Hunted: The Demon's Forge - Xbox 360 Review

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3.3 ***

I knew nothing about this game until a friend encouraged me to pick it up. The only thing I knew, was that it was touted as being a fun co-op hack and slasha promise on which the game delivers. One thing I will emphasize is that this game, at least for me, is a lot more fun playing with a human partner rather than the game's AI. It's not that the AI is poorly programmed (though they do walk in front of you and impede your movements at times), but rather that the presence of a human presents a more dynamic and interesting game-play. One thing that ultimately sold me on the game was the Bethesda logoit's hard for me to think of a game with their brand that does not meet expectations.

Graphics

The graphics won't blow your mind, nor will they disappoint you and render the game less playable. If great graphics are important to you, beware this will not be the selling point of the game.

GamePlay/Control

This game plays VERY similar to Gears of War, as others will note. The button layout is practically the same, with a dedicated "action/run/dodge" button leaving your other buttons for aiming and weapon selection. The controls in my opinion are very user friendly and excellent overall. One interesting element for this hack-n-slash is the use of block. Yep, you'll actually have to block.

Characters

The game has two interesting characters with engrossing personalities. The dialog is often humorous and feels relatively natural for the world in which the protagonists interact. Where some hack-n-slash games can become tedious this game prevails during such moments with interesting conversation through out it's presentation.

Challenge

This game is quite challenging on the higher difficulty levels. However, with a human partner this is very welcome and greatly adds to the games enjoyment as you both struggle to survive the next wave of enemies.

Should You Buy It?

If you have a friend to play with and are in the mood for a fantasy romp with a decent storythis game is a bucket of fun. If you are looking for an action role playing game, this will likely let you down a bit. The game is geared for fast pacing, without the need to halt the action. You will not collect items and have an inventory to root through. Instead, you'll have a sword, armor, bows, etc and replace them with better loot that you find along the way. This game is an enjoyable slash-fest/shooter that will keep you entertained for hours. The replay value is enhanced with the added ability to create your own dungeons, or play a friends creation. In my opinion, this game is definitely worth a play-through. However, playing single-player is rather dreadful and the game becomes quickly monotonous.

Have any questions or comments? Feel free to leave me a comment and I will respond ASAP.

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Hunted: Demons Forge

This is an interesting game to review, for it has an abundance of strengths and weaknesses. When I went into this game, I didn't completely know what to expect. I'd heard this was supposed to be a dungeon crawling RPG. I'd seen comparisons drawn between Demon's Souls and this; never in a million years would I have thought that it would have been so similar to Gears of War, but it was. This game is a far cry from an RPG. That's ok though, I loved Gears of war. A forewarning to those coming into this game expecting an RPG, get the thought out of your head. This is as much an RPG as God of War, Ninja Gaiden 2, or Gears of War is one; that is to say, it isn't. Some minor customization doesn't make a game an RPG.

Basically, the game plays like a dark fantasy (as opposed to dark science-fiction) Gears of War, cross to some extent with Dante's Inferno for combat. It actually works, but there are issues.

Story: 7/10

The game is fairly weak here. There is very little character development or back-story to them. Aside from the banter exchanged, there is little to go on. They are obviously friends, and their motivation is money, but aside from that, there is nothing more to their actions. As for the actual main-story, there is an evil horde (comprised of Minotaurs, Wargar, spiders and dragons) that has subjugated the towns people and are using them for slave labor...your job: you are hired to liberate them (more or less). There are also side characters (witches, etc.), but it's not really much more complicated than this.

Graphics: 7/10

While the graphics aren't bad, they aren't great either. They are basically a little like the game: Darksiders , albeit less refined. That said, the designs are quite good and there are a decent variety of enemies to fight through. A few are recycled, but that's typical of this genre.The effects are quite average to be honest. The shading work could have been better, there are also quite a few artifacts (e.g. when you prompt the glowing light for guidance), and there are quite a few jagged lines, but a lot of it is forgivable.

Audio: 7/10

The soundtrack is average. There isn't anything epic here that will likely make you remember the game for its great music (much like Gears of War 2 the music was average in contrast to the original game where Embry Square and the Locust theme were quite memorable). Similarly, the dialog is delivered largely monotone, and what dialog is presented (especially in game), is usually reused so much so that you will get sick of it by the end (e.g. "Look! Another door!")

Game-play: 8/10

Where the game is lacking in the other areas, it more than makes up for here. The combat is fun. I played this solo and for the most part had a great time. I played E'lara and sniped like crazy. There weren't a multitude of bows to choose from (slow and high powered, medium speed and medium powered and fast and low powered). Basically from these, you get various drops you can use (I chose medium because I wasn't quick enough on the triggers to take advantage of the fast paced ones) many of which have a limited enchantment on them making them much more powerful (e.g. In Chapter six I found one that was around 490 for standard power and enchanted to well over 1200 that was a beast).

The movement was also quite smooth, you could dash long distances and dive roll ala Gears of War. There was also a hack and block element to the game too that wasn't unlike Darksiders. Attacks were quite smooth, and evasion through dive rolls could generally be done mid-way to cancel (not always though).

In regard to co-op there were quite a few attacks which worked well together, e.g. the levitate attack of your partner helped you to take out quite a few enemies in tandem. All in all, the game-play was quite cleverly done through elements like this.

Despite the positive aspects of the game-play, there were negatives as shall be outlined below.

Firstly: there were a few too many hordes of enemies for my liking. Basically, once you turned a corner, you got three waves of enemies. This aspect got a little repetitive. It would have been nice if there were less enemies so that you could play a little more strategically.

Secondly: it would have been nice to have a scope for your bow so you can focus on headshots. Supposedly some of the bows do have this function, but I didn't encounter it during my play-through. I think it would have helped to make the game more strategic rather than the 'at times' purely button mashing extravaganza that it was.

Note: I've since been told that every bow has a scope (I tested this and found otherwise)...that said, the hordes of enemies that come don't make the game any more strategic. I still think there is a little to much enemy flooding in this to make it strategic, and they seem to pop up from everywhere; it's never fun get get flanked when you 'know for a fact' that you have cleared out an area.

Length/Last-ability: 7/10

The game has: the standard Co-op, Crucible where you can make your own levels, as well as standard Campaign. The first play-through should take you around 12 hours possibly a bit longer depending on how much exploration you do. There isn't a great deal of exploration though, as many areas are simply 'cut-off' from access though they look like they should lead somewhere (a slight annoyance, but you get over it. The game itself is six chapters, and each chapter is divided up into sub-objectives (again, much like Gears of War). There are collectables like Death Stones, Dragon's Tears, and secret areas to find (I only found one of the areas in my play-through). It should keep the average person quite busy.

Overall: 7/10

The game is quite solid all in all. With a bit more work, this game easily could have been an 8 or a 9, but it's with the areas that this game is lacking in (voice work, graphics and some of the tweaked combat mechanics mentioned like a scope for the bow) that this game loses marks. Hopefully this game will be like LA Noire in that it will motivate other companies to try and innovate on what they have done here. I personally love Dark Fantasy games (ala Demon's Souls and anime like Berserk), so I would love to see a game of this style with a beefed up story, graphics and voice work. That said, this will leave many happy, but for those coming into this expecting an RPG...I think you will be sadly disappointed.

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I rented this game on a whim. Loved it. Flew through this one in a few days, its co-op too so that makes it even better. If you like to treasure hunt with out being given horrible head aches and love old fashioned bow, sword, and magic killing, Give this a try!

Honest reviews on Hunted: The Demon's Forge - Xbox 360

and we both really enjoy playing it, but....it's really hard. A lot of the times, we have a hard time being able to see the enemies we are supposed to be fighting. I thought this was going to be an easy game we could just have fun playing together, but its not. Also, this could just be because I just suck at games. The characters in the game are interesting though, and it is fun, when we are able to get through the fighting parts.

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This may come across as a scathing review, but hopefully, the included details will get through to gamers like myself and my brother who were expecting much more from a title like this and were let down considerably. In brief,if you're at all drawn by the medieval setting and prospect of playing a local co-op action RPG (i.e., many fantasy monsters, frequent loot, skill customization, roaming towns, weapon/item shops), you'll be wholly put off by this one-note effort. This is just your typical mindless shooter--if you've ever played the Uncharted games or "Army of 2", where you face off in endless shootouts against scores of uniform enemy soldiers, you've seen this kind of thing before. Just replace the guns with bows and you've basically got "Hunted: Demon's Forge."

Now for the gory details . . .

Yes, there's melee fighting, and it definitely has its moments of adrenaline induced fun. However, attack animations are limited, and you'll always need the archer character to pick off the endless droves of enemy archers you're faced with throughout this plodding title. The focus on shooting and our frustration with it here can't be overstated. The mechanics are fine--I rather enjoyed being an archer at first, but there's simply way too much of it. The levels where my brother and I were encountering an enemy or two standing around the corner were admittedly fun and seemed promising of adventure . . . until we'd inevitably come upon another paintball field setup where we'd be crouching behind logs and barriers in another "gunfight" with bows. And this isn't a complaint about difficulty at all. Unlike other reviewers, we actually did enjoy the limited potions (you can normally only carry one or two) and the fact that you will get DESTROYED if you don't plan your your attack and fight recklessly. A healthy dose of desperate survival can be a good thing, and in that sense, this game delivers.

Unfortunately, this aspect is not enough to offset the game's overall tedium and lack of variety.

Aside from the all too frequent shooter sequences, making the combat even less variable is the extremely simple "skill tree" your character is faced with--rather than having a large variety of strengths/abilities in which to build your character, you're presented with a total of 3 attack and 3 magic "moves," each of which you may invest additional points in to improve damage, reduce mana cost, ect. Adding to this frustration is the fact that the game simply limits you with regard to how many points you may put into any one skill. So, for example, if you want to take the approach of stacking your points into a fire spell, no such luxury as further upgrades aren't available until subsequent chapters. With such limited customization comes limited replayability and more tedium, as you're eventually left with no option but to disperse all of your points across all of the available skills.

But who needs skill trees when you can just go around mashing enemies, collecting loot, and fashioning your character with new arms and armor, right? Games like Diablo and the console Baldur's Gate games were just monotonous click-fests on the surface, but the near endless amount of possibilities in terms of what enemies could drop and the prospect of finding that one awesome piece of gear at the shop always kept things relatively fresh. In this game, however, there are essentially a whopping four weapon types you may find--slow, medium, fast, and special. The "special" weapons simply add some elemental effect, but because this effect is temporary, you're inclined to stay away from these. And armor is few and far between--we may have found 3 or 4 armor pieces throughout the game. Needless to say, looting is not something that adds replayability here, and there's a reasonable chance that you find a weapon on the first level that you keep for the majority of the game. Oh, and there are NO shops from which you may actually use the gold you collect. Gold, thus, is mostly useless (it does give you "points" with which to unlock things in the custom dungeon mode), so there's little satisfaction in finding that hidden section of the cave stocked with treasure.

So, there's little sense that you're ever building your character up with skills or weapons. But hey, skill customization and looting can be nil if there is adventure and excitement in the gameplay. Unfortunately, as with the overall theme of this game, there is virtually NO variety here. Each level is mostly linear, with a set number of aforementioned "secret areas" that you may find, in which case you might stumble upon a few treasure chests that contain useless gold. But perhaps our BIGGEST complaint of of this game is in the enemies you fight. Throughout the game, you will fight "wargar" (orcs, basically), skeletons, and spiders. Wargar and skeletons are the same, existing essentially as humanoid versions of the army troops you would fight over and over in a shooter--some will come at you with melee attacks, while most others will be hiding behind walls trying to pick you off with bows. Spiders were introduced seemingly as a last ditch effort to add some combat variety, as you'll have to fight them with your melee weapon and use your shield a lot. After playing through the first two chapters, you'll begin to realize (unless your brain is comfortably on auto-pilot) that there's NEVER a sense of foreboding when entering a new area--no new enemies (wargar that shoot magic beams instead of arrows do not count), and no real prospect of encountering something new and dangerous. Just waves of soldiers shooting arrows at you with the occasional spider jumping in. Do you love those Uncharted games? You'll probably love this. Shoot, hide, rinse, repeat.

The graphics are fine, and the storyline is bland (your characters just exchange unconcerned witticisms about who killed more bad guys throughout the game). But to me, these things are peripheral--this is purely a COMBAT game, so how is it acceptable to have so few enemies and so few variables (i.e., weapons, status effects, skills)? This game is fun at first, but the idea that the developers figure that such little variety will be lost on consumers is just maddening. I suppose the era of the first-person shooter--which hinges on the notion that gamers consist primarily of teens and young adults who can play Call of Duty and Gears of War for 18 hours straight, killing the same thing over and over again with their mouths agape--played greatly into the development of this game. But even with this bland formula, more weapon and skill customization could have improved the experience immensely!

Utterly disappointing and could have been SO much more! Here's hoping they don't scrap this franchise and instead improve upon its flaws, because despite everything I've said, there are aspects of this game (local co-op, tactical fighting in a medieval atmosphere, and sense of survival) that have a lot of potential.