Greetings StopGame.Ru! Surely many of you have already heard about today’s object. But there are so many people, so many opinions, and today I would like to share my vision of the game Devil’s Hunt. The review was extremely difficult for me, but I will do it. Happy reading!

Text version

Devil’s Hunt – as the developers assure this action third person game, but in my opinion it’s typical, poorly made hack and slash. The game was developed by a small studio Layopi Games located in Warsaw, and published by 1C Entertainment. The game was presented at GDC 2019. After showing the demo version, many players noticed a deterioration in the quality of the game compared to the version presented at Gamescom, and were wary of this product. We will now find out whether the fears were justified.

The game’s plot is based on Pavel Lesnyak’s novel «Equilibrium» and is dedicated to the eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil. Angels and demons are preparing for an epic battle that will take place in the human world. The player will play as Desmond, the son of a wealthy entrepreneur. Desmond himself, let’s be honest, is not particularly smart and instead of developing his father’s company and continuing his work, he spends money on a good life and realizes himself through his muscles in underground battles. Because of his not-so-far mind, Desmond gets into a series of troubles, he loses the main fight, his fiancée cheats on him with his best friend, his friend successfully escapes, and the main character himself, unable to withstand the pressure, takes his own life and flies off the bridge. Fortunately, the demons, led by Lucifer, turn out to be smarter than the main character and, seeing him as a Savior and Destroyer, decide to enter into an agreement with him. For most of the game, Desmond will be at the mercy of the demons, but at one point, the main character realizes that the strength of his muscles is more important than the cunning and cunning of his enemies and decides to abandon those who gave him a second chance. In the first half of the game, the cut scenes are much longer than the gameplay time, and throughout all the cut scenes you will hear such melodic words as: “Motherf*cker” “F*ck you” and “What the f*ck?*, every sentence.

It seems that everything is there, but you are stupid and cannot hold it

What is the main ingredient in any slasher film??
A) combat system;
B) platforming;
C) abundance of opponents;
D) plot and dialogues;

If you chose option D you can submit your resume to Layopi Games.

Let me remind you that I regard the game exactly as a slasher, because despite the fact that the developers classify their product as action games, all game mechanics refer us specifically to slashers. Let’s look at them.

Combat system. In any slasher film, the focus is on the combat system and here it is extremely, extremely dull and poorly done. Desmond’s main arsenal is his bazooka arms. There are three schools in the game: Executioner, Unclean and Abyss, which open as you progress. The first school is based on dealing damage, all the skills of this school are somehow aimed at maximum damage, a quick rollback of skills and an increase in rage. Here I want to note that Desmond can only use 3 abilities from each school, and rage is an additional indicator, filling which will help the main character carry out “brutal” finishing moves and turn into a demon. But more on that a little later.

But at least some www.nonukcasinosites.co.uk/review/trino-casino/ variety.

The second school, Unclean, is aimed at supporting the main character. In addition to a couple of attack abilities, this school improves the main character’s health, reduces damage received and restores health during battle. The third school is the Abyss, based on control. The school itself is not large and has only 3 active skills, one of which traps opponents, the second sucks them into a sphere, and the third attacks. Each school has only 5 combinations and here the first problem arises. In addition to the fact that for a game in which the combat system is dominant there are few combinations, this combo must be purchased for souls, like other abilities. Because of this, at first the player continually fights with basic combinations of 3 light blows 1 heavy. Addictive gameplay.

In addition, you cannot combine schools. The player can switch between schools during the battle, but only after performing a combination, so you shouldn’t expect skillful and long combos with switching styles like in DMC. For his defense, the main character is endowed with a crooked parry and more or less tolerable evasion. No blocks, which makes it difficult to fight with a large number of opponents.

In concept, Desmond was cuter. And not only him..

The second, no less important and poorly developed point is impact or recoil during battle. Kicking opponents with various blows, in any slasher game and not only how the opponents react to the blow is important. In Devil’s Hunt, enemies rarely react. The character’s first blows may have a return in the form of an interrupted enemy attack, animation, and be accompanied by some sounds. But after that, a situation may arise when the enemy doesn’t care about your attacks and he, standing still, absorbing damage, will prepare for the next attack. And such a moment extremely spoils the impression of the game, because in essence the enemies do not care about your attacks and the player does not feel that very juice and power when beating the undead. And this is unforgivable for any combat system.

I mentioned earlier that Desmond can turn into a demon when his rage meter is full. The scale itself fills up when striking, and the demon form does not last long enough, which allows you to kill 1 fat mob or a bunch of small ones. In the form of a demon, the character cannot run, but can only be magnetized to the enemy, and his move set is meager and consists only of cyclical waving of his arms. The player can also be resurrected once per level, but this will not make the battles much easier, since you will often die from the crookedness of the local combat in the later stages.

Desmond in demon form. Fun fact: there are enemies in the game whose appearance is completely identical. Guys are messing around

Also, apparently because of his muscles, it is difficult for Desmond to jump, thereby depriving the combat system of verticality and the second important point for a slasher useless and annoying.

Platforming. It’s no secret that many slasher films use elements of platformers to advance the character through the level, somewhere the player just needs to jump from point A to point B, somewhere real challenges arise. But not in the case of our object. All platforming in Devil’s Hunt comes down to pressing one button. The player approaches one point, presses the action button and the character performs it. Such a dull mechanic is so absurd that even in order to jump from a small ledge, you need to find the point of action and press the button. The developers found this system interesting and actively use various acrobatics in their levels.

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Speaking of levels. The level design, like the previous elements, is extremely questionable. There is no interactivity in the levels, which sometimes raises the question “Why make such a large location where there is nothing to do?”?» Exploring locations is not so interesting that the only elements that can be found at the levels, namely useless notes with sketches of opponents and inscriptions, the developers slip almost under the player’s nose so that he does not miss them.

The number of opponents also leaves much to be desired. You can count the bosses in the game on one hand, a couple of them are really well made, but the number of ordinary opponents is upsetting. The game may not be big, but kicking the same dummies is tiring, although… here I’m already finding fault and against the backdrop of the above disadvantages, the variety of opponents fades into the background.

These are the notes you can find too. And yes, this is not the worst option 🙂

Some people in reviews and articles praise graphic design, but personally I didn’t see anything interesting for myself. Yes, a couple of levels can please the eye, but the quality of the graphics, despite the modern engine, leaves much to be desired. Also, for some reason, everyone who uses Unreal Engine 4 considers it their duty to add such a “revolutionary” visual effect as falling leaves, ashes, and other glowing debris floating in the air.I’m a fan of all sorts of glowing things, but even I started to get tired of this effect in every game. Not to mention that there are also problems with optimization in the game and the game constantly freezes.

The animation in the game is also bad. If in your review of Greedfall (If you haven’t seen it, read it) I criticized the facial animation, then in Devils Hunt things are no better, but even worse. It’s difficult for me to determine whether Motion Capture was used or the animation was done manually, but please, developers. If you don’t have the budget for good facial animation, make it like in The Witcher, no need to try to repeat Uncharted.

The animation of finishing moves looks just as bad, and their brutality, combined with the sound design, causes more laughter than pleasure. But the combo movements (of which there are not many) look quite spectacular and for this you can give the game a small plus. Two characters in the game also don’t look bad: Death and Desmond’s girlfriend.

It was 2019.

I also have a lot of questions about sound design. Initially, I wanted to praise the game for the dynamic rock music in the background during battles, but later I realized that this is the only track that plays and it plays extremely rarely and quietly. The sounds of blows are quiet and blurry, and at the moments of finishing, when the player is expecting a brutal crunch of bones in the style of Batman, the game gives the waiter a faint slurping sound, as if someone crushed a tomato in his hand.

I understand that Devil’s Hunt is the studio’s first game and I could forgive some minor errors, considering that it is also a B category game. But the game is very poorly implemented even if you don’t take into account that it’s a slasher film. Maybe I’m biased, but going through the game was a kind of torture for me and I only got fleeting pleasure at the end of the game. When the character became fully upgraded and it became possible to use all styles completely. But even there the game managed to disappoint, throwing packs of fat opponents at me like Doom, which turned the battles into squeezing all the juice out of me. I sincerely hope that the developers see their shortcomings and if they still decide to release another game, they will treat the new project with a greater degree of responsibility and spend more money and time on development. Devil’s Hunt, unfortunately, will not be saved by patches and fixes, so I do not recommend this game even for testing, you will only waste your time.

If you are smarter than Desmond, and my readers are only like that, you will understand that to win the battle for Earth, you just need to put a plus on this article, thereby increasing my army. Thank you for your attention, use only ready-made and high-quality products, and see you soon.