THE NEW WEST

Five years old, HUNT: SHOWDOWN is still the most interesting FPS in gaming

- Samantha Greer and Evan Lahti

The exquisite tension of the pervasive unknown," is how general manager David Fifield describes Hunt: Showdown in a sentence.

Fifield joined Crytek in July 2022 after working on huge games like Halo and Call of Duty but fell in love with Hunt, determined to work on this weird multiplayer FPS. "The atmosphere is moody and forlorn, the landscape is corrupted and threatening, the tension builds with every step that you take, every noise that you hear... and that just keeps building and building, far longer than a typical shooter lets that build up before it just breaks into a gunfight."

Anyone who's stepped into Hunt knows exactly what Fifield is talking about. When it launched into Early Access five years ago, it made a strong impression by putting you in a hostile setting with disturbing AI monsters and other players, giving you cowboy-era technology to deal with them. That core experience has remained intact. In its three maps, plentiful overgrowth-maybe the most in the genre-obscures sight lines and makes it possible to stage authentic ambushes. Listening is a rich skill within Hunt, with even a snapping twig in the woods being a helpful source of information. Half a decade later, its emphasis on atmosphere, audio-visual fidelity and gritty gunplay sets it apart from other shooters.

When it first launched, we were still learning the phrase for its format: 'extraction shooter'. Competing teams of one, two, or three players, fighting over bounties and racing to 'extract' while dealing with AI enemies. There wasn't much precedent for this sort of thing when Hunt arrived. Battle royale games emerged at the end of 2017, but they pitted humans against each other and forced them into confrontation. Escape From Tarkov had been released only the year before but its modern military world was a far cry from Hunt's 19th century. It's a choice that gives the game more than just a distinctive look.