For those of you who don’t know about Hunt: Showdown, it is a first-person shooter video game developed by none other than Crytek, the team behind Crisis games. It’s a multiplayer game where players get bounties on certain monsters that they have to hunt down. Yet, while they are hunting their bounty, they can get murdered by other players during the process.
Hunt: Showdown is a really competitive game with its already complex missions and now Crytek has decided to add crossplay into the mix. So, today’s question is, is Hunt: Showdown crossplay going to break the game? The simple answer is No, and here is why…
But First, What is Hunt: Showdown?
Imagine zombies but in a wild wild west setting. That is basically Hunt: Showdown. The game has been around since 2018 and has come a long way since its beta testing days. Though the game is not as popular as other FPS games, it is a fresh take that gives players a unique experience in the FPS genre. In Hunt: Showdown, players not only have to fight against other players but also have to fight against a wide range of NPCs. These include zombies and special, horrifying bosses. The objective is to make it out alive after extracting the bounty token.
Let’s explain this in more detail, players are tossed into a big swamp-like area and you the hunter are tasked with hunting down zombies or zombielike monsters all while fighting off enemies or hiding from them. Players have to do all of this while managing their ammo and supplies. The game is a real adrenaline rush that takes players to their ultimate highs and lows.
A Normal Hunt Round
A normal round of Hunt: Showdown consists of the player dropping onto the map which is a different spawn point on each side. From there you use your dark sight to look for clues. Clues that indicate where your bounty is. Dark sight is an ability that makes the entire screen turn black just like the Witcher cat vision. Yet, here you try to find blue clouds that indicate clues. Players need to find three of these clues to find where their bounty is.
Some rounds will have one bounty while other rounds will have multiple bounties to hunt. These multiple bounty missions are great for teamplay and will be fun with crossplay in Hunt: Showdown. Each bounty will have three sets of clues and each bounty is also a boss that players have to defeat. Each time a player finds a clue, the game will gray out a part of the map. This tells the player that their bounty is not on that specific side of the map. After players find three clues, the location of the bounty is revealed to them. Now you just head there to vanquish it!
Defeating a Boss and Winning
Each boss looks and feels drastically different, they have their unique weaknesses and death animations that keep players on their toes every time. Some bosses have AOE attacks that really damage the players if they get hit. So, after a player defeats a boss, they have to banish it and after the boss is banished, the boss drops bounty tokens. Players need to pick up the token and extract it in a different location to win.
When players are banishing a boss, the game informs other players that the boss is being banished and where the boss is being banished. Be careful during that moment as other players could potentially sneak up behind you during that time and kill you while taking your bounty. You can also lose your token while traveling to the extraction point and extract for 20 seconds without dying. Rival players will hear gunshots, footsteps, noises that you make. So, make every decision tactically.
Sounds are your enemy and your friend. Any sign that helps you pinpoint your enemy will give you the edge on your enemy and you can pull the trigger on them before they do to you. The game is super stressful and teamwork-oriented. You will want to play with your allies in Hunt showdown cross play if you can. Hunt: Showdown does have a solo mode but why risk your time and equipment when you can play with your team. There are also other modes where you are joined with a random partner.
Bounty Hunters have Permadeath
To accomplish all this, players get equipped from bows to revolvers to bolt-action rifles that help them achieve their mission. Moreover, your hired character can gain levels after each match. This also gives you points to allocate skills that might come in handy in your next game. If for some reason, your character or bounty hunter gets killed during a match, you lose all of the equipment, skills, and that character entirely. Meaning, losing a match in Hunt: Showdown is like losing a big chunk of the time that you invested into creating that character.
Players have to hire a new hunter and start from the beginning again. Because of this unique mechanic, Hunt: Showdown has become somewhat of a hardcore gamer’s choice today. I personally find the game very visually pleasing and the gameplay is not too bad. But I do feel that the game might become somewhat boring after a while. The game is super hyper-realistic and loves to stay close to its roots despite all the updates. You can lose everything in the blink of an eye. And alternatively, you can gain it all back in the next blink just like that.
Evolution of Hunt Showdown Crossplay
If you and your friends play Hunt: Showdown on different platforms, then you probably know that it was impossible to play together. Finding games with inbuilt cross-platform gameplay can be difficult as there aren’t many games with crossplay. Also, not every game is for everyone as different social groups will have players who like different games.
Well, you can’t satisfy all of them, that’s why Hunt: Showdown is choosing to satisfy the FPS genre-loving console players. They made the big update where they announced that Hunt: Showdown crossplay is coming to Xbox One and PlayStation. For the first time in Hunt: Showdown, you will be able to play with gamers on different console platforms.
Planned Update to Crossplay in Hunt: Showdown
Hold your horses, PC players. The sad news is only the consoles are getting crossplay. With the new update of Hunt: Showdown, the developers have added crossplay only to consoles ps4 and Xbox but they have purposefully left out PC because it would give the PC players a bigger advantage because of their quick shots with a mouse. So, PC players, forget about ever matching up against a console player and watch the two consoles duke it out among them.
The update will also have sunset as a time of day to make gameplay eerier. Further, it adds two new AI variants for players to fight against. Both are, the Grunt Doctor who specializes in poison damage and often drops medical kits, and Concertina armored, who causes heavy bleeding damage to players. On the plus side, the developers also added a new legendary hunter and two new weapons for players to experiment with.
Why is Cross-Platform Play Only Coming to Console Players?
It seems that the developers of Hunt: Showdown are afraid that because of how the game is designed, players losing everything after a single loss, PC players might stack up with each other on a full lobby and take advantage of console players that have a harder time controlling the aim and accuracy. You don’t want to face a PC player with tons of Hunt Showdown prestige levels with just a controller joystick. There are also some technical hurdles that Crytek has yet to overcome for the game to be fully cross-platform.
So, to answers your first question, is Hunt: Showdown crossplay going to break the game? And there you have it, the answer is NO, the game will still be balanced in theory at least and players will be able to enjoy the game without being out-skilled by PC gamers or hackers.
