Most recent Steam user reviews are Mostly Negative

Crytek’s sweaty and superlativesurvivalboss-rush shooterHunt: Showdownhas been relaunched as Hunt: Showdown 1896, introducing a comprehensive technological update alongside a chronological leap forward to a new map in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. As is tradition for big 2.0-style updates, some players absolutely loathe it, with recent Steam user reviews dragging the consensus underwater.

Here’s how Crytek say the jump to a new flavour of CryEngine improves the game, courtesy of our dear friend Monsieur Press Release and his trusted associate, Senorita Blockquote:

  • A leap in visual fidelity, including improvements across textures, lighting, environments, animations, and more.

  • Hunt has been upgraded to DirectX 12, which means better graphical performance and higher FPS.

  • A new light cache system and specular tracing for multi-bounce Global Illumination mean higher quality lighting and more depth to environmental visuals, as well as richer darkness.

  • Water and hair shaders bring the world of Hunt even further to life with more realistic hair on characters and water and rivers that have never looked better with improved foam, flow, and turbulence for increased realism.

  • Adding DLSS and FSR gives the game a performance boost with higher frame rates and sharper graphics.

  • Improved CrySpatial audio and audio slapback ecosystem provide improved clarity and sound definition, immersing you even further into the game.

The above “drastic leap” in visual and audio fidelity and performance accompanies a new biome, a new Scorched Earth live event, new types of non-boss munster to slay, a new Wild Target or roaming boss, additional vicious period firearms and melee implements, and new varieties of Hunter. The new map is Mammon’s Gulch - a relatively radiant and crisply defined alpine playground, next to the flyblown swamplands of pre-1896 Showdown - and the new Wild Target is the Hellborn, who hikes about the forests coughing fire at people. I still think the Spider is the worst of the roster. Pray god they never let it come looking for you outdoors.

The complaints cover a range - rants about bugs, upset over nuances such as bullet drop, objections to the presentation of store adverts when you start the game. Some of the negative reviews are from people with hundreds or thousands of hours of Hunt Showdown playtime, which you could look at in a couple of ways: firstly, these players are expert sources of feedback, and secondly, these players are overinvested - they’ve been playing for so long they possibly can’t see the wood for the trees.

It’s worth reiterating that the point of the refresh was partly to bring in new people, not just mollify the old guard. Still, I can’t help thinking of Fifield’s comments to me last year about Cryteknever “replacing” Hunt Showdown with a sequel, as Blizzard hasOverwatch1 withOverwatch 2. As far as I know, there’s no option but to play the new version of the game. Offering the ability to reverse key aspects of the 1896 build might soothe the naysayers, though this would presumably be extremely difficult to implement.

Crytek developers are firefighting in the review comments. “Our design team has been hard at work on the long-requested UI overhaul, which is a crucial improvement that’s been needed for some time,“reads one reply. “We’re focused on balancing simplicity with functionality, which was the whole idea behind the new design. We will keep gathering player feedback and refine the UI going forward as well.”

The game will be free across 15th-19th August, if you want to give the ole' spider-wrangler a spin and make up your own mind. In other news, I continue to hold out hope for a Hunt singleplayer campaign -Fifield has suggested it’s possible, albeit not very likely.