The great Irem arcade title receives a poor Saturn port, but what the heck, its still a pretty fun game.....
The gameplay of In The Hunt is at first glance very similar to any other shooter of the type but certain things make it slightly different. The main reason it plays different is that your sub doesn’t progress forward by itself, instead it only moves right when you tell it too. This can be slighly disorientating at first and gives the whole thing a much slower pace, but once you have got use to this control method and figured out how to use it your advantage (in other words don't rush in) it can become a very enjoyable (albeit still incredibly hard) game. Another really great thing about this game is its brilliant set pieces and more importantly its inspired boss battles. Most impressive perhaps is the third level. Here you actually meet the boss (a giant stone statue) at the levels opening and are then chased for the entire stage until you are trapped and have to fight it. The are a few other moments like this that really do wow you in a big way.
In The Hunt's presentation is also fantastic. The sound isn't all that great with the effects being standard fare and the music pretty dull overall but the graphics really do make up for it. The game looks a lot like the Metal Slug series (and very much like the sub bit in part 3). There is a tremendous amount of detail and the explosions both underwater and on ground look great. This is a game that is really worth experiencing just for some of its artwork alone.
Less impressive is how the game feels on the Saturn in comparison to the Arcade version. Sega's machine is famous for having perfect ports of 2D games so it is strange that In The Hunt ends up being plagued by some really bad slowdown at key moments. This slowdown is actually some of the worst I have ever seen in a game and really spoils what is an otherwise superbly presented package. The games levels also take place in a different order to how they did in the arcade, which doesn’t really make sense but its not that big a deal I suppose. The only other bad thing about the game is that for some reason it doesn’t let you save your scores, which seems like a really silly feature to exclude from a shooter.
Had some compromise been found and the developers lowered the graphical detail just enough to get rid of the slowdown but not enough to ruin the games look and charm then In The Hunt would be getting a much higher score from me. As things stand, if you can find this anywhere I would still say pick it up because despite being pretty floored this is the only way to play In The Hunt in your home without owning the arcade version and the fact remains that it is still a pretty good game.