Hunt: Showdown
Hunt: Showdown is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by Crytek. It was launched on Steam in early access on 22 February 2018, and for Xbox Game Preview on 29 May 2019. The full release of the game launched on 27 August 2019 for Microsoft Windows, it was also released on Xbox One on 19 September 2019 and PlayStation 4 on 18 February 2020. In the game, the player assumes the role of a bounty hunter who must kill a mythical monster in order to claim the bounty and survive long enough to reach an exfiltration point.
Hunt: Showdown was originally in development at Crytek USA, who wished to create a spiritual successor to Darksiders—a video game series developed by their predecessor, Vigil Games—under the title Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age. It was envisioned to be a cooperative multiplayer game. After the initial announcement in June 2014, Crytek USA was shut down due to financial issues, and the development was brought to the Crytek headquarters in Germany. The game, under the new title Hunt: Showdown, was re-announced in May 2017 and became a competitive multiplayer game in which players need to combat other players and enemies controlled by artificial intelligence in a large map that resembles an open world. The game received generally positive reviews upon release and was praised for its innovative gameplay loop.
You and your partner are members of a secret hunting society that tracks and kills creatures. The bounties are high, but so are the risks. The smallest mistake will cost you everything—your bounty, your gear, your life, and your very soul. Some hunt for wealth, some for power. Some hunt to protect others, some hunt for glory. You must track your quarry through a dark and treacherous world. Winner takes all. Fail, and go straight to hell.
Hunt: Showdown is a multiplayer first-person shooter with two gameplay modes. In “Bounty Hunt”, the player plays as a bounty hunter who hunts down one or two of the games 4 bosses to claim a bounty. Players can work on their own or with up to two other players to find clues about the monster’s location in two maps. Each map function as a medium-sized open world filled with other environmental dangers and enemies such as Grunts, Hives, or Armoreds. As the player collects more clues, the location of the monster’s lair is narrowed down. There are four monsters, including the Butcher, the Spider, the assassin, and the new boss, the Scrapbeak.. Players can use a variety of weapons ranging from shotguns to crossbows to defeat their enemies, though the amount of ammo is scarce in this game, forcing players to rely on making their shots count. They also have access to a large variety of tools such as traps and decoys. Upon killing the monster, players will collect the bounty and need to survive until they can reach one of the extraction points. The locations of these exits are randomly placed in a map. Collecting a bounty gives the player limited ability to see the approximate location of other nearby players, but also reveals the bounty-holder’s location to all other players in the in-game map. Players can steal a bounty by killing a current bounty-holder, which is a core strategic component of the game. Each match supports up to 12 players.
The game’s second mode, “Quickplay”, is a battle royale mode that lasts for 15 minutes. In each match, the player is tasked to find an energy wellspring in a map and fend off hostile attacks.
