Do-it-yourself conspiracy theory, step 1: write the word ‘Wargar’ – the name of the orc-like race at the centre of Hunted: The Demon’s Forge – down on a sheet of paper. We’ll wait here while you find a pen. Step 2: splice the word in half at the syllable break. Finished? Step 3: swap the order of these two words. If you’ve followed instructions properly, you should have arrived at the nonsensical phrase ‘gar War.’ Step 4: sandwich the preposition ‘of’ between the two words to get ‘gar of War’. Step 5: hold your head firmly with both hands as the epiphany enters your brain like a sniper bullet catching a Locust Drone between the eyes. If you’re lucky, the applied pressure will keep your head from a similarly messy combustion.
The above theory wildly over-reaches, admittedly so, but givenHunted’s sycophantic adherence to the design principles behind Epic’s Gears Of War saga, can you blame us? Hunted appears convinced that its borrowing will go down easier if it footnotes the nakedly obvious source text. Hence the inclusion of an achievement that reads, “Obtain an Epic quality weapon” (holy strategic capitalisation, Batman!). It’s like the whole dev team at inXile collectively decided that if Hunted flopped and they landed back in the job market, they’d all be relocating to North Carolina to work on the inevitable Gears prequel that will keep Epic’s bean-counters happy once the trilogy wraps.
A cover-based, thirdperson shooter and brawler, Hunted follows the exploits of two mercenaries – E’lara and Caddoc – who stumble into a quest to save the land of Kala Moor from the marauding Wargar. In predictable high-fantasy fashion, the pair must battle their way through swamps, caves, dungeons, forests, slave-filled quarries and arson-ravaged medieval villages, pressing ever closer to the foreboding summit where their destiny awaits. There isn’t a Tolkienism in existence that Hunted fails to trot out for a weary victory lap. So despite some atmospheric, if nigglingly familiar, world-building – the Unreal Engine imbues Kala Moor with genuine verve – you never quite shake the feeling that Hunted takes place in Middling-earth. As far as Tolkien ringers go, Hunted’s tone is less Game of Thrones and more Dragonlance.
The game’s protagonists are about what you’d expect. E’lara is the prototypical sexy elf and skilled archer who has managed to shrewdly fashion an entire outfit out of a single leather belt, with tribal tattoos stretching and curling like creeping ivy across her legs and inner thighs before vanishing beneath a scandalous excuse for a thong. Melee-favouring Caddoc gets to be a sex object in his own right, provided you’re into chiselled abs and elephantine, triangular torsos. Hunted’s primary gameplay enticement revolves around the pair’s co-op adventuring, and the script dials up the romantic tension accordingly. E’lara and Caddoc are caricatures, sure, but the writing is just strong enough to keep them on the right side of flimsy.
If you’ve played Gears Of War, Hunted’s combat and level progression will feel cosily intuitive. Each level consists of a series of open battlefields, sprinkled with banks of chest-high cover to duck behind as Wargar archers send arrows whizzing by overhead. There are a variety of weapons for the pair to find throughout the game – which the player uncovers by smashing weapon racks to splinters.
Bows are classified by their damage-dealing properties and their rate of fire (slow, medium and fast). A slow bow is effectively a high-fantasy sniper rifle, dealing heavy damage but balanced with a sluggish reload. The medium and fast bows can be fired like an assault rifles, mashing the trigger down and sending off a steady auto-fire stream of arrows, which can be aimed or blind-fired. Melee combat allows you mix medium and heavy attacks into standard combos – with block mapped to the left trigger.
Both E’lara and Caddoc can fight with arrow or blade, but their abilities are heavily weighted in favour of shooting things and hitting things, respectively. In practice, this means one player engages in some solid cover-based shooting while the other grinds through the thick of the crowd. In order to spur co-operation, both players have access to magic attacks which can be used to temporarily buff each other’s weapon or – more interestingly – set up enemies for combined attacks. Caddoc can use a Force-like power to lift Wargar haplessly into the air while E’lara systematically picks them off with ease. Or she can use arrows enchanted with ice magic to freeze enemies in place, after which Caddoc’s rush attack might as well be a rodeo bull goring a piece of delicate crystal stemware.
These co-operative moments are the exception, not the rule, sadly – the Wargar attack in waves large and relentless enough to make wider co-ordination simply not worth the effort in the heat of battle. Caddoc feels like an imposing house guest in E’lara’s Gears clone, especially since the cover-based level design means ranged fighting provides a tactical satisfaction entirely absent from Caddoc’s hack-and-slash tedium.
Like a horse swishing its tail with futile persistence, Hunted never manages to rid itself of bugs. If you’re standing over a weapon drop when your partner triggers a cutscene, the heads-up weapon comparison hovers clumsily above as it plays out. Your character occasionally refuses to scoop up clearly visible health potions. And close-range enemies neatly lined up in your aiming reticule will fail to register your shots with annoying regularity. Despite the cloud of bugs pestering its flanks, the grafted DNA in its cells and co-op play’s baffling lack of drop-in/drop-out functionality, Hunted delivers an improbably fun gallop.
