...but, as many know, that really isn't saying a whole lot.
For those unfamiliar with the Gauntlet series, Hunter follows a very simple formula:
A. 1 to 4 players play confined within a single screen (can't go too far from your friends)
B. Get from one side of a level while hacking your way through innumerable hoards of enemies.
Thats about it. Well...on to the nitty gritty details.
Nice Visuals
Normally, the graphic department is rarely skimped on when developing for next generation consoles. Unfortunately, graphics sell, not gameplay. No one would have purchased Final Fantasy X if it looked like 6 or Halo if it looked like Doom. Anyway, Hunter is really damned good to look at, good indeed. Enemies are well modeled and come in packs of, oh, 50. Included with 4 character models and a variety of well textured and fairly large arenas to run around in, like a city street or prison compound, it is a marvel the system can keep that all going without a single hiccup. Some of the effects could have used some work, particularly the Judge's blue energy attack thing. Didn't light up the area well and didn't cast shadows.
Of course, there is another flaw here, it is hard to distinguish your character on the screen, especially with the hoards of enemies, and it is easy to lose track of yourself in the mess. Would have been nice to include a little flashing icon over the character's head. System overload here.
Sounds Good To Me
The sounds in the game are sparse, but they sound good none the less. Voice acting is, well, marginal at best, but nothing so horrible you would grope wildly for the mute button. Gunshots, things dying, and spell effects are all done nicely.
Stiff Controls
The worst thing your game can have as a negative happens to be stiff, unresponsive controls. It can have the greatest premise, graphics, sounds, and story in the entire world, but it is the controller that links your will into that world. If what the character on the screen is not the same as what you wanted it to do, then the life and fun is immediately sucked out. Movement is very difficult. Hunter apparently uses the 8 point motion method. You got your for main directions, up, down, left, right, and you also have the halfway points between them. Apparently, the developers left out the idea of full range of motion. This makes movement particularly troublesome.
It also effects your combat ability. There is a slight delay from when you push the attack button from when the character actually attacks. This is deadly, especially against the tough and fast bosses that don't allow for time to position, aim, and fire. It doesn't help that there is a confusing and difficult to use aiming while moving method, turn the left analog stick to aim while using the right to move. Then there is the problem with melee attacks. When performing combos, you have to rapidly tap the attack button, the right trigger. If you do not COMPLETELY release the trigger button before your next swipe, your character locks up in the followthrough animation and doesn't attack anymore. It would have been nice to include a "hold down" option where you could just hold down the attack button and have the character just wail away. THEN if you DO manage to get a combo off, make sure you don't do the full combo, it has the awful problem of turning you around to face the other direction, even if there isn't an enemy there to attack. So, after turning around with the attack, you have to go through the work of repositioning yourself BACK to the enemy you were fighting just to repeat it again if you manage to hit the attack button one too many times.
You Call That A Story?
Four people are sitting around watching an execution. One is a police officer who works at the prison, one is a girl who is witnessing it because she knew the victim, one is a priest for spiritual support, and the last is a biker who managed to get matinee prices for the evening execution. Not really on the biker, his presence is illogical at best, and priests never watch executions.
So, anyway, the guy fries, and instead of dying, he wakes up an evil living in the prison, something about angry spirits who were executed before, wonder why they are angry. So, the spirits awake, and the four people are the only ones that can see them, which creates the question if they are schitzophrenics or if it is all actually real. Anyway, they manage to beat the evil and seal up the prison.
Years later, a group, large group, of teens decide it is a good idea to break in to the prison to have their rave. Apparently a prison that has lurking within a well known evil entity, one that is looking to eat your skin off at a moments notice, is a good place to hold a huge party with thumping bass, which is probably not good for the structure of a run down, condemned building where you have an equal chance of getting eaten by ancient spirits as being crushed by falling walls. Yep, kids chose the craziest places to hold their parties.
So, the spirits were taking their nice naps when the noisy neighbor kids turned on their music. The spirits, thinking the music too loud to sleep, and angred by its horrible tunes, decided the best course of action to take against the stupid children who wandered into a condemned, evil prison to play horrible music - send out large monsters to eat them and spirit things to turn them into drooling zombies. Music would have done it by itself, but guess the spirits were feeling nice.
Then the kids break back OUT of the prison, have the time to lock it up (you will find out if you do happen to play it) on their way out, and begin terrorizing the town. Of course, normal people cannot see them as evil flesh eating zombies, but think of them simply as a spontaneous mob rioting in the streets. The four people who sealed up the evil, being disturbed at dinner, found out about it and came in to eradicate it once and for all.
Yep, stock save the people, become the hero story. You will find massive plot holes, created by the plot moth, throghout the game (like why leave a little girl, one that just saw here parents eaten by her mutant teddy bear, alone in a church surrounded by zombies and gargoyles?).
YAAAAWN!
The game becomes highly monotonous. Every level is the same. Send in hundreds of zombie creatures, and a sprinkling of gargoyles and ghost things you have to wade through hacking or shooting. Every level, same basic creatures, few additions later on. Then you get your usual boss fight. Overly hard, fast, with an arsenal that can wipe the floor with you in seconds.
Poor Multiplayer
Multiplay mode, the very heart and soul of this sort of game, purely and truly sucks. The main suck factor happens to be the fact that you all share a single life pool. One person dies, it comes out of everyone's total. So, if you have an idiot playing with you, then kiss goodbye any chances of actually beating the game. Combine that with having to get some teamwork going on the screen when if one guy stands behind, and another wants to move ahead, no one goes anywhere, leaving you just out of reach of an enemy that proceeds to kill you and eat your skin.
It also becomes arduous during boss battles where you end up running into your friend and shooting him (bullets won't harm them in certain modes, but are still stopped), thereby wasting your precious few shotgun rounds. It is boring, frustrating, and overall, just not fun to play this with 3 friends, or even 1.
Bottom Line
Don't bother. Hunter stinks both as a single player and multiplayer game. Apart from the visual and audial nature of the game, it has no real merits to bother with a rent or even a buy. My only consilation is that I got a free copy of the 1968 horror/comedy Night of the Living Dead with this, which, unlike this game, is funny-bad.
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