Hunt Showdown, at its core, is a brilliant and unique game. The sound design, gunplay, and graphics are all top-tier. The atmosphere is second to none. Hunt is not for the feint of heart; it is incredibly challenging, difficult to master, punishing, and expects its players to be fully invested at all times. No sit back and play here. This, along with its unique and memorable art direction, make Hunt an unforgettable experience; one that I consider the best multiplayer game ever made.

That said, Crytek has shown itself hardly capable of handling the success of Hunt well. Since it's launch, Hunt has slowly but surely lost some of its charm as the graphics are constantly nerfed, the game is flooded with trends like battle passes and skins, and the gameplay is slowly over-simplified in some aspects and made confusingly complex in others. Luckily, Hunt is so strong at its core that, without changing the game completely, Crytek basically cannot ruin this game.

There are some serious warnings I issue here: prepare for cheaters, server lag, and some seriously toxic gameplay in this one. Crytek refuses to address their cheating issue, and *will* ban you from their Discord for mentioning it. Crytek also seems to *encourage* toxic gameplay behavior through mechanics that can sometimes ruin an entire day of playing. Player discretion is advised.

As of 1896 update:

UI: The new UI is horrible. Almost everything directs you to the store to spend money on DLC skins. Most options are hidden through submenus, which massively increased the number of clicks to get anywhere and do anything. To make it worse, these are really unintuitive menus due to weird naming and locations. For example, if you want to buy a new weapon, you tap 'store' at the top which takes you to a page showing you a slew of options, all of which amount to 'buy DLC' - if you want to buy an actual weapon, you need to click 'Gear.' Of course, the Gear page has more submenus, but these menus are actually just filter options, and those options are available if you click into any submenu in 'Gear'. Why are the filter options presented in a menu? It makes no sense and doubles the clicks needed to purchase a weapon. The UI scale makes it extremely hard to see anything, which further increases clicks needed as you scroll through options because they can't be bothered to fit all 5 options on screen for some reason. So that's a lot, but on top of that, the UI is highly bugged. Flashing images, buttons that don't load, lots of hitching and freezing. I get lots of flickering and artifacts that make all the above issues even harder to navigate. Oh, and don't get me started on the changes to the UI that seems to act as a way to protect cheaters from scrutiny. A total failure.

Gameplay: Crytek claims that they want to deal with the cheating issue, but they never have and never will. They included bullet drop with the excuse of minimizing camping, but it's made camping with a sniper much more valid because if you have a weapon with iron sights you can't see what you're shooting at after you account for bullet drop. The new burn time on Hunters encourages toxic gameplay. The movement speed has been noticeably reduced for some reason, so the game feels very sluggish. There are tons of new weapons, so many that game knowledge is basically impossible, so throw years of learning weapon sounds and functions out the window. A total failure.

Graphics: The new 'improvements' don't exist. In my experience the game looks muddier and runs slower. I get constant hitching when opening the map or entering darksight. There are invisible walls and weird collision issue in places they were not before. Gunfights are very difficult because there are so many visual artifacts and flickers I can't tell a Hunter from a tree from a rock. Not to mention the loading times on visuals have shot through the roof; I frequently find myself walking into new areas to find no textures on anything as well as missing props that suddenly pop in. Absolute downgrade in both performance and visuals across the board. A total failure.

New map: Actually very cool. Some weird level design choices in the compounds make some areas annoying to navigate, but that's bound to happen in an non-linear game. *Not* a total failure.

Hunter Recruitment: The old system, the unique roguelike recruitment that encourage players try new things has been totally scrapped. Hunt is now effectively a hero shooter. Gone are the exciting days of finding a cool random hunter with a memorable name. My favorite part? They took all the best looking hunters that used to be free once you were Tier 3 and...put them behind a paywall huzzah! I love when content I used to have is stolen and now I have to pay money to get it back. Speaking of that, some of these skins are $10 and up...for a single hunter skin. Anyway, this destroys the flavor of Hunt, encourages stale, meta builds, makes traits annoying to deal with since they're randomly thrown on your Hunter, and there is no reason to not fill your entire roster with 6 of the exact same character. Not only does this encourage players to be sweaty, but it discourages any form of experimentation. A total failure.

Stability: It's pretty clear that this update released in an unfinished state probably to meet some kind of earnings quota instead of released when it was ready for the players. I have played this update for about 4 hours. In that time I have crashed 5 times, hit constant hitches, and have had the game freeze more times than I can count. The game is, in this state, quite literally unplayable due to these issues. Don't expect to be able to complete matches. A total failure.

Crytek: As I mentioned in my older review, Crytek can't take the heat. They crafted such an incredible experience and are now just trying to squeeze money from it. It feels like most of these changes, especially for the UI, weren't made to improve player experience but rather drive players to spend and attract more players on console. For example, there is now a rarity system on the Hunters. It literally doesn't do anything for the game, but it *does* trick players into trying to buy 'rare' skins for absolutely no reason. It's really sad to see this game fall apart because its creators have completely lost sight of what matters to Hunt and its player base for the sake of making a few extra bucks. A total failure.

The result of this update is an unstable ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of a game living in the husk of one of the greatest multiplayer games of all time, a complete and total downgrade of the original across the board where everything exists to make you pay more money or to appeal to a new audience instead of their current player base. Actually, I don't think this update was made with player enjoyment in mind at all. This update was made to sell battle passes and skins; to hell with the players. I refuse to believe 1896 was tested by anyone and I refuse to believe it was made with regard to player feedback. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Crytek has a message for those who have played this game consistently since 2018 and are absolutely in love with what it is: "♥♥♥♥ you."

Well, ♥♥♥♥ you too, Crytek.

Update:

Oh look, Hunt is now walking in the shoes of Fortnite by including characters from other IP. So the one thing that put Hunt above all others, its immersion, is being thrown straight out the window in the name of greed. Wonderful. Please, Crytek, continue to destroy my favorite multiplayer game of all time. I love this. There is no need to respect your players or your property when you can bank on stuffing another, more popular, property into yours. Why make Hunt better to sell more when you can just include Ghost Face and ruin the experience for everyone? Amazing. Can Crytek get worse? I bet they can. Find out in next month's update where they'll add Ash from the Evil Dead to the game, chainsaw and all....or something. I'm done. Absolutely done.

Oh...nope, Post Malone. My bad.