Here's my main takeaway from this game. It has a very compelling setting that's just got the vibes I love. A lot of the guns feel amazing to use, the gun-play is SO GOOD! Which is something to me because I feel like I have become more and more picky with my shooters. Here's a funny take, if I shoot you with a gun, you should die. I hate dumping mags, I hate bullet sponges, I hate all that RPG/shooter mechanics. When I was playing this game I was just vibing. I go out, kill shit, leave. I want to drink a fucking beer while playing this game and I’m not even the biggest beer guy. You know what? This game is basically fishing. You go out, you catch a fish or two, maybe you do it while pondering about some deeper shit happening in your life, OR perhaps you do it to not think at all. Either way it’s a slow methodical process where you get something out of it. In context of the game, maybe you get the bounty and enjoy seeing the cash/xp flow in, or you’re like damn that gun felt really good to use. Either way the game HAS a flow and it’s a nice flow to be a part of once in a while, well until..

This is the part where the fishing metaphor gets really funny. Imagine you’re fishing by yourself at your favorite lake, then a “party” of guys come in with their big fuck off boat and loud music. Now this becomes very disruptive for you, so.. What do you do? I suppose you got a few options here. You can just leave and find a different fishing spot, maybe sit around and wait for them to leave (but where's the fun in that?). OR. You can listen to the devil in your ear and try to ruin their fun. In Hunt: Showdown a lot of these options are options you can certainly do.. But I have to add an additional factor to this. Those party fishing guys? They fucking hate people that aren’t them. So you better hope they didn’t see you to begin with! Or they’re going to make your boat sink, maybe steal your fishing rod.. MAN, maybe if you’re lucky they’ll call you the f slur or something. The first two things I listed, I don’t really blame them for because the game promotes that. The bigotry, lol no people just suck sometimes. The PVP aspect of the game really complicated my feelings on the game, any of the nice things I’ve said about it just becomes more of an emotional gray to me. The gun play, remember when I said that was good? Well when you include PVP scenarios to it.. That becomes muddy because a good amount of guns become problematic. Here’s a fucking example! Shotguns! They either feel amazing or absolute dogshit! No in-between, because this game’s delay is so strange,if you’re using shotguns prepare for the inevitable trades. Which for a game that has “permanent death” as a mechanic is pretty grating! At least, I sure did when I was playing this. Also in context to PVP, there is no reason why you wouldn’t use a Winchester/ or any gun that offers multiple shots before reload. I mean fuck, all you need is a good sidearm in this game. A lot of people (including myself) were using the Uppercut then you got assholes who use the fucking Dolch. I’ve heard and seen good things about the spitfire too but whatever I digress.

Experiencing this game’s PVP really helped me come to some conclusion with the frustration I have towards its “instrumental” play style. It offers these “options” when some of these options just feel like quality of life improvements of the game, meaning, it creates this air of “why the fuck WOULDN’T you take this???”. Like serpent, why the fuck wouldn’t you take serpent??

[For additional context this is what Serpent does, quoted from the wiki. “Using Dark Sight, interact with nearby Clues, Rifts, Banishable Targets, and abandoned Bounty from a safe distance.”]

Fuckers be like “oh if everyone just had it from the start it would be too strong!!” Would it really?? Because with how I fucking see it, with how PVP is like in this game, picking up the bounty is almost ALWAYS a disadvantage. Oh you gain the ability to see other hunters around you? In a game where you almost always see better with sound? WOW! What a game changer! For how long will I get this blessing? Five seconds? That’s so lovely! What do they get? Oh they always know where I’m going? It’s basically having a fucking supernatural tracker on me? Wow. Seems like a fair deal to me! Don’t even get me started on the recently added pact that grants you the ability to self revive as a solo hunter with the Necromancer trait. Like WOW. An “OPTION” that makes the solo experience more playable!! WHY WOULDN’T YOU FUCKING TAKE THIS?

No matter the PVP “play style” it always churns into some form of online shit flinging (Like fuck it shows up during this review. Fuck Dolch users!!). A lot of people in the community hate “campers”/”snipers”, that was in some form a big discourse within the community because you had people that were taking advantage of a particular hunter skin that had a lot of dull colors that easily blend in the game’s environments. Also trappers! The toxicity within the use of traps sure is something. There was this problem of what I will describe it as “turtling” where a team would set up base at one of the settlements (probably the one with the bounty in it) and just place barb wire traps (or just barb wire) EVERYWHERE! Then hunters outside of this settlement would combat this by just waiting outside and stare at the timer going down, because eventually the team would have to make a break for it. SO these moments are just stalemates that murder any hint of fucking momentum in this game and it all comes down to a battle of pettiness. This factor of the game definitely got me to stop playing because it was this shit- every time. The simple enjoyable flow of hunt showdown was not worth having to put up with this shit. 

The only hint of feeling of “magic” with this game’s PVP is when PVP conflicts feel like an actual SHOWDOWN. You know- the title of the fucking game? Go figure. Anyways the moments of multiple hunters meeting head to head at the same settlement, having an all out gun battle, is where the drama happens! That’s the moment that gets me to understand why the developers wanted to make the game the way that it was. You really feel that set up to it, (when it happens of course.). It has the pacing of a spaghetti western (Like fistful of dollars) without any words being said. That comparison is probably why I always found myself preferring to play Hunt Showdown alone than with friends. Maybe I’m just a sucker for a good underdog story. Not that Fistful of Dollars is one but... Playing Hunt Showdown solo really feels like both to me. I guess that was and still is the main appeal to me with Hunt Showdown. It’s the stylish world and the drama it can generate with tension. It’s why at this point I find myself having the preference to watch people play it over playing it myself. The guy I usually watch play this game makes this game look so enticing. His aggression, the way he goes up against teams of two and three, using every weapon he can get his hands on that were left behind on dead hunters because the ammo being so scarce. That shit is intense and a joy to watch! 

I don’t know, man. I guess I would just enjoy this game more if it was a single-player game. If this shit was a fucked up western stalker it would be one of my favorite games ever. It’s why sometimes I just played on the Oceania servers because no one in the Oceania area uses their own servers. That’s the closest I’ve gotten to a single-player Hunt Showdown experience. It was alright. Part of me feels like I enjoyed Elden Ring so much when it released because before it came out I was getting tortured by this fucking game! So yeah at the time, it felt like a blessing that I could look like a queer, hold a huge sword, and ride a horse in a weird vast world without having to feel like an asshole. Yes, I play the souborne games with no multiplayer because that shit adds nothing to the experience I enjoy from those types of games. Anyways, I don’t regret getting into Hunt Showdown even though most of my experience with it was negative because it gave me the inspiration to begin writing my very own setting for a TRPG game. It revealed to me that I have a dream to create a world/experience similar to Hunt Showdown but with focus on the type of play that's more freeing and alive than whatever the hell is going on here!

Reviewed on Feb 14, 2023


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