Hunted: The Demon's Forge Previews
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You can pick up weapons and defensive armor from the dead and a handy pop-up menu will tell you its strengths or weakness relative to your current load-out. But the true story-related power-ups in this instance, a powerful axe seem to be gained as the result of more complex puzzles such as directing E'Lara to set her arrows aflame and light a series of torches sequentially from a distance. And when we say (direct,) we mean that any actions that must but can only be executed by the alternate character are triggered by directing them with a button press. Had players selected E'Lara from the beginning, they'd have been prompted to light the torches themselves. Fortunately, single-player gamers can switch between either character to change-up the gameplay experience at select waypoints, and multiplayer fans playing through a co-op adventure can opt to switch roles, as well.
Graphically, the game looks impressive. Certainly, the levels vary in color palette and design enough to keep the player engaged, but the narrow, self-directing nature of the environments in the early portions of the story keep the scope fairly limited. However, we're assured that, in the service of good looting, the landscape opens up for more branching exploration once the first few hours are complete. In the meantime, there are a handful of dynamic sequences like a sprint through a collapsing set of ruins that keep the momentum moving forward while the story beings to formulate.
And then Destroy All Fanboys! does their thing:
In co-op, you can throw healing potions at your buddy for a quick pick-me-up, but if they get downed, there's only a small window of opportunity to revive them before you fail the mission. After getting killed off a few too many times, we worked out a new strategy which was basically a mix of Caddoc zig-zagging like hell toward the ballista and E'lara distracting enemies by killing them quickly while both players kept an eye on healing each other when needed. Surprisingly, this worked amazingly well and soon, it was over and done and off to collect a hefty reward from the rich fat guy in the tower we'd just saved.
Of course, we didn't get the loot, as it was revealed that Mr. Wealthyrobes had a daughter that went missing and he just so happened to need two nearby adventurers who just saved his bacon to go look for her in the dungeon that just so happened to be below his tower. Don't you HATE it when that happens? This led to a bit of exploration and combat along with some neat puzzle-solving that involved reading tablets and lighting a series of torches with E'lara's arrows. While there's no mapping system, by clicking in the analog stick, you get a glowing light trail that points you in the direction you need to head. There was also a nice little surprise or three lurking in that dungeon, but I'd rather not spill any more beans about it here.
