Publisher: Interplay, www.interplay.com
Ages: nine and up.
Parental Advisory: Violent action
Roughly based on the White Wolf pen-and-paper role-play game, Interplay's Hunter: The Reckoning is a compelling third-person action-shooter that lets you take on the role of one of four hunters. The game, while being rather short, serves intense and addictive action. This title is a port from the Xbox.
In play, the title is reminiscent of Gauntlet and Diablo. You get to play as an avenger, defender, martyr, or priest. Each character is well defined with distinct abilities and fighting styles and preferred weapons. Each also has predefined attributes, called 'edges' which may be used to their advantage.
The game offers 23 environments based on White Wolf's World of Darkness and multiple difficulty levels. There are also over 20 types of monsters to battle, including 7 bosses pulled from White Wolf source material, and over 20 melee, ranged and spell weapons.
Playing the game as different characters effectively creates a new experience and serves different cut scenes. But it's the fun, cooperative multiple-player games that really shine. The game lets up to four play together, and all characters appear on the same screen as the game adjusts the camera angle and difficulty based on the number of players. If you're up for a challenge, you can turn on the friendly fire option.
During multi-player games, you'll find yourself constantly communicating with fellow players to come up with strategies and execute them, and make sure that characters aren't cut off and overwhelmed by the waves of monsters. The only downside with the multi-player mode is that the game restricts the movement of characters to a single screen-which makes it harder for characters to move and run if they need to.
The controls, while geared somewhat towards long-range attacks, work fine and are intuitive to use. The graphics are excellent, letting the title convey its dark theme with spooky locales and detailed characters. Also, the game successfully uses music to convey a feeling and mood.
Hunter: The Reckoning is a first rate game. As a single play game, it's not all that long, but the possibilities for several people to play together are immense and inevitably raucus.
gamecube - Hunter: The Reckoning
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