At this month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, there were signs everywhere for a game called Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age that looked like it would be perfect for all the horror gamers out there. And having heard nothing about it prior to the convention, I thought E3 would be the perfect place to check it out. As I searched the show floor for this mystery booth, I came upon an oversized black box with the word HUNT written on the outside. A Crytek employee then informed me that a closed-door demo would be starting shortly and that’s when the fun started.
I entered a dimly lit room filled with various swamp sounds, with frogs, crickets and other creature noises setting the tone of the presentation. As I took my seat, I also noticed that the walls are filled with swamp-like murals too with various trees and plants attached to the walls to complete the setting which was a nice touch. Then, a ten-minute non-playable demo video for Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age started up, further explaining the game and giving us a peek at monster-hunting mayhem to come.
During the demo, we learn that Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age is a four player cooperative action RPG set in the late 1800's. Playing as a monster hunter of sorts, you are in a group of other like-minded individuals who have taken up the mission of ridding the world of supernatural creatures and revealing the truth behind their legends. In the demo, we learned that each character had a distinct accent, clothing style and steam punk style weapon load-out too.
Instead of being told from an alternate history point of view, Hunt is using going with a different approach, telling us that the events of the game really happened. By using actual regional mythologies for the different creatures in the game, that sets Hunt apart from your typical monster hunter game too, which sounded really cool. In the demo, the team was making their way though a Louisiana swamp in search of local legend, the nightmare witch. The environment was very detailed and rich with life and the team, headed for a fire off in the distance, moved through the dark foggy marsh with stealth and precision. As the hunters approach the camp, it appears that there is some kind of ritual going on. Then all hell breaks loose and there are undead minions everywhere. The team takes them on with a variety of techniques and intense melee combat approaches. Keeping true to the era and location, firearms must be reloaded often and ammunition is a scarce commodity.
A fun game mechanic in Hunt that some players might be familiar with is re-spawning in a situation that you have to be rescued from. For example, when one the hunters died, instead of just re-spawning at a pre-determined location on the map, he re-spawned hanging upside down from a tree. A teammate then had to leave the battle to come and cut down the fallen player. After the dust had settled the team scavenged the remains of the camp looking for any ammunition of supplies that they could find before moving on to the next area. Replay value also seems to be high on Crytek’s list of features for Hunt, as they have employed a special content generation system. This system uses an algorithm to build the environment and places enemies throughout the map, as opposed to having everything pre-rendered which makes the environments and scenarios identical on each play through. It’s nice to see that kind of variety included.
After watching all this awesome gameplay, I was surprised to learn that not only has Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded been in development for less than a year, but it is being offered as a free-to-play title as well. Hunt is being developed first for PC and will eventually be released on consoles at a later date. Interested gamers can sign up for the Beta right now at huntthegame.com.
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