Hunted: The Demon's Forge Reviews
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GamePro, 3/5.
But I digress. Hunted does feature RPG elements, such as ability progression and unlocking (usually by finding crap that the designers stowed in various semi-secret places in the game world), but it doesn't have some other RPG elements like...inventory. Bizarrely, while the game's enemies drop all sorts of weapons and shields and armor and stuff, you can only equip one of each at a time, and you can't carry any extra loot. In a way, I suppose, this is good for weaning gamers off of our packrat-like instincts, but it is also incredibly frustrating, because Hunted doesn't do a bang-up job of letting you know how useful a particular new item is gonna be in the upcoming struggle. I'm never sure if I should stick with the bow I have, or pick up this new one that's more effective only against certain types of enemies.
Another thing the game doesn't communicate well is why in the hell we should care about these characters or their quest to gain riches by murdering skeletons with extreme prejudice. The dialogue and plot are more clumsily written than the lyrics to a Christian rap song, which makes it hard to get involved in the tasks at hand. When you don't care, you don't care, ya know?
The Escapist, 3.5/5.
Hunted rewards exploring the gorgeously rendered levels in several ways, not the least of which is listening to Deathstone monologues give hints on enemy weaknesses and treasure locations. Hidden areas abound, and I found myself running around after each fight to collect mana and health potions, and the crystals needed to upgrade spells. The system is a little sparse, as there are 6 skills to improve but you can only map 4 of them to use at a time. The smart player will realize that spending crystals is only useful up to a point, as the best powers require a huge number of crystals to unlock. You're encouraged to save crystals for use when the more devastating spells "unlock in Chapter Five." I can see piling up shards being useful if you're hopping in and out coop matches, but the single-player progression doesn't provide any meaningful choice. In a game like Hunted, I'd love to see a more robust leveling system that would allow you to specialize your skills to your play style.
There's a weird alternate leveling system that unlocks abilities through just playing the game. Revive your comrade enough times, and you gain more slots for resurrection potions. Find enough gold, and you unlock ... something, I was never really clear on what. All this does is provide the illusion of a dungeon crawl without any substance. Why collect gold if there is nothing to spend it on? I don't think a Diablo-style inventory system would work, but only carrying one weapon at a time was annoying until I arbitrarily unlocked a second slot at some point.
EDGE, 6/10.
Like a horse swishing its tail with futile persistence, Hunted never manages to rid itself of bugs. If you're standing over a weapon drop when your partner triggers a cutscene, the heads-up weapon comparison hovers clumsily above as it plays out. Your character occasionally refuses to scoop up clearly visible health potions. And close-range enemies neatly lined up in your aiming reticule will fail to register your shots with annoying regularity. Despite the cloud of bugs pestering its flanks, the grafted DNA in its cells and co-op play's baffling lack of drop-in/drop-out functionality, Hunted delivers an improbably fun gallop.
Den of Geek, 2/5.
One of Hunted's main problems, aside from occasional bugs and glitchy online play, is that it's just so generic. The world and characters are instantly forgettable, including the two protagonists, who are not only cookie cutter RPG stereotypes, but have little in the way of likable personality.
The co-op features, what there are of them, anyway, are so lean and pointless, they amount to little more than basic puzzle solving, and the ridiculous need to team up to perform simple tasks like opening doors or crawling through tight spaces just gets in the way much of the time. It amounts to a wasted opportunity to create the mixture of Gears and RPG gameplay and feels much more Quantum Theory than Epic's series, and the underlying gameplay is average at best.
Video Game Writers, 2.5/5.
And now, a word about checkpoints. I am, generally, okay with the checkpoint system. Many games have removed the save feature in the sense of the game saying (I'll go ahead and handle the saves, you worry about the fighting and the puzzling.) When this works, it is a perfectly acceptable solution. However, in this game, the check point system was not always clear (must have been in the tutorial), and on occasion we would die and find ourselves having to replay large areas of content. Because of this lack of clear save and checkpoint, it makes it nigh impossible to know where you're leaving off when you quit for the night, or if your death will set you back five or forty-five minutes. In addition, many of these save points are before an upgrade point, and a boss fight. Which means . I hope you enjoy the upgrade menu, cause you're going to see it more than once.
