Hunted: The Demon's Forge Crucible Details, Previews, and Interviews

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Written by BuckGB on April 18th, 2011

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But combat can easily get muddled. There are almost too many options in Hunted, and having access to all of these options bogs down combat. The sword-swinging male protagonist can pull a bow, and the female archer can unsheathe a blade, almost immediately removing the special differences between them that seemed to be at the heart of what Hunted is all about. There are special magical abilities to keep track of, and the ability to revive your fallen teammate, though both are contingent on having the proper potions in your inventory. And then there are the shared cooperative tasks the two characters regularly take part in.

It's these shared tasks that started to make me doubt just how well thought-out Hunted: The Demon's Forge actually is. It's not that Hunted isn't a game worthy of cooperative gameplay, but rather that many examples of the cooperative gameplay seemed forced, unnecessary and inconsistent. Instead of just letting two players move through the game together without having to try to explain both characters' presence via the gameplay, Hunted has many examples where one player must wait for his the other player in order to accomplish some sort of task. Unfortunately, these tasks don't necessarily seem to be of the two-player variety, and their forced nature quickly takes away from the experience.

After my play session with the game, I checked out Crucible. It starts you off with a choice of the type of arena you want for your dungeon's setting. Next, it's time to fill it up. You receive three waves of foes to determine. You can fill them with monsters of varying strengths and numbers, all of your choosing. For my dungeon, I filled it with a wave of lower-level monsters (spiders and skeletons), a second wave of stronger monsters, and finally, a wave of boss-level creatures.

You can also set player handicaps, such as limiting the sort of weapons the player can use.

Within each dungeon you'll be able to create a series of interconnected arenas, customizing everything from the weapons loadout to variables like gravity, spawned enemies, and more.

I had a chance to hop into the creator for a bit, and was easily and quickly able to produce a dungeon with no experience with the editor. It's simple enough that anyone can pick it up (you can even randomize an entire dungeon at the press of a button), but seems to have enough depth to allow for creation of some interesting crawls.

(All of the skills were designed with co-op in mind,) Clayman continued. (Caddoc has this one skill where he will lift enemies up on the air and he will drop them, and it will do damage. But what he is really doing is lifting them up as targets for E'lara. E'lara has a freeze arrow she can advance, and it's great because you can shoot the freeze arrow and it will do damage. But what she is really doing is giving Caddoc a chance to close the gap and charge enemies, because he is better at dashing in at close range. There isn't anything you can't do alone, but if you want to be very successful, you need to work with your partner.)

Clayman also dropped a new detail about a substance called Sleg, which was described as liquid mercury that makes you near invincible. Sleg has been used in the world of Hunted to deform enemies and enslave innocents, but both Caddoc and E'lara can use it to augment their abilities in difficult sections of the game. Clayman posed a question will you truly work with your partner to best difficult scenarios, or will you take the easy way out? Evidently yielding to Sleg's siren call will have far reaching consequences in the game.

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