Headhunter is a recklessly ambitious game.
That's the best way I can sum it up.
The effort put into it can be immediately seen in the visuals, it doesn't look like a Dreamcast game.
Textures are clean and sharp, models look good, decent animation and smooth environments, and nice lighting effects. It's possibly the best looking Dreamcast game I've seen so far, I would often just wander around in rooms and look at all the small details and backdrops.
The game excels in atmosphere overall, the visuals, tone, and soundtrack perfectly fit together.
It's also noticeable in the story and writing and in this case that was one of the better aspects, it was entertaining throughout it's not the deepest story or anything but it has a strange satire/semi serous tone that makes it stand out, numerous cutscenes both pre rendered and live action.
The last overall positive aspect is the music by Richard Jaques, it adds a lot to the game. It's one thing that stands out in a good way.
The dev team simply tried to do too much, you have driving segments, stealth gameplay, third person shooting, VR missions, and various Resident Evil style puzzles crammed into a small game, as a result none of them are all that polished or deep.
The combat is not great, stealth take-downs wouldn't work most of the time, the enemies aim is terrible so the entire game I would just walk toward them while shooting and usually take no damage, instead of coming up with any strategy.
The boss fights were better but often were more of a DPS race. Targetting would often get stuck on objects or far enemies I didn't want to aim at. It was clunky but still fun in a mindless way, when the stealth worked and I could sneak up on enemies it was fun and trying to use mines and grenades strategically was satisfying, it was never hard enough to be frustrating and losing doesn't send the player back that far (most of the time).
I could definitely tell this was supposed to be an open mission based game, but something must have happened in development because the game has a pointless empty overworld to drive around in despite progress being linear.
They clearly had to cut back on this one a lot, yet confusingly they kept the open world hub anyway they seemed to really want to keep it in the game no matter the cost, and to make sure players are forced to explore it there is a driving exp system the prevents you from continuing until a certain number is reached, it's one of the strangest design decisions in a game I can think of in recent memory.
even the slightest graze with any obstacle makes you lose points, it's far too punishing this lead me to have to grind driving back and forth through an empty lot for about 30 minutes before I could finish the game.
This holds the game back a lot, it does add a bit of identity to it but maybe not in a good way.
I did enjoy wandering around in the hubworld just exploring sometimes.
To add to all of this the game is glitchy, new game plus softlocks itself, it's easy to clip in to some areas, a wall in the overworld has no collision, and I died while exiting areas or beating bosses several times leading to strange and funny results.
Near the end of a game I left a room I wasn't supposed to and found it couldn't be re-entered. I had to circle back around the route to get back in, an the event that stopped a bunch of instant kill lasers blocking the way forward wouldn't re activate, so I had softlocked my game at the very end.
In order to beat this game I had to resort to using an out of bounds glitch to walk around the blocked doors, it was incredibly easy to cause this softlock.
That's generally how this game is, poorly executed but almost never dull, it has what you might call Dreamcast era charm that keeps it from becoming boring sometimes ironically. Despite the problems I had it was worth sticking with this one, it wasn't too long either.
This game was awkward, a bit glitchy, but still a fun playthrough. I'd recommend this to people that want something a bit experimental that has an aged feel to it, like a time capsule representing the late dreamcast era.
People with less patience for unintuitive control and lack of polish should definitely avoid this game.
That's the best way I can sum it up.
The effort put into it can be immediately seen in the visuals, it doesn't look like a Dreamcast game.
Textures are clean and sharp, models look good, decent animation and smooth environments, and nice lighting effects. It's possibly the best looking Dreamcast game I've seen so far, I would often just wander around in rooms and look at all the small details and backdrops.
The game excels in atmosphere overall, the visuals, tone, and soundtrack perfectly fit together.
It's also noticeable in the story and writing and in this case that was one of the better aspects, it was entertaining throughout it's not the deepest story or anything but it has a strange satire/semi serous tone that makes it stand out, numerous cutscenes both pre rendered and live action.
The last overall positive aspect is the music by Richard Jaques, it adds a lot to the game. It's one thing that stands out in a good way.
The dev team simply tried to do too much, you have driving segments, stealth gameplay, third person shooting, VR missions, and various Resident Evil style puzzles crammed into a small game, as a result none of them are all that polished or deep.
The combat is not great, stealth take-downs wouldn't work most of the time, the enemies aim is terrible so the entire game I would just walk toward them while shooting and usually take no damage, instead of coming up with any strategy.
The boss fights were better but often were more of a DPS race. Targetting would often get stuck on objects or far enemies I didn't want to aim at. It was clunky but still fun in a mindless way, when the stealth worked and I could sneak up on enemies it was fun and trying to use mines and grenades strategically was satisfying, it was never hard enough to be frustrating and losing doesn't send the player back that far (most of the time).
I could definitely tell this was supposed to be an open mission based game, but something must have happened in development because the game has a pointless empty overworld to drive around in despite progress being linear.
They clearly had to cut back on this one a lot, yet confusingly they kept the open world hub anyway they seemed to really want to keep it in the game no matter the cost, and to make sure players are forced to explore it there is a driving exp system the prevents you from continuing until a certain number is reached, it's one of the strangest design decisions in a game I can think of in recent memory.
even the slightest graze with any obstacle makes you lose points, it's far too punishing this lead me to have to grind driving back and forth through an empty lot for about 30 minutes before I could finish the game.
This holds the game back a lot, it does add a bit of identity to it but maybe not in a good way.
I did enjoy wandering around in the hubworld just exploring sometimes.
To add to all of this the game is glitchy, new game plus softlocks itself, it's easy to clip in to some areas, a wall in the overworld has no collision, and I died while exiting areas or beating bosses several times leading to strange and funny results.
Near the end of a game I left a room I wasn't supposed to and found it couldn't be re-entered. I had to circle back around the route to get back in, an the event that stopped a bunch of instant kill lasers blocking the way forward wouldn't re activate, so I had softlocked my game at the very end.
In order to beat this game I had to resort to using an out of bounds glitch to walk around the blocked doors, it was incredibly easy to cause this softlock.
That's generally how this game is, poorly executed but almost never dull, it has what you might call Dreamcast era charm that keeps it from becoming boring sometimes ironically. Despite the problems I had it was worth sticking with this one, it wasn't too long either.
This game was awkward, a bit glitchy, but still a fun playthrough. I'd recommend this to people that want something a bit experimental that has an aged feel to it, like a time capsule representing the late dreamcast era.
People with less patience for unintuitive control and lack of polish should definitely avoid this game.