izigame.me

With nearly 2,000 hours in-game, and typically sitting at 6*, I'm confident I have an extremely strong grasp on this game's vision, gameplay, strengths, and weaknesses. Clearly, with almost 2k hours, it's one of my all-time favorite games. What Hunt does well, it does best-in-class, or stands alone as a trailblazer in the gaming industry.
I'll preface this with what it does well:
-The new map: Mammon's Gulch. With every map the dev team releases, it's clear they learn, listen to the community, and iterate with constant improvement. Stillwater is blatantly the weakest map with glaring issues. Then, Lawson, which improves upon many of the issues of Stillwater, though still with large stretches of open land, some poor compounds, and pathing that could use improving. Desalle, prior to this update, stood out as the superior map of the three, and was unsurprisingly the most recently added to the rotation. Seeing this continuous improvement is heartening, and shows there's clearly talent on the team, and passionate level designers who understand this game's needs and gunplay. Mammon's Gulch makes Desalle look half-baked by comparison - it's truly a triumph of a map for this dev team, and they should be unbelievably proud of their success here.
-The gunplay. While this will inevitably draw some complains from other long-time players and 6* PC players, it's still true. Yes, Mosin / long ammo remains the meta. Yes, Avto, Nitro, Crown and Dolch are still unbelievably strong, and it's tilting to die in scenarios where you lose for no other reason than you chose to run an objectively inferior loadout. However... in my mind, that's part of the challenge, and fun, and adrenaline of how fights can unfold. I'm a full-time Crossbow + Shotbolt player, and I've hit and retained 6* from this loadout alone. It's "inferior", but plenty competitive, as it has one of the highest skill ceilings (alongside other options like the bow). Now, with the gunplay changes that any ammo can headshot at any range, and with bullet drop and the new map's verticality somewhat diminishing the ultra-long range engagements, there've been far fewer tilting cross-map Mosin Spitzer Sniper engagements that, unless you're running the same, are outright un-fightable. Ultimately, the gunplay feels like it's in the best place it's ever been, even with strong meta picks remaining on the table. If a Dolch FMJ tags me, that's on me for not gunning them down before they had a chance to get a shot off.
-The core gameplay loop. The concept of this game as an occult western with wild traits like Shadow Leap, audio-focused hardcore PvP engagements, and fantastic art design boss/AI PvE engagements, leads to an immersive experience unlike any other. While balance changes that make the PvE element more difficult (looking at you, most recent melee weapon nerf) place additional focus on a *less* fun aspect of the game (I feel the PvE should be secondary to the PvP - making them more difficult just makes the task more tedious, not more fun), there's no way around the fact that once you load into a game, you're likely going to enjoy the experience once you get the hang of it. Though, there's an admittedly extremely steep initial learning curve for new players, as basic Ai like immolators, hives, and bosses like Scrapbeak will inevitably cause some embarrassing and frustrating deaths for new players until they get the hang of how to handle all non-PvP aspects of the game without even having to think about it.
So while this all sounds extremely positive, I have ~2k hours in-game, play regularly, and clearly love this game... why would I "not recommend this game"?
"Review bombing" as a term carries this connotation that people go out of their way to express frustration with overly negative reviews as a way to "punish" a company for what the company often believes to be a minor issue. I'm not leaving this review as part of a "review bomb", nor do I think that's what this community is doing. Veteran players and the core playerbase aren't coming out of the woodwork to vent mere frustration at a change of pace, or a new direction. New players are coming in droves to Hunt - which is great! However, I know numerous people personally (and you can read countless more examples online) who tried the game, and have decided to give it a pass due to the issues that are prompting these negative reviews.
Steam reviews ask if we, as owners of this game, would recommend it to a new player. And, bluntly, in its current state, no, we wouldn't.
The biggest issue that's being mentioned in all these other negative reviews is:
-The UI. No, they're not being overdramatic, and neither am I when I say this is the worst UI I've experienced in any game, ever. I work in digital marketing, often collaborating with my company's UI team, where we rigorously test, pilot, and adjust any new UI updates according to feedback. We also design with one of the most important core concepts of good UI in mind: get people to where they want to go in as FEW CLICKS AS POSSIBLE. Identify the most used / high-traffic regions (simple heatmapping can identify this, or even just playing the game yourself and timing how long the new UI takes versus the old one to buy, modify, then equip a hunter, and start a game), and optimize your UI around those core elements. This UI somehow seemed to try to do the opposite. Even when they teased it, the community expressed their deep concern, but the team asked us to "give it a chance" to use it in-game. We did, and all the original criticisms not only still stood, but things were far, far worse than we ever anticipated. The UI is the first thing a new player will see, and it's quite literally HOW you play the game. It's clunky, broken, confusing, and a downright waste of time. This alone is genuinely worth steering new players away from, because frankly I don't want their sentiment toward the game forever tainted due to a horrible first impression.
-Trades.
-The engine. Yes, I know this update made certain vistas prettier. Yes, I know performance is improved on SOME GPUs. However, generally, optimization has been questionable. Entire compounds can take even nice computers down to half their average FPS. High-end GPUs are experiencing massive screen tearing, shadow bugs, and more. While i'm sure these issues will be sorted with time, this isn't my biggest issue with the engine. In fact, it's an issue we've had since before this update, and it's quite literally game-breaking:
Derendering. Essentially, walls, windows, and other visual obstructions (that you can shoot through) disappear completely depending on your settings. Thus, any player can adjust their render distance to "low", and quite literally see through entire buildings - sometimes even within the same compound! This allows for you to be shot while you're inside a building, by someone who sees you floating mid-air on their screen, or crouched next to an open window that, to you, is completely closed. As the victim of a derender, you have quite literally no way to combat it, other than by getting behind a non-penetrable wall (thick stone - but not brick, as this can sometimes be penn'd by Nitro). In a competitive shooter, an engine deficiency that quite literally gives wallhacks to enemy players is unacceptable. Sure, Crytek says they'll punish players caught doing this, but they only actually follow through if there's recorded proof submitted via their website - hardly a user-friendly system, and it's done absolutely nothing to discourage this type of play. If you don't know what walls derender, or are aware that this is a "feature" of Cryengine, as a new player you'll die in places you didn't think possible, to what appear to be hacking players. This will keep happening, with no punishment going to those players doing this, and thus make both new AND experienced players alike want to uninstall this game.
Do I recommend this game? Not until it's fixed.