Recent reviews by albion

i came into the playtest expecting some survival slop to mess about on with friends for a couple hours and then move on, but i came out of it with one of my highest anticipated games of the year. the quality and care is obvious, the game oozes with love

the game is in early access and much of the content hasn't been added yet, but the game is still more than long enough (my playthrough was over 25 hours) and is very consistent in quality - the game doesn't feel unfinished at all until you reach the abrupt end. i would have been perfectly happy with it as a complete game, and the price is more than fair

there are a couple balance issues with the current content: guns start out useless, are very grindy to improve with, and never get more than okay, character builds barely matter and a lot of aspects of that system are poorly thought out (e.g. class meant to specialise into guns actually significantly gimps your ability to use guns), and late game there is a very easily obtained overpowered weapon that works for any build which trivialises a lot of challenges. these issues, while disappointing, don't significantly harm the gameplay experience

if you like half-life the references are really cute, if you like scp they have a bunch of those, if you like survival games i'm very sorry to hear that but they have at least finally made a good one

decent la-mulana clone with a respectable length and quality for a free game, but with frustrating bosses and desperate need of fast travel. a lot of the puzzles are actually too straight forward, and the small size of the game doesn't leave room for the 'oh ♥♥♥♥ this mattered all along' moments from la-mulana, but there are a few great ones. if you enjoy lovecraftian lore/aesthetic you'll probably get more out of it than i did. any fan of la-mulana *must* try this game

favourite moment: 'fleeting life will guide you from death'
least favourite moment: the final boss
nitpick: the whip doesn't have a back hitbox

you should play sc_tetris and bm_sts

in one update they removed every single map in favour of a new one, made the entire ui substantially worse (even ignoring how ugly and styleless it is even basic actions take several more clicks now and important information now takes up less screen space), made the game run worse and take even longer to load (this was already a really big issue), broke the queue system again, removed the menu that contained a huge amount of lore for no reason, and the very first thing that pops up when you start the game is the button to buy the battle pass

one of my favourite things about hunt was how impressively well balanced the weapons were. apart from a couple outright useless weapons there was more diversity than i thought possible, and almost everything was viable. however, every weapon added over the last year or so has either been mediocre and entirely redundant or a blatant direct upgrade to an existing weapon - did they just run out of ideas? why did they go out of their way to remove generators, a niche yet creative tool to outplay opponents? this is all to express that i've felt the change in direction for some time. this update, though, is where i feel certain - i am no longer the target audience.

update: in the months since i wrote this review, some balance issues have been addressed, the new ui has been improved - but it is still absolutely miserable to use, more new weapons have been added that still don't fit into the game's balance at all, and they just announced a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ licensed crossover hunter lol. hunt still has the core of my favourite shooter of all time, but the direction the game is heading in is clear and i will not be changing my review

update 2: i feel it would be a disservice to the reader if i did not mention that a few months after the previous update, they announced the Post Malone Event