Hunt: Showdown is a very different multiplayer FPS experience. It brings a new twist to the PvE and PvP models of its peers, opting instead to blend the different multiplayer genres together for a unique feel. While it involves guns, looting, and extraction, it’s a lot more flexible than you might think. Regardless of your game level and style, you can earn XP and take part in monster hunting operations. There are clues to find, enemy teams to outsmart, and tactics to plan and execute with your friends. Hunt: Showdown’s maps are mini sandboxes filled with monsters and explorable environments that combine to create memorable player-crafted stories.
have a clue
The main goal when entering a Hunt: Showdown match is to track down targets, kill them, and clear the siege with a bounty, either solo, as a duo or trio. How you do this is up to you, there are a few side activities you can do on your way to the boss. Hunt: Showdown’s map is compact, but depending on the map you load, it’s filled with ruined buildings, misty swamps, and other points of interest. Hidden on each map are one or two of the four boss monsters chosen in the game, each of which defends itself differently. Butchers will throw firebombs, while other monsters will be very attentive to any noise you make as you kill.
To track down the boss, you need to collect clues using the Eye of Darkness. Having one member of the team handle this is usually great as they guide the player from point to point, slowly shrinking the final position. As you go from buildings to swamps and back, you’ll slowly dispatch monsters and gain honors, which will reward bonuses when you’re done. Whether you’re taking out other players, gathering information on bosses, or dodging and using traps, you’ll be rewarded for your specific playstyle.
Participation Rules
While stealth is very advantageous in Hunt: Showdown, there’s a lot more to players who just want to run and shoot through monsters. Loud noises will alert other players to your approximate location due to the binaural sound design, but some may want to take advantage of this, setting up traps and line-of-sight to knock enemies back as they run. Those who want to play more tactically and coordinate with friends will find solace in the melee weapons scattered around each map. These kill enemies (relatively) quietly, allowing you to explore without alerting other players. Every team member has something to offer during the hunt, whether they’re a top marksman or better at exploration and stealth.
It’s these smaller decisions that really start to differentiate Hunt: Showdown from other online shooters. Even a fairly standard run, from respawns to boss fights, feels unique considering the sheer number of options at your disposal. Sometimes you accidentally trigger a flock of birds, sending enemies pouring in from the woods. Your teammates may mistakenly throw Molotov cocktails and set your building on fire. Bite-sized stories like this punctuate each game in a way that truly builds on the core FPS experience.
Let us show you the ropes
With so many aspects at play in each round of Hunt: Showdown, it’s great that the game offers an in-depth tutorial that players can use to master the basics. The tutorial offers three difficulties, slowly adding more complex systems and harder enemies. The characters you level up and the bonuses you earn during onboarding are carried over to the main game, meaning your early investment of time pays off. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you’re free to approach each goal in any way you want. You can freely choose maps and modes to create your own story.
One of the most important things you learn in the introductory tutorial is whether to fight or not. Once you get close to the boss, you’ll see a flashing icon in the corner of the screen, either white or red. White means that there are no other players around to fight the boss, allowing you to completely clear the target. The red icon means you need to watch out for other players, but it’s also a great opportunity to set traps and ambush as you swoosh to finish bosses after the enemy team’s health drops. As each game develops, you can decide how to progress. Proceed with caution and wait for enemies to attack each other, or set up decoys and traps and ambush to get better gear early. this is your choice.
Banishing Skills
While the main goal of Hunt: Showdown is to eliminate targets and evacuate with bounties, there are many different options when it comes to choosing to evacuate. You can spend time earning accolades, finding points of interest and clues, and extracting them before being killed by enemy players. You’ll still gain XP by doing this, and sometimes it’s wiser to cut your losses and run away. If you do manage to defeat the boss, you’ll need to complete the eviction to get the bounty token. Doing this will remind the player where you are, so you’ll want to get your team ready and cover all exits before continuing. Sometimes luring enemies into danger this way can pay off handsomely, as you can use the boss’s body to set traps, earning yourself kills and more honor in the process. Once the boss is banished and you pick up the bounty token, all remaining players will be able to see your location on the map, so you’ll also want to keep that in mind before heading to the extraction point. It’s this variety and player-focused storytelling that really shines in Hunter: Showdown. It gives players the option to create their own version of each map’s main settings, and makes every advance and every retreat feel unique.
Hunt: Showdown brings a helpful twist to familiar multiplayer mechanics. It balances variety and player choice with great tutorials and a simple control scheme that makes a variety of individual play styles feasible. By giving players other ways to interact with the world besides shooting, Hunt: Showdown is a more approachable beast than it could have in any of its rights. With exploration, scrutiny for clues, and hack and slash action, Hunt: Showdown is a versatile FPS that rewards experimentation. As long as you do the extraction, that’s it.
Hunt: Showdown is available now on Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series consoles, PS4 and PS5.
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