in and have a good time. Sure, it might be a while before you successfully take out the bounty and finish a level without a horde of enemies, both AI and human, chasing you down, but the journey to becoming good at the game is incredibly fun.
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