Crytek has released 10 minutes of Hunt: Showdown pre-alpha gameplay, about a week after the same footage was shown to journalists attending E3 2017, giving the general public an extremely early look at the studio’s upcoming team-based, PvP, monster-hunting shooter. There’s still plenty we don’t know about the project. But the new video makes it clear that Crytek is hoping Hunt: Showdown -- like the recently-rechristened Deadly Hazard -- can use popular mechanics from other genres to inject some freshness back into competitive shooters.
Hunt: Showdown drops teams into a sprawling open-world environment -- a commonality among some of the biggest shooters on the market right now -- which are filled with a variety of enemies, from your standard, shambling zombies and undead dogs to seriously disfigured humans whose bodies are now host to a hive of bees. In the E3 2017 demo, we follow a squad asked to hunt a gargantuan spider. But finding and banishing monstrously oversized animals isn’t the only goal in Hunt: Showdown . They’ll also need to outlast the other teams on the spider’s trail. Once the target has been neutralized, the team that downed the creature will also need to banish it -- a process that exposes the team’s location on the map -- before they can be extracted and claim the bounty. Crytek says the average game will take about 20-40 minutes to finish.
The Hunt: Showdown footage shown during E3 2017 features at least three teams, with multiple extended clashes before the spider is killed, and introduces several unique enemy types from the game. We see undead dogs, which can be used as something akin to proximity alarms in certain scenarios, and a massive zombie that seems to interact with the world like an amalgamation of Left 4 Dead’s bloaters and chargers. There also seems to be some sort of supernatural aspect to the game, aside from banishing your targets, based on the tracker vision utilized by the two-man team from Crytek’s E3 demonstration.
For a closer look at Hunt: Showdown, set aside 10 minutes to watch the E3 2017 gameplay demo published this week. Then head down to the comments section and let us know what you’d like to see in Hunt: Showdown when the game heads to PC.
Hunt: Showdown is in development for PC but there’s no word on a release date.
Be sure to check back with Player.One and follow Scott on Twitter for additional Hunt: Showdown news in 2017 and however long Crytek supports Hunt: Showdown after launch.
