Bethesda Softworks and developer inXile Entertainment have been toting Hunted: The Demon’s Forge since E3 2010. It promised to be a beautiful action/role-playing game that would thrive on co-op play and a assortment of different ways to upgrade weapons, characters and magic. Ambitious? Very, but nearly executed. The game delivers in some of areas, but definitely falls short in others.
Let’s break it down!
Always start with the pros…
What inXile Entertainment has created doesn’t strike one as unique, but it does have some fun aspects to it that separate it from the rest of the action/RPG pack. The story of the game is well done, as is the acting. One player will take on the role of the warrior Caddoc and the other will play as the huntress E’lara as you fight your way through besieged towns, sprawling dungeons, and ancient ruins as they become entwined in a tale of corruption and deceit. It’s a mixture of Conan the Barbarian and The Sword and the Sorcerer. Unhinged fighting that leads into a very dark story that captures your attention. You will see the personalities of the two main characters play off each other as the game presses on further and further. It’s fun to watch and it sets the tone for the adventure. Each portion of the story, which is played out from level to level will keep you locked in, as it should.
Once locked in you will find a few elements that inXile Entertainment did well to keep you interested beyond the storytelling. The first thing is the simplistic upgrading of magic and fighting of the characters. While Bioware holds the title for the most options ever to upgrade and create a unique user experience, the devs for Hunted: The Demon’s Forge keep the process simple to understand. You go around picking up blue crystals throughout the game that work as upgrade currency. You can upgrade different types of magic and you can upgrade different types of fighting/weapons. There aren’t a lot of options to the upgrades (1/20th of what a game like Dragon Age would have), but they’re still nice to have.
Just as equally important in the game is the upgradable weapons. Having that same RPG taste as the character upgrades, you can pick up loose weapons and decide whether you want to keep what you got or take what you found; completely based on how strong the weapons or armor numerically. Again, much like the character upgrades the weapons/defense upgrades are simple, which just goes along with the motif the game wants you to experience; more fighting and less thinking. For an action title I’m completely fine with that theme.
Upgrades aside, the real gem in this title is how much fun the co-op can be. I’m happy that Bethesda and inXile really focused on co-op mode because it’s always fun going through an adventure with a friend. If you ask an FPS fan out there what’s the next important thing outside of multiplayer they will probably tell you that co-op is extremely important. Having the ability to play a friend via LAN or online (or just split screen) is a blast, if you are patient. Depending on a friend to save your butt is much better than depending on the computer. That’s what made games like Brink fun to play; the more friends you have the better and richer the experience. What’s particularly neat about this co-op is that you can play single player and pick up in co-op where you left off in single player. For example, Steven McGehee and I played co-op and he helped me solve a puzzle that I just couldn’t get past. We started at the puzzle, where I left off, so we didn’t have to start at the beginning of the story. It was a very neat option and one that truly just made the game a bit more diverse in my opinion.
Other than co-op, I have to give hats off to the graphics of the game. Using the Unreal 3 Engine to its potential, inXile Entertainment put together a very drab, atmospheric environment that really gets you into the game. The character models of the game were neat to see, maybe a little too ‘Lara Croft’ in a couple respects, but nonetheless detailed. Seeing the tattoo on Caddoc’s bald head just screams badass to me. Had he not talked it would have been even better (worked for Arnold in Conan, as he has three lines — just kidding). Hitting the right curves and creating really good details in skin texture help to create some fun characters.
As for the surroundings in the game, Hunted really leans on some German Expressionistic environments that have a lot of harsh black/white contrasts that are mixed in with some colorful magical effects. The game adds some dreary depth to caves and castles that set the tone for the story. I particularly like the way fire has some fantastic reflection off of shaded areas. Is it important to gameplay? Not as much as controls and whatnot, but it does add to the experience.
With that said, let’s talk about some cons…
While inXile Entertainment has been around since 2002, there really hasn’t been much consistency in what it has released. The Bard’s Tale (2004) is the only big title the company has put out and countless unfinished products after that. Hunted: The Demon’s Forge is their biggest release to date and it shows some youth from the developer. For example, the levels in Hunted are deep. You can spend 10-15 (depending on gaming skills) going through levels and completing them. Linear in nature, the difficulty of the game doesn’t come from survival; rather it comes from trying to find which direction you need to go through in these massively confusing environments. Giving no signs of direction, other than a nice little magical light that will lead you out of a very visually confusing area (press R3 when you want to activate that cute little cheat), you will find wasted moments just trying to get from point A to point B. For example, during one level of the game you’re ordered to set off bombs on a bridge to prevent the evil demon creatures from invading an important part of town. You have to go through a series of houses in this town to get to the right spots. I found myself seeing where I needed to go, but because of the linear direction (and lack of onscreen map) I had to find my way gently to the area, which wasted so much time. So, I would see the bombs and want to jump off stairs, but couldn’t. I had to jump off the stairs at a particular point. Again, annoying and frustrating, but mainly it shows a real lack of true experience and hindsight in level design. In this day and age the developers must think like gamers and understand that someone is going to want to jump out of the window from a two-story complex to get to the bombs as quick as possible. The punishment for stupid acts like that should be damage or death, but the option has to be available, otherwise you create a restricted environment.
Speaking of restrictions, the controls are a bit clunky. Harking back to the days of Golden Axe III, where I had to line myself up perfectly with enemies to even have a chance at a first strike, Hunted: The Demon’s Forge suffers from this very same problem. I think my timing and alignment were right about 10% of the time when it came to fighting. I always had to expect to get hit first then break into a button-mashing combo to defeat enemies. It was frustrating especially when you get into the harder enemies (and they start early in the game). Some of you might say that I need better strategy, but when you’re dealing with an action game you want to get the first lick in quick, which just wasn’t possible. If you’re not in the right place and hitting the button at the right time (little room for error) then you’re going to be hurt first. You can either accept this fate, like me, or drive yourself nuts trying to find the perfect spot.
Shifting gears, let’s talk about what happens when you’re playing single player versus co-op. Advice: If you don’t have a friend, find a friend. Having to depend on the computer to be your partner is like having to depend on a parachute with a giant hole in it to save you life when you jump out of an airplane during a skydiving session; it simply ain’t going to work well. The very first problem I encountered with Hunted is how quickly Caddoc goes dies when you’re letting the computer control him. Not even out of the first level of the game I had that guy get abused thoroughly by a skeleton force. He went down, 7-10 seconds later he died. Why is this bad? Once your partner dies it’s the end of the game, as you cannot continue without them. So, remember all those missions in all those other games where you have to be an escort for something and if something had happened to that thing it would mean the mission failed? That’s the entire single player experience for Hunted: The Demon’s Forge. Granted, if you play as Caddoc the experience is much better for no good reason, as E’Lara takes care of herself pretty well, but some people will want to play as E’Lara and find the game frustrating from the get-go.
With that said, the co-op portion of the game is a better experience, though you can survive in single player.
Other little things that seemed out of sorts in this game included a lot of clipping in the game, lots of back-and-forth traveling (no gamer loves that), checkpoint mysteries and weapon inconsistencies.
The clipping in the game is forgivable to a point, as most games (even AAA games) have just a bit of clipping here and there. Is it ugly? Yes, but it’s forgivable. The large amount of traveling is less forgivable. Going back to to a previous co-op story with McGehee, we were on the search for four secret stones in a particular part of the game. We spent 10-minutes in a particular area, running down a long hallway to discover that a flaming arrow was needed to get us to the next point. The only fire was located at the beginning of the level, which forced both of us to go back to what was essentially a different area. It was tiresome to do this, especially multiple times (if we died on the way back). There are more than a few points in the game where you will be asked to backtrack. You can see it coming most of the time, but that doesn’t ease the pain.
Now, continuing on that same point, should you get killed in the game you will more than likely have to start all the way back at the beginning of the level you’re on. Again, McGehee and I were playing a co-op session for 10-15 minutes and ended up dying. This put us back at the beginning of the level where we were forced to repeat the entire process again. Sure we knew where enemies were going to be, but in the long run it made the experience more anxiety driven because dying meant starting all the way over. Demon’s Souls from Atlus already scarred us when it comes to restarting levels; that game created more tension than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. While not as bad as Atlus’ game, it still created a very nervous gaming experience. More checkpoints throughout a level would have been nicer to see.
Finally, my last complaint is probably unique to my gaming experience with Hunted. Playing as Caddoc, I found a nice spiked club to carry around to bash up the bad guys. I gave up a magical axe for it, as the club was much stronger, but nearly halfway through the game I hadn’t found a weapon that was better than the club. In my opinion, that was way too early to peak for a strong weapon. Harking back to maybe a little inexperience from the dev team, you shouldn’t have such a strong weapon early in the game. You should be able to find weapons scattered here and there and experience really cool/nasty weapons to use during battle. A vicious club is nice to sport, but a variety of better weapons with slow/gradual increases in strength would have been much better.
So, with all this said, is the game fun? I think the single player experience isn’t nearly as compelling as the co-op. If that was the intention of Bethesda and inXile then bravo on accomplishing that. It’s more fun having not to deal with idiot AI and it’s much easier to correct your friends on what they’re doing wrong (or vice-versa). Regretfully, even a good co-op simply doesn’t save this game from other design flaws. Restrictive, linear levels mixed in with some frustrating controls and added to inconsistent checkpoints equal out to be a tough experience to get through with a smile. This game had potential of being one of the more fun co-op experiences, but lack of execution on design really hurt it. If things had been cleaned up here and there then you’re looking at something special.
As it is Hunted: The Demon’s Forge has a lot more issues to deal with before it can achieve the greatness it was shooting for.