Hunted demon's forge review

Take Gears of war, Oblivion, a little Army of Two and you have yourself Hunted. The demon’s forge is Set in a medieval fantasy world. You control two heroes. A barbarian named Caddoc and a lady Elf named E’Lara. Caddoc specializes in melee moves and brute strength, while E’Lara is quick. She also is great with a bow and arrow. Caddoc slashes the enemies up close, while she picks them off from a distance. It’s no secret this game has coop going on.

Several places have simple puzzles, but they require teamwork to get through. Similar to Army of Two, you’ll need both characters to work together to open huge doors, move structures in dungeons and more. This is a dungeon crawler at its heart, with the next-gen mechanics companies use like crazy. Here’s where Gears of war kicks in. There’s a roadie run button, and a cover system. The problem with the cover system, and parts of the game, is that its flawed. A few times playing coop online with a friend, I got stuck to the cover and I could not break free of it. You can vault over the cover, but that doesn’t feel particularly smooth either.

Hunted uses the unreal engine, but it comes with mixed results. Sometimes Hunted will look dazzling, but in certain places the visuals will dip significantly in quality. I’m a big fan of consistency, especially in 60 dollar games.

The A.I. is pretty solid, and they put up a good fight for their-self. Sometimes the CPU will make foolish decisions like running out into the open to get slaughtered, but it’s not as frustrating as it could have been. If your ally does happen to get put down though, it works just like Gears. I really mean just like Gears. The screen will go red and the character will have to tap the button to crawl to the other person for a revival. They copied so much in that aspect, but really they should have copied more. What comes next is the most frustrating problem with the game.

Hunted naturally gets tough. They put you through brutal, and violent battles as you go along. The melee feels great and the magical abilities can all be upgraded. Like many dungeon crawlers, there’s tons of stuff to pick up along the way. Health/Magic Potions, more armor/weapons and the Regeneration Vial. The Vial ruins the experience big time for me. When your teammate gets put down, you simply cannot go over and pick the person up, you need a Vial. If one of you dies its game over. I couldn’t tell you how many times my friend was put down, and there were no Vials around at all. Maybe if you wipe out all enemies in a room then the person could come back? Nope. I cleaned the area of creatures, and all I could do was watch my teammate die right in front of me.

The story is pretty solid, and the characters are pretty interesting. The way they both interact with each other is magical. It will certainly remind you of Army of Two. The Constant joking and jabbing helps gives the game a good boost. Once you beat the game, you can come back with your souped up person and try the Adventure Plus mode. Also there’s a map maker mode which you can post online. Its pretty similar to the God of War 3 challenges. You can lay out rooms, and decide how many waves of creatures players will face in each room, and what kinds of enemies they will face. Pick your poison.

Hunted equals a decent summer title. Fun characters, brutal combat, and serviceable coop. It’s a game that’s worth a look, but there is definitely some bumps in the road.