Sometimes I come across a game that I know I’m not going to like, right from the start. Anyone who plays video games regularly has this ability to know, within a few minutes, if a new game is going to be something special or something they know they’re going to wish they skipped.
Devil’s Hunt is the latter.
I wrote about Devil’s Hunt earlier in the week. I knew going into the game that the story was going to be a hodge-podge of corny angels vs. demons melodrama, but I wanted to give the game a fair shot before outright dismissing it based on the story alone.
As I took my first steps into the game and hit the A-button to jump across a ledge, hit the A-button to crawl through a hole, hit the A-button to push fallen debris out of my way and hit the A-button to climb another ledge, I realized that what little hope I had for the game was evaporating with each tap of the A-button.
The game starts in medias res, with the protagonist being no more than an avatar for players to move around. There is nothing explained at the start. You’re simply in control of a generic white dude with a pocket chain (I didn’t realize that’s still a cool-guy look?) who makes a few comments that made little sense.
“The monster from my dreams,” he said as I moved him out onto a vista of a burning city street. I guess he’s been having dreams about monsters…that’s all I picked up from that because that’s all the game presented me with. I waited for something else to happen but I found myself just standing there awkwardly, admiring the developer’s bravery for using such low-quality fire effects. Before long I realized it was time to hit the A-button and move out of the area.
After a small voyage through the burning city that Devil’s Hunt started me in, I came across my first pack of demons. The game instructed me on how to use light and heavy attacks (the right bumper and right trigger) and let me beat up some low-level baddies. No sweat. Apparently the guy already has cool demon powers at the beginning of the game, because while I was button mashing trigger pulling I accidentally button mashed and used one of my special attacks.
The effect it had on the demons was shockingly disappointing.
A wave of flame shot out of the guy’s body and the demons didn’t even notice as the fire blast faded through their bodies. I eventually trigger-pulled enough to knockout one demon and then the second I got to execute with a funky-looking slow-motion slap. I hesitate to call it a punch, the animation looked very weak. Most of the animation during combat was weak and had no weight, but I hoped the execution would have a bit more gravity. It did not.
After a few more less-than-thrilling demon fights and a half-dozen more A-button sequences, I came to the game’s first boss: the monster from his dreams.
The minotaur-like beast was impressively vicious looking, I’ll admit. The beast’s attacks hit hard and I found myself dying a lot, even with using the character’s stiff sprinting and dodging abilities. The problem is that the protagonist’s attacks have such little weight it didn’t ever feel like I was actually impacting the monster when I’d run up and slug at it a few times. The health bar would shrink a few centimeters and that was my only indication that the monster was taking damage.
It was an incredibly underwhelming battle.
I kept dying because the game never bothered explaining how to play it beyond showing me the light and heavy attack buttons. There were options in the main menu for controls, but the fact that the game never presented me with a clear explanation organically was more annoying than having to sort through a few menus to learn what buttons made me sprint or dodge.
After dying to the minotaur beast a few times I gave up. I found nothing about the game enjoyable at all.
Beyond some consistent framerate drops, I encountered no bugs or glitches — then again I never ventured very far into the game before I decided to call it quits. Devil’s Hunt is a sub-par experience that I simply cannot recommend.
A retail copy of Devil’s Hunt was provided to Epic Brew by the publisher.
