Hunt: Showdown
A new game preview game was launched on the Xbox over this passed weekend that I’m not too sure many people are aware of. It’s a game that was popular over the last year on PC and has finally made its way to Xbox. That game is Hunt: Showdown. This game puts a completely new spin on battle royale games. If you’re a fan of the genre, it may be something to consider picking up.
What Is The Premise of Hunt: Showdown?
Hunt: Showdown is a battle royale game that puts you in a competitive, open world where you match up against not only real players, but AI controlled monsters as well. This is a completely new spin to the battle royale genre because we don’t traditionally see AI controlled enemies throughout the map. This allows for the player to strategize in a different way than they have in previous BR games to account for enemies that, for the most part, end up getting in the way. You can use this to your advantage and do things like wait for the real players to start fighting them to attack, or you can take the AI controlled bots on yourself for some extra, end game XP that will help boost your rank.
Bosses, AI & How To Move Throughout The Game
On top of the many AI controlled monsters throughout the map that, for the most part, are easy to take down, there are also bosses that are way more difficult to kill in the map as well. You first enter into the map not having any idea where these bosses are, but you’re able to go into a night vision that shows you where clues are throughout the map. Once you find and inspect these clues, you’re making yourself one step closer to finding where the boss in located. The issue you’ll soon figure out is that these clues are also shown to the other players scattered throughout the map. These players traditionally will B line it to these clue locations because the ultimate goal is to kill these main bosses and collect the county that will drop from them. Once you collected the bounty you are to take that bounty and extract from one of the different extraction points within the map. Another issue you’ll run into is that other players will camp out these extraction points and try and steal the bounties from you. These players could of struggled finding the clues and not been around to fight the boss, or maybe their strategy was to just take the bounty from you all along – after you’ve done all the grunt work.
PVP & PVE Fights
This is a first person perspective shooter that is set in the 19th century. This means you’ll be able to customize your character with old school, 19th century weapons and consumables. These weapons are very difficult to use and make for more intriguing PvP and PvE fights. You go into each game by yourself or with a teammate. I would recommend finding a teammate to play with because you will more than likely be thrown into the game without any help if you start it up without someone in your party.
Your Life Matters
On top of all these new takes on battle royale, you have one more thing that separates this game from all the other BR games. The thing that separates this game from BR games like Fortnite, PUBG, and Apex Legends is how meaningful your life can be. In previous BR games if you died you’d end up just spectating your teammates or just enter back into the lobby just to start another game. In this game if you die, you lose everything. All the hard work ranking up your characters and all the weapons and consumables you’ve spent in game money on will disappear forever. This makes you go into each game TERRIFIED even more so than you already are while playing a horror game. The good thing about this is you have 15 levels to better understand the game and get more acclimated to how things work before this goes into effect.
Hunt: Showdown Final Thoughts
I’ve put a few hours into this game and I thoroughly enjoy it. It’s a game preview, so it’s not going to be this in depth game with tons of customization and different things to do. It’s a base model game that being tweaked slightly with every week it’s out. I wouldn’t pay $60 or more dollars for this game, but you don’t have to. The game is retailed at $29.99 right now and I believe that to be a fair price. I personally think it should be around $19.99, but what’s $10 during a time in the year when there aren’t many other games to choose from. I recommend picking it up and although the replay value seems unlikely right out the gate, I do see myself wanting to sporadically return to playing it with each update this game launches.
