Poor gameplay designs and execution hamper an otherwise ambitious melding of Gears of War with fantasy hack n slash RPG.
Now do not let me fault their emulation of the venerable Gears of War franchise, Saints Row I think took Grand Theft Auto to the next level. Hunted is NOT an innovator and I do not fault the title for this, but it is how the game is executed that cause an otherwise ambitious and creative in concept experience to fall short of expectations.
Enough of the comparisions, let me just get down to the details.
The game takes place centered around the Elven E'lara who is the traditional Tolkienesque lithe archer and the burly Caddoc, master of melee weaponry. Despite their expertise in weaponry, one of the unique aspects of Hunted is that E'lara is the more aggressive of the two, more impulsive and willing to blow things up, while Caddoc would rather prefer stealth and tactics despite his massive muscles.
Visually the two characters are cliched but their personality lends some uniqueness to the story, which is mostly based on their adventure and centers around the two main character's perspectives, which sort of causes the game to lose sight of any overarching storyline outside of the great evil taking over the land and "while we are mercenaries concerned with gold, we might as well just do the right thing for free while we are here" paradigm.
Gameplay is definitively cover based when the character plays as E'lara, archers hide behind cover as does E'lara and Caddoc. Although Caddoc has much less firepower choices and holds less weaponry in the ranged department nor does he have magic powers for ranged weapons. E'lara plays just like Gears of War characters at a distance. Her bow dispatches foes with ease from a distance with 3 different types of attack speeds and corresponding damage proportional to the speed. Fast, Medium or Slow. Fast is almost too fast, Medium still fires very fast, and is the most balanced. Slow bows do massive damage and are the game's attempt at sniping weapons.
Caddoc can use his crossbow but doesn't have nearly as many weapon choices. His weapons are various types of swords, clubs and other nasty melee gear. His attacks build up Fury which can be unleashed to do incredible damage upclose. Basically he wades in smashes stuff and repeats.
Magic attacks are the same for both characters, their weapon based magic are entirely based in their specialties. E'lara can shoot shield breaking arrows, explosive bolts, freezing arrows, Caddoc can rush enemies or hold them up in the air while E'lara picks away at them or blasts them all with a bolt. There is a lot of focus on cooperative gameplay which is evidenced by the combination (albiet a small number) of attacks.
The idea of a meatshield and sniper class combination (although E'lara can use a sword and Caddoc a crossbow), one is clearly built like a tank with more HP and one has more of a ranged feel.
Here is where we start feeling some of the conflicts and gameplay incongruencies. The game is meant to be played online, with a partner utilizing the Caddoc/E'lara dynamic duo... however, only one person can be one of the classes and with all of my experiences, almost everyone wishes to be the hot elf chick, but they also prefer the ranged experience more seeing as the whole cover feature is familiar and prevalent through the game. The game has to randomly assign a player one of the characters in almost every one of my experiences. This is annoying, but not game breaking.
Second, the online portion does NOT allow for instant drop in drop out gameplay. You must start at one of the crystal checkpoints (where you can switch between E'lara and Caddoc, you cannot do this on the fly in single player nor in online coop).
This is a chink in the game's "armor" (flaw in programming or intentional, either way it's unacceptable). You must be able to switch dynamically to utilize the strength of each character to make the polar gameplay of each character in a more tactical manner, but unfortunately the developers didn't seem to make this happen.
Also, while there is character growth, it is very limited at the start with only allowing for one heal potion and mana potion and revive jar. Revival jars allow you to revive your partner from a distance and they are very common, but it's a cheap way out from the more challenging Gears of War close proximity revive.
Killing more enemies means getting more damage, more health, etc... But while executions are cool, but they interrupt the flow of the game, pausing a bit, going into a canned slow motion animation which does actually not do anything for you in terms of beneficial gameplay outside of temporary invincibility.
Both characters can carry a shield and dodge and evade enemies in melee combat, however shields can break over time, but there is no real danger of that seeing that new shields are as common as blade of grass in the field or a rock in a cavern... literally.
The graphics are a mixed bag. The environments are mostly repetitive and bland dungeon types using the wide variety of grey, green and browns in the spectrum reserved for gritty shooters. The NPCs don't have a very wide number of models, and to be honest, Caddoc and E'lara are the only two real standouts graphically. Getting dirty or bloody shows up on the characters faces or in their hair, this is one of the few details you see throughout the game that could have been added more often. Arrows do fragment and stick into things (which includes enemy throats), which I suppose is this game's version of bullet damage. Weapons and armor do show up on the character models but that's pretty much standard now.
In the first chapter a fortified town is under siege and Caddoc and E'lara must storm the building under a hail of flaming arrows, reminiscent of Lord of the Rings. Neat set pieces show up like this very sparsely, which is sad as it shows some flair that doesn't appear enough to add variety to otherwise stale copy and paste style dungeons. The siege levels where towns are under attack are the bright points in the game's visuals, the jungle and cavern levels are rather bland and sparse on details.
The enemy types are really rather limited at first but expand as you go on. There are the little bug type crawler enemies who are the game's wretches, the skeletons who you don't see much past the first chapter or a few side dungeons, the wargar who come in easy, shielded, archer and magical glowing varieties. There are minotaur later on and some bosses like the Haridar dark amazon sorceress in chapter 3, but basically it either shoots at you from a distance or attacks you up close and depending on how big or glowy it is defines how much damage it does to you. Eventually you get into bigger game like a dragon and demons, but that's end game material and along the way, previous boss types become "common" enemies.
The sound has some epic fantasy pieces and the two main characters are well voiced as well as a nice part by Lucy Lawless who plays the enigmatic Seraphine, but there are too many random villagers sitting in holes in the wall (literally) crying about how they are lost or the meaning of life or whatever... Really you just come across random people who are not tied up or in immediate danger just muttering. I suppose being lost in the catacombs might have that happen, but it's just out of place and feels intrusive rather than adding to the ambiance of darkness and despair when placed in awkward locations.
The few in game things that the game keeps score of are the Deathstone tallies, Prisoners Freed, Dragon's Tears, etc. These are "mostly" just collectibles that sometimes fill in the story but don't really add much to the gameplay or to your powers and are just basically trophy/achievement whore focal points. Sure exploring and finding epic enchanted weapons is nice sometimes, but finding these items and secret areas are lessons in picking out burnt sienna from chestnut shades in the wall.
Some of the in game puzzles are well detailed and give you good clues like shoot the flaming eye out, or stand on this floor plate and then have your partner push the flaming cart or what not.
Some of the other problems I notice are that the NPC AI causes Caddoc to hop in front of you very often while lining up a shot with E'lara, which has cost me a lot of MP because of the very poor collision detection. Sure, you might not be able to shoot through Caddoc, but there is a mysterious force field that extends above his head like 2 or three feet, which somehow causes E'lara's arrows to drop bounce off like tennis balls. Also the game has aim assist, but oftentimes it auto aims at enemies behind walls and doesn't help with tracking other than snapping your sights to where the enemies are. And even then, while the arrows do not get affected by gravity, chances are due to poor collision detection at a distance the game will not register a hit.
One last frustrating thing is that while there is an "inventory", you have to get about 2 or 3 chapters into the game to unlock carrying a secondary weapon, which is annoying if you pick up an enchanted weapon but upon using it all up you basically get a dried out stick instead of "The Flaming Bastard Sword of Awesomeness". I understand character progression and all, but leave the extra weapon as a start of game perk and let the damage and HP and stuff progress later on. And related to weapons, when you smash open weapon racks, the character that smashes it gets the weapon for themselves, it is not randomly assigned between the two characters. So playing online is sort of a competition of who smashes the rack open gets the shot at the weapon.
Finally inexplicable bugs that cause E'lara (at least for me) to not be able to shoot block or swing because her shield gets locked into position are aggrivating. No it is not due to lag and online play, it happens to me in single player mode as well. Also, there has been more than one case where I picked up a health potion and it never gave me its benefits nor could I pick up the other myriad lying around even though I had one free health potion slot open.
Generally the game tries VERY hard to be a cooperative experience but due to the inherent conflict of who wants to play which character, the lack of drop in drop out gameplay and other problems.
Finally is the extra feature called the Crucible, which is a built in map editor but it seems to be built for confusion more than ease of access. But then again... most editor systems are at first. My biggest gripes about this promising aspect of the game are twofold.
First, you must unlock a lot of the contents by playing through the game a number of times. Second, the content generated by the users is what would keep the Crucible fresh, but seeing as how the game has a lot of connectivity issues going on and the community is small right now it is not a huge part of the gameplay, nor did the developers and marketing push this aspect of the gameplay very well to the public's knowledge.
Basically this Hunted is a game with tons of promise and hopes and dreams of being a unique RPG Shooter Coop build it yourself violent dark fantasy romp but for every one of it's successes it has at least a failure in execution that hurts it at its core being.
I'd recommend renting it first, seeing as the game itself is highly linear and not much more than a dozen hours long and you could beat it on a weekend. You'll probably spend more time trying to get a match going where you get the character you want to play and not having someone drop out on you on purpose or otherwise.
Pros :
+ Neat blending of hack and slash with Gears of War mechanics.
+ Good voice acting for the most part
+ Some neat set pieces
+ Create a dungeon, AKA, The Crucible game mode
+ Some neat boss fights
Cons :
- Those set pieces are rare.
- Graphics are average at best overall.
- Online is flawed as well as other random bugs online and off.
- For a cooperatively oriented game, this game makes cooperation and seamlessness feel less of a priority
- Crucible does not have a big community at this point.
- Short and linear.