Hunter: The Reckoning - Early Impressions

[Prince Planet]

With all of the E3 buzz going on (my office is 2 blocks from the Convention Center), I felt obliged to buy a new game, and I settled on Hunter:TR for the Box. I've played it for an hour or so last night, but here are my initial impressions.

Background: It's based on the White Wolf pen and paper game. I haven't played a pen and paper game in more than 20 years, but I've heard that the game is marginally faithful to the White Wolf/Hunter universe. In short, you pick one of 4 "Hunters", each with slightly varying abilities, and "defend"/"seek vengeance"/ generally kill kill kill all of the evil, undead baddies that have taken over your poor little town.

Graphics: Polished. You won't be blown away by any means, but it's all very clean; nice textures, reflections off waxed floors and puddles of water, slick fire effects, explosions, bullet casings flying, etc. The game is played in a 3D "not quite overhead" view, in a cross between "Loaded" and "Cannon Spike". You can zoom the view in an out -- up close you can see nice detail, but you have a very limited view. Most of the time, you need the camera to be pulled back so you can see what it going on (and A LOT is going on). This is especially true in multiplayer (see below).

Control: Decent. Similar in some ways to Cannon Spike. You move with the Left stick, and aim your weapon independently with the Right stick. Very nice, especially with ranged weapons (e.g., cross-bow, shotguns, machine guns, pistols, flamethrowers, etc.). Buttons cycle through the various weapon (Basic, Special, and Wards (yep, magic)). Right Trigger attacks/fires, and Left Trigger jumps. Strafing is easily accomplished, and ranged attacks are essentially auto-aimed. The characters' movements are a little choppy (no pun intended), but it's all fairly smooth, fast-action oriented.

Gameplay: Yes, each character has his/her own story; yes, there are tasks to accomplish in the 20+ stages. But, essentially, it's kill, kill kill. It's a frenetic bloodbath. Period. Each character has a short-ranged weapon (double daggers, sword, axe, etc.) and you slice and dice. Heads, arms, and legs are soon separated from zombie torsos, with copious amounts of blood. Each character has multiple close-range combos for laying into the flood of monsters. Run into a pack of zombies? Like 20 of them? (and this happens more or less constantly). Whip out your shot gun, deal death from afar, and then move in to dismember them. It's pretty crazy seeing 20+ zombies and other creatures swarming you in various stages of dismemberment (i.e, headless and even torso-less bodies still chasing after you). By the way, no slow-down detected thus far. Oh yeah, there are boss battles as well.

Sound: Zombie/monster groans; the "shing" of your sword coming out of its sheath; the reports from constant gunfire; booming explosions, and crackling flames. All of the time. I think there's even some music in the backgound, but I barely noticed.

Multiplayer: Folks, this is where the game is at. Solo is fine, but it's meant for 4-player simultaneous play. I played the 2-player last night, and it's pretty damn fun. You share the screen, so like the old days, you have to move together in order to get the screen scrolling in the direction you want to move. Basically, it's you and 3 friends laughing and screaming while shooting, burning, and hacking the (un)living sh*t out of endless swarms of creatures, with (seemingly) no slow down.

That's it for now. There's a TON that I haven't seen (e.g., boss battles, power-ups, etc.), but for now, it looks like a solid hack and slash game, and the fun is greatly magnified if you're lucky enough to have some friends. I'm not disappointed.

[Despair]

Good impressions I also picked the game up yesterday, and posted my own impressions in other Hunter thread.

This game is pretty much beat-them-up at heart, and it definately needs to be played in multiplayer mode for greater fun

[Prince Planet]

Sorry about that Despair. I thought I checked your thread for impressions, and didn't see any. Anyway, I'm looking forward to spending a bit more quality multiplayer time with Hunter over the weekend. Enjoy.