Hunted: The Demon's Forge Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on June 6th, 2011

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Hunted is a pretty decent game at its core, and the mix of fighting styles works better than one would expect, especially from a company that has never been known for action games and has spent over half a decade working on very small titles. While there's a definite lack of polish (for instance, players can perform executions on weakened enemies, but the animations never sync up properly), The Demon's Forge is a fun ride with combat that mostly remains quite tight.

However, Hunted is let down by the fact that it consistently reinforces one's belief that it could have been so much more. The bare bones approach to storytelling and character development is surprising, when a little more depth could have made this game a real keeper. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the boss fights, most of which are built up as large, epic encounters, but end up as rather short, underwhelming, unchallenging fights. Every time Hunted threatens to make a leap from decent to great, it seems to sink back to complacency, afraid to risk aiming above its station.

Unfortunatley, the first portion of the game is an absolute disaster. The environments funnel you down narrow walkways, the characters feel like two-dimensional fantasy clichés, and the story is completely uninteresting. But the worst offender of all is the control scheme.

When you first start playing Hunted, the controls are baffling. Sure, there's a tutorial to show you the nuts and bolts, but it doesn't tell you how to put up with the counter-intuitive control scheme or the inconsistent environmental interactions.

For example, the button you use to toss health pots to your partner is the same button you use to finish off an enemy with a quick-time event. A friend and I actually ended up failing a mission because I hit the circle button to toss him a heal pot and instead finished off a wounded goblin with an elaborate set of moves. All the while, on the screen was a message that told me to hit circle to heal my partner. On top of that, I've had instances in which I got stuck in an endless arrow-firing loop, which could only be ended by either running out of arrows or mashing a bunch of buttons until my character finally stopped shooting.

Though a fun game, unfortunately Hunted isn't without its issues. The graphics certainly falter a little, while the environments are great with war ridden cities, dungeons covered in spiders webs and awesome looking enemies, our mercs Caddoc and E'lara and a few other characters don't quite work, with jaggie outlines and a lot of texture overlapping, spoiling the overall look. Another issue is the lip syncing, maybe playing L.A Noire spoiled us, but it's just so unrealistic and very disappointing. There are a couple of other minor issues too, the sound is severely lacking in some areas, causing a disappointing lack of atmosphere, while the distance in between checkpoints means that you may get frustrated when your character is killed and you have to replay certain areas again.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge is a solid online co-op title. When everything is working right, it's a very entertaining game with solid length and replayability. Caddoc and E'lara can be funny, but they begin to hit a nerve after a while. It's a very accessible action game with only a shadow of role playing elements. The gameplay may get a little repetitive for some gamers, but if you like a hack and slash grind, there's plenty of it here. Split screen is hard to handle, unless you want get up close and personal with your display. Single player gamers can find better offerings elsewhere.

Not that it's all bad: There's a comfort-food quality to the simple hacking and slashing. And a fellow human subbing in for the AI helps stave off diminishing returns and frustration that much longer. For example, one puzzle can only be solved by having E'Lara set her arrows on fire with a blue flame. In single-player, you have to take control of Caddoc, have him command E'Lara to use the flame, then tell her where to shoot. For some reason, you can't simply use the flame while controlling E'Lara, though a second player can. That's essentially the problem with Hunted in general: It thinks ham-fisted cooperation is indistinguishable from effortless cooperation. Any two people playing together know better.

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