Hunt: Showdown 1896 is a semi-sequel/reworking of the 2018 title Hunt: Showdown. Rather than release Hunt 2, the developers have been working on updating the game to take advantage of current-get hardware, dropping last-get in the process – by adding all sorts of features alongside graphical and performance improvements. The cost is that last-gen players can’t hop aboard this new iteration, but the good news is that it’s a free upgrade if they have the hardware.
Hunt then is a PvPvE game which is part monster hunter, part Battle Royale, and part extraction shooter. There’s a lot of mechanics going on here but it’s quite simple. Four teams of three start off on a large map to hunt one or two monsters. You find clues (basically checkpoints) which shrink the searching area until the monster is found, and then you kill it and perform a ritual to extract its soul (referred to as a ‘banishing’). Then you can go after the other monster, or escape. The challenge? Every team is trying to do this too, and you have a variety of zombie-type baddies also roaming the level who want a piece of you (literally). Oh, by the way, once you extract the soul of the boss monster, everyone will target you. Good luck.
What this results in is an incredibly tense and atmospheric shooter. Stealth is key – you don’t want everyone alerted to your presence, but this isn’t painful – it more comes down to not charging through a field of sleeping horses or birds, or firing non-silenced weapons willy-nilly. Set in the late 1800s, you have a good idea of what to expect here – no machine guns or bombing-run kill streaks here. It’s single-fire guns mostly, hand-to-hand combat and occasional throwables. As such it’s a different pace game, the emphasis on completing your mission whilst not being killed, and survival is up on the priority list.
Being reworked, past players may be surprised that there is only one (new) map: Mammon’s Gulch. It’s a huge combination of small residential areas, a forest and a mining town – and it looks fantastic. It suffers slightly from the visuals being ‘too good’ – ultra-realism can make it a little hard to spot things, especially if you are playing with your curtains open on a sunny day. Thankfully, reworked audio means, especially if you’re playing with headphones, you can pinpoint where enemies are coming from, and this full visual and audio experience is what makes Hunt so compelling.
The frame rate helps – sluggish on last-gen consoles, aiming and movement now feel snappy at a solid 60fps (on PS5). It holds up when things get a bit hairy too – you’re wandering about, minding your own business as a freakish demon starts howling a piercing scream, and all manner of nasties (and other players) come running as bullets and fire descend upon all. There is a decent tutorial that explains the journey of entering a level to escaping with your bounty, but nothing can quite prepare you for the full-scale hell that is bestowed upon each hunter.
Unlike most battle Royale games, you will need to select a load out before going in. Each hunter has a set of abilities that you can level up over time for increased perks – there is a permadeath element which adds to the stakes of a hunter dying in the field, but you can repurchase them. The in-game currency allows you to buy all manner of things for your hunters so going in with just a pistol is not advised as you may come up against someone with considerably more and better gear. I liked this metagame element, even though it might smell a bit of pay-to-win. Still, the reality is that all of the costs are cheap enough that the economy isn’t a pain to worry about unless you’re a reckless big spender and a terrible player.
What we have with Hunt 1896 is a superb update with a reasonable cost (or approach for previous owners) that should provide a fantastic new basis for lots of great experiences through the remainder of this console generation. The one downside of having such a similar progression on a series is that existing players who are still playing are very, very good (despite the new map) so the learning curve of a unique style of game can be a bit steeper, but it’s worth persevering with.
Reviewed on PS5