Recent reviews by A gay jellyfish

I've been playing Hunt on and off for almost 5 years now, it's been a fun game to come back to every few months. The gun play is unique and fun. The characters and overall vibe of the game is something you won't find in any other shooter. Unfortunately, with this most recent update, the game is in a borderline unplayable state. I'm on an older rig, 1080 i7, and with the new engine update I get stutters during almost all actions. Darksight, a core gameplay mechanic, drops my fps to 20-40 every time I press it. Shooting a gun, the most integral part of the game, causes my frames to drop by 20 and the stutter is bad enough to make me feel motion sick after a few matches. If a computer above minimum requirements cannot keep consistent frames, then I imagine these stutters are present for a number of players.

The servers have been incredibly unstable, and while I'm sure this will be fixed within a few weeks when player retention dives off a cliff, the fact Crytek didn't anticipate this is telling.

Another thing is the UI, Crytek is clearly out of touch. Letting this UI make it to launch speaks to how little they play their own game, or test it. Every menu is nested within another menu. Actions integral to playing the game, recruiting hunters, choosing their weapons and their perks are now incredibly tedious and confusing. The traits do not have their names displayed, which for new players will be incredibly annoying. All of the menus feel convoluted, except for the bounty hunt menu. That one feels incredibly cluttered, but it at least has relevant menus accessible from it.

Overall this update, despite being very pretty on the outside, is perhaps the largest step backwards I've seen a game take in years. With the game in it's current state, I cannot recommend anyone to purchase or play this game. I will be stepping away and letting things play out, but I may not return if Crytek doesn't step up their game.

This game is fairly fleshed out, as a BR it very much so copies PUBG and builds on it. The classes are interesting and unique, though some of them lack useful skills such as Marine. Most classes have some dead skills or very situational/niche abilities. This does bring certain other classes that all around have useful perks to the front, but it's not so much so that there is a clear meta.

The gunplay is more or less PUBG in a nutshell with lower TTK. Unfortunately, since beta, TTK has been lowered to make the game more inclusive. Most of the dedicated playerbase dislikes this change, however as of yet it has not been tweaked or reverted.

The store was, on release, an atrocious mess. They have since taken the massive negative community feedback seriously. They have given us a way(at least for now?) To acquire skins for free and are working on a paid shop where the skins can be bought upfront, without any gacha or predatory schemes. As long as they follow through with this, the game will keep a positive review from me.

Overall, the game is PUBG with abilities and is a fun time. The crafting system is intuitive and fun, gun fights feel fresh and exciting every game as you are incentivized to use new weapons. There are certain guns that under perform and certain others that over perform, on average. However with the way the perks are laid out, there is a situation for every gun and it rarely feels "bad" to find a Legendary or Mythical tier weapon.


------------------------------------------------------Old Review-------------------------------------------------------
Played for around 200 hours across all betas, they gave us some basic options of clothing and when new stuff came out, they handed it to us for free. Now that early access is here and beta has ended, they ripped all of our cosmetic options out, giving us a bland shirt and shorts. Everything else is behind a pay wall, which at first doesn't seem like the worst thing, but the pay wall is predatory and incredibly expensive.

We were told by devs that the cosmetics would be "affordable". However, for the event skins, it ends up being $80-100 for a single set. But it's not an upfront payment, it's predatory gacha that is obfuscated so you have to talk to 10 people and run the numbers 3 times or more just to figure out what your odds are. Diamonds, to tickets, to tiles to temporary skins that finally turn into permanent skins when you get enough of them. It's a system that is clearly marketed towards those with gambling problems and chasing that "I hit!" feeling.

I will not support the developers as long as they use this form of monetization, I will consider changing my review if the system is looked at, though I doubt it will be.

This game had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, I think it was mostly wasted and the current community is not an enjoyable place to be.

Pros.


Visuals
It's voxel graphics are interesting and while they aren't unique, they do gave the game a bit of flavor. The maps have character and with them being procedurally generated, they don't get old as fast as some games in the genre.

Mechanics


Round to Round
The way that equipment is handled is incredibly unique and something that I wish there was more of. It makes the game more strategic, you have to have a plan and you need to account for if ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan. It makes each round have more impact on the game as a whole. Losing a key piece of equipment on round one can spiral a game from a potential victory into a sudden crushing defeat.

The map
The map is also incredible, it's entirely interactive and while the drawing feature is nothing new, being able to drag and place yourself and equipment as well as highlight key areas is very nice. All of this carries over into the game and you can see in real time when changes happen across the map.

Gunplay
So, at first I thought the gunplay was fun. It was unique and I thought "ah yeah, I'm losing gunfights sometimes because I'm just not used to it." But as I continued to play, that feeling never changed. The guns feel un-intuitive and something just feels...off? I still haven't pieced together what exactly causes this and I doubt I will as I personally won't be playing this game very much in the future. Perhaps you will enjoy the semi-unique feel of the guns. Each one does have it's own personality and feel, so that is an upside.

Cons.


Mechanics


The Round to Round
So, while the way the game handles the round to round equipment is unique, it leads to problems. If you don't have a full 5 man party, you will inevitably run into problems managing resources. Throwing 5 people who have never met before into a lobby and telling them "Hey guys! Here's your stuff, get along and share." doesn't always work out. Now for the most part, there's not too many things that can lead to catastrophic failure, but there are some. Key pieces of equipment can be wasted and lack of communication can lead to an entire game being thrown out the window because someone grabbed something that was needed later. Overall, this system isn't designed with randoms in mind, especially for the casual matches.

The map
You remember how I said that the map is fully interactive? This includes pre-round and during round, for both teams. This means that if you're an attacker, you can see defenders breaking things on the map. What this leads to is experienced players being able to piece together information on defenders strategy before even entering the building on certain maps. Meanwhile, as a defender, without any communication from your team, you can at any point check your map and see where an attacker has breached. You can see when the explosions go off etc. This also means that both teams can see when doors are opened, when bullets hit walls and any other form of interaction with the environment. While this would be cool for a spectator, it leads to too much information being available. Someone properly utilizing the map can know exactly where an attacker is pushing, where a defender has set up an ambush and when and where their teammate is getting shot from.

The community
When I picked this game up, I got it on sale for $5. At that time, the game went up to about 300 players in total playing actively for a few weeks. During that time, my friends and I played against mostly new players. We were all laughing and doing stupid stuff, having fun learning the game. After those first few weeks, the next time we got on the game it was genuinely an incredibly unfun experience. Players with 2-3k matches played and hundreds of hours in casual lobbies playing like there was money on the line. Using strategies and mechanics that the game never really explains, using all of the tools at their disposal to absolutely crush us. It wouldn't have been as bad if they were at least nice about it, but instead they gloated in the end game lobby and said "lol, we weren't even trying." We've played a few matches since and mostly run into the same thing with similar or the same people. It's simply not an enjoyable experience and I would not recommend picking up this game.

This game has sent me on a dopamine fueled, seizure inducing rampage of carnage and destruction. I've spent enough time playing roguelikes to know when I will be going on a downward spiral into a manic state where the next unlock is the only feasible thing that will keep me doing anything that could be considered "productive." I have already gone on a few absolutely adrenaline inducing, mob melting, faster than sonic on coke runs that have left me with a hole that must be filled. I need to go faster, hit harder, pray to RNGesus as I stumble across a new absolutely ludicrous way to break the game before I am brutally reminded that this game controls me, not the other way around. The first time you look through the challenges, you will be left in either utter despair or complete joy. If you seek the next masochistic grind to sate your ever changing mental state, look no further. If you wish to experience a peaceful romp through a beautiful, though slightly disturbing world, just play Engineer and let your friends do all the work.

The multiplayer left something to be desired, the item distribution was utterly despicable. It made it difficult to play with my friends who didn't have any roguelike experience. This was quickly remedied by the amazing mod community, tens of minutes of googling and opening folders later and we had a fully functioning, balanced and still utterly chaotic experience. It has left us screaming at our monitors after a potential "the run" slips through our fingers to some crazy unexpected monster that we definitely should have expected and prepared better for.

This game has a thousand ways to play it, and while it is not my place to tell you how to enjoy your experience, I'm going to do just that. There are enough absolutely mind boggling things going on to keep you entertained for hundreds to thousands of hours, even if you started the game with everything unlocked. So, if you wish to do just that, by all means, go ahead. But, you're wrong. This game, it's small intricacies and beautiful hidden secrets that tug at your mind and lead you to the ever dangerous decision...do I look just a little harder before I start the next stage? That itch drives this game into a whole new league as you enjoy it for the first time.

Good fighting style, story is enjoyable and the game is longer than most single-player games that are popular.