Hunted: The Demon's Forge Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on June 4th, 2011

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It's a shame that this cooperative dynamic breaks down when you're paired up with the computer, though I will admit that cyber-Caddoc did save my bacon on a number of occasions (including a near death during the final boss). But for those of you rocking out with this adventure solo, you're missing out on a lot of what makes Hunted fun. The A.I. partner just isn't good enough to make a suitable replacement for another player. You might be stuck with it, too, because the current online communities seem limited. I was able to find random partners on the PS3 and 360 versions, but nothing on the PC.

For a game built around cooperative play, Hunted lacks a number of features I would have thought obvious. There's no drop-in, drop-out options, which means every multiplayer session has to be intentional and a friend can't join in mid-quest. Also odd are the character-changing obelisks that must be used if you want to switch your hero during a session. These are set throughout each chapter in the campaign. As a mostly solo player, I would have loved to hop back and forth between the characters to set up better combo attacks.

There are other things too, like the lack of a map and a poor inventory system, but they're not as critical to the experience. All you need to know is that for every time Hunted does something right, chances are something goes wrong elsewhere. Poor AI, environmental glitches, and a host of other nasty business interfere with an otherwise enjoyable quest.

You stumble upon plenty of random equipment on your adventure, though looting isn't Hunted's best feature. You find equipment on the ground or smash weapon racks, but the loot that falls from a rack is only for the character who smashes it. Most of the time, what falls is useless, making you wonder whether the team might have earned something more valuable had the other player smashed it instead. You might also be annoyed by the lack of a damage-per-second stat on weapons. There are slow, medium, and fast bows, for example, but the base damage stats don't help you compare different types. This is a small gripe, but it is one of many senseless, clumsy elements that crop up time and again in Hunted. A list of such oversights could continue for pages. You automatically pick up potions by walking over them, but to collect gold, you have to press a button. Why not have you collect it automatically as you do other items? You can perform finishing kill moves at random times, and these slow-motion brutalities look cinematic enough. But performing one means leaving your partner without assistance for several crucial seconds. Sure, you don't have to perform the action if you don't want to--but the game encourages you to do so. It feels as though Hunted's creators chose to implement the mechanic because it looks cool, and because all the popular games do it, rather than because it belongs. In actuality, it doesn't belong: it interferes.

The spell effects are among the visual high points, though that's largely a function of how drab the rest of the game is. I don't expect to visit well-lit catacombs or monster lairs overflowing with color, but Hunted overdoses on earth tones. Graphical glitches are also commonplace. Some don't do much aside from pulling you out of the experience, such as enemies floating in the air after dying or the dramatic bow finishing move freaking out at close range. Others are more troublesome. When I cleaned up loot from most major battles, items were almost always lurking beneath the ground beyond my reach. I knew they were there, thanks to the telltale shimmer, but I couldn't pick them up. Those missed potions and elixirs can be critical, since you won't encounter any stores to replenish your supplies.

Aside from working together in combat, each character has special abilities that are useful in solving the game's puzzles. Caddoc can put his back into pushing heavy blocks, and E'lara can light torches with her arrows. There are a fair amount of optional side quests and places to explore off the critical path, though I quickly grew tired of them. Nearly every puzzle revolves around lighting fires or stepping on switches simultaneously. The characters themselves are keenly aware of this repetition as well, cracking jokes like (Haven't we done this before?) Yes, you have, and you're not the only folks who noticed. Joking about it doesn't make it tolerable.

Despite adding a bit more punch later on, though, Hunted's story and events fail to make much of an impression. Caddoc and E'lara's self-serving attitudes and grating quips make them unlikeable and unappealing characters, and the spotty storytelling failed to engage me until near the end of the journey. Moreover, missions fall into routine far too quickly and utilize a slim number of enemy types, with few surprises along the way. What caught me off-guard were the recurring visual hitches and occasional bursts of slowdown, which frustratingly complement the moments of inelegant design -- notably, having to watch the heroes slowly saunter through every tight gap and crevice via dull cut-scenes.

Hunted adds one little bonus morsel in the form of the Crucible mode, which lets you create and share survival challenges (much like the Trials of St. Lucia downloadable content for Dante's Inferno). While solidly executed, this idea of slicing through further groups of familiar opponents with even less narrative motivation just didn't offer much appeal after I'd wrapped up the one-note campaign. Whether you see it as a fantasy-slanted Gears homage or a punched-up and streamlined dungeon-crawler, the end result is roughly the same: Hunted is an adequate diversion for co-op aficionados, but little more.

Hunted's big failing stems less from what it brings to the table as what it leaves in Diablo's bat-infested cellar. The level editor packs each and every one of the campaign's big tricks into one tidy grid-based package, but it lacks the single player's beguiling sense of mystery. Though tricky to implement, some sort of random environment generator a la the roguelike would have taken up the slack nicely (you can, to be fair, randomise the content of Crucible levels, just not the precise terrain layout). In a game which derives such lingering thrills from the act of rounding a shadowy corner (and butchering whatever lies beyond), it's a shame to run out of things to discover.

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