E3 2001 Hands-onHunter: The Reckoning

Interplay's devotion to publishing games based on popular pen-and-paper RPGs cannot be questioned. High Voltage Studios' Hunter: The Reckoning is only the latest example. The game is based on White Wolf's RPG of the same name, which is part of its World of Darkness series--a world where vampires, wraiths, werewolves, and faeries live among regular humans. Against all these creatures are hunters--humans who have been chosen, for one reason or another, to battle the creatures of the night.

High Voltage's Hunter casts you in the role of one such hunter. Though four characters will be available for play in the game's final version, the build on display at Interplay's booth featured only two: a burly biker and a comparatively frail priest. The biker was physically stronger, as you've probably guessed, while the priest was more adept at magic.

Even after only four months of development time, Hunter looks pretty good. Built using a piece of proprietary High Voltage technology, the game features some decent-looking character models, impressive lighting, and some great-looking animations.

The game's control scheme is pretty simple. You attack by means of the R1 button, and you jump with L1. The A and B face buttons, respectively, allow you to cycle through your weapons and activate your "edges"--Hunter: The Reckoning terminology for magic spells. Moving is achieved with the left analog stick, while the right stick allows you to focus your aim in a particular direction. The control is a little sluggish, at this point, but the scheme has a good deal of potential, and we've no doubt that High Voltage will continue to refine its responses.

The two areas we got to play through in our short demo of the game were packed to the gills with zombielike creatures (or wraiths, technically speaking), confirming Interplay's claims that Hunter will be a heavily combat-oriented game. The sequences had us wading through throngs of creatures, slashing them with our melee weapons or shooting them with our shotguns. As the game's camera is extremely adjustable, any type of perspective was achievable--everything from an over-the-shoulder third-person perspective to a top-down isometric view.

Despite its relatively solid state, however, Hunter: The Reckoning is still quite early in development. Everything about the game will be fully fleshed out, by ship time--the characters will boast more edges, objectives will be added to the missions, and all the technical aspects will be tinkered with. We're eager to see how it'll look in the next few months. Keep your ears to the ground.