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Have You Played… Hunt: Showdown?Bestest best sound design

Bestest best sound design

Image credit:Crytek

Image credit:Crytek

A Hunt: Showdown screenshot in which two players, waist-deep in swampwater, prepare to kill a Grunt standing on a pier in front of them.

I’m writing this just a day or so afterHunt: Showdowncelebrated its three-year anniversary with an event which caused it to break its all-time concurrent players record. Of course, that would be more noteworthy if the game hadn’t been breaking its concurrent players record with increasing frequency over the past several months. It seems that word has started to spread at last that Hunt, with its wonderfully unusual approach to battle royale and competitive multiplayer, is well-worth the average player’s free time.

Players in Hunt: Showdown take on the role of hunters with a contract to kill an AI “boss” monster hiding somewhere on the map. On the way you must use your Dark Sight to find clues which will narrow down the location of the boss so you can defeat it, banish it, collect the two tokens that the banished boss drops, and then leave at one of the extraction points on the edges of the map.

Hunt: Showdown - Launch TrailerWatch on YouTube

Hunt: Showdown - Launch Trailer

Cover image for YouTube video

Of course, it’s not that simple. Various unheimlich AI monsters roam almost every part of the map, and other players are never too far away either. You can play each match entirely how you want: you could rush the boss and try to exfiltrate before anyone else finds you; you could go out roaming for other hunters to kill; you could lie in wait at an extraction point hoping to find hunters that you can kill and scavenge their boss tokens from; or you can just leave the map and end the match at any time, thus keeping your character and equipment intact for the next game.