This post is about my favorite video game called Hunt: Showdown.
Disclaimer: Image Usage. The image used in this post is not owned by the author. All credits and rights belong to Crytek. The purpose of using the picture is solely for illustrative purposes.
What is Hunt: Showdown?
Hunt: Showdown is a first-person shooter developed by Crytek, the company known for developing games such as Crysis and Far Cry. Hunt: Showdown was originally launched for PC in early access on Steam in 2018, the full release of the game followed shortly in 2019. Console port of the game for Xbox was released in 2019 as well and for PlayStation the full release of the game arrived in 2020. The game can be classified as a multiplayer extraction shooter like games such as Escape from Tarkov and Deep Rock Galactic. Hunt: Showdown also has some elements of battle royale game type but is mainly an extraction shooter.
The gameplay loop of Hunt: Showdown
The main idea of the game is rather simple. You can play as a solo, duo or trio and your objective is to locate and banish a monster to get a bounty token. After receiving the bounty token, you are supposed to reach an extraction point and leave the game. At the beginning of a match players spawn randomly across the map and have to work their way to clues scattered around the map that piece-by-piece reveal information about where the monster carrying the bounty token is located. Players can also accidentally find the monster and skip collecting the clues entirely.
The game combines elements of PvE and PvP since the map is full of NPC’s and I don’t mean voters of Joe Biden. There are several non-player-controlled enemies in the map that attack the player-controlled characters and make the mission of getting the bounty harder. These enemies vary in strength with the most common one being a weak regular zombie called grunt and the strongest being huge grotesque zombie-like creature called meathead. The PvP element comes from interaction with other players known as hunters who have the same mission as you of receiving the bounty token. By default, all the hunters are enemies with each other excluding the members of your team if you decide to play as duo or trio. There is two ways of getting the bounty token with one of them being finding and killing the monster carrying it. The other way to get the token is to kill another hunter who has it. Players can essentially choose how they want to try to get the bounty token and not going for the clues and just waiting to kill another hunter who banished the monster and got the token is perfectly viable strategy.
It is also worth mentioning that players can completely skip the process of trying to get the bounty token since there is no penalty of not getting it. At any time, players can extract out of the game without the bounty and take home all the loot they managed to gather during the match. This loot can be anything from money to weapons and explosives. Like Escape from Tarkov, before joining a game one must recruit and equip a hunter. Buying guns, explosives, medical supplies, and other consumables costs money and creates an incentive to extracting with loot or with the bounty token. Players can also loot weapons and other consumables from other hunters they have killed or found dead, and those items can be used in future matches. Every time a player dies, he loses the hunter and all the items that hunter had which also creates an incentive for trying to get the bounty token or other valuable loot during the match.
After extracting from the match or dying the player is sent back to lobby where he can see his mission summary that highlights the key factors about the played match such as amount of experience gained, number of hunters killed if any, number of monsters killed et cetera. Playing these missions gives experience that can be used to buy boosts and skills known as traits.Traits have an impact on the gameplay because they can grant a hunter with powerful ability that is of tremendous help in a match. Traits can also be found and obtained during a match.
Currently Hunt: Showdown has two game modes which are bounty hunt and soul survivor. What I described in the chapters earlier was bounty hunt. Soul survivor game mode is more like battle royale and can only be played as solo. In soul survivor one must find and close five rifts before his or her life points are depleted. After closing the fifth rift a process of transferring the points to the player begins and the player must stay alive and defend himself during the process. When the process starts, the location of the player who closed the fifth rift is revealed to all other players in the match and the player must stay within certain boundary to keep the point transfer process going. The objective is to stay alive until the process is complete and by doing that the player who closed the fifth rift is the soul survivor and wins the game. The objective for other hunters is to kill the player who closed the fifth rift to get the rift for themselves. This process repeats until the point transfer process is complete and somebody becomes the soul survivor and the game ends. Only the winner of the match gets to keep the hunter and the items he managed to collect during the match, everybody else loses their hunters and all the items gathered.
Why I like Hunt: Showdown?
Hunt: Showdown is set in late 1890’s which is unique, and I can’t think of any other similar game that is set at the same time. The 1890’s style brings nice and pleasant aesthetic to the game and in my opinion, it suits the game environment and style better than a modern setting would.
In my opinion, Hunt: Showdown achieves a perfect balance between slow paced and fast paced action which makes the game more fun, fulfilling, and meaningful. Matches where you see nobody for ten minutes and just gather resources and then run into other players and a crazy gunfight ensues are not uncommon. I think that this is an important point because it keeps the glamour and fun of fighting other players alive since it is not guaranteed to happen or doesn’t happen all the time. Also the gunplay with 1890’s weapons is a refreshing breeze in a world full of games with modern weapons.
One thing that appeals to me as well is the graphics and the visual outlook of the game. The game looks nice and is up to par with big names in the gaming industry when it comes to graphics. The sound design is also very well made. All the guns sound realistic and powerful and the monstrosities found in the map also sound convincing and good.
I think that the game offers nice amount of progression by levelling up your hunters and buying them better load outs and items. When you max out one of your hunters you can recruit a new one and start the progress again. Also, when you are new to the game you can unlock new weapons and ammo types for the weapons by playing which is nice and keeps the game interesting.
There is also something to the feel and flow of the game that I can’t really explain and must be experienced.
Conclusion
Hunt: Showdown is my favorite first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek released in 2019. The game is an extraction shooter set in late 1890’s in which players battle with monsters and other players known as hunters to get a bounty token. The game has a unique atmosphere and feel to it which is not rivaled by any other game currently in the market in my opinion. The gameplay is fun and strikes a perfect balance between slow and fast action while offering nice possibilities for progression.