Huntdown - "His blood type spells AK47"

[Jamie John]

Fuck me sideways with a spoon, this game boils my piss. I'm up to Suki the Sniper now. Whattacunt. I'm not sure if ploughing through to the end is worth the grey hairs.

 

Edit: in true Rllmuk fashion, I got her on my next try after posting that. 43 deaths, though. Somehow, I think the 'Survivor' runs are going to be beyond me.

[K]

It's a hard game, but as you play you gradually get better and better, to the point where bosses start to seem quite easy. It's like Halo, in that you don't have to actually consciously learn anything - you just improve through playing, probably because it's just so enjoyable. 

 

This is an all-timer for me, I would say. It's like the platonic ideal of the 16-bit shooter/platformer - it takes that form and pretty much perfects it. It doesn't do anything more than that, but within that super-specific framework of the violent side-on Mega Drive game (the kind of thing Probe used to make), it's hard to imagine anything better. Everything about it feels like it's been so carefully considered, and tested and reiterated to the absolute limit. 

[Jamie John]

6 hours ago, K said:

It's a hard game, but as you play you gradually get better and better, to the point where bosses start to seem quite easy. It's like Halo, in that you don't have to actually consciously learn anything - you just improve through playing, probably because it's just so enjoyable. 

 

This is an all-timer for me, I would say. It's like the platonic ideal of the 16-bit shooter/platformer - it takes that form and pretty much perfects it. It doesn't do anything more than that, but within that super-specific framework of the violent side-on Mega Drive game (the kind of thing Probe used to make), it's hard to imagine anything better. Everything about it feels like it's been so carefully considered, and tested and reiterated to the absolute limit. 

 

Well, I just came in here to say that I'd rage quit and deleted it from my Switch, ha! I got up to the Dudson Twins, but after two dozen goes of getting merked, I've had enough.

 

I know that I could push through and probably finish it if I wanted to, but, crucially, unlike other hard games I've completed, I don't want to. The satisfaction isn't worth the frustration and the tedium of repeating the same sections (and listening to the same fucking voice clips) over and over again. It's a shame, as when it's good, it's very good, and it looks and sounds fantastic. I'd have liked to have played more, but I can't be done nowadays with playing games that make me want to smash things like a big baby, so this is off the hard drive and onto the abandoned pile, I'm afraid.

 

I can definitely see how this would appeal to someone with a lot of nostalgia and love for the Mega Drive-era games you mention, but that's not me, so I don't have that to push me through.

 

I bought Gunstar Heroes on the 3DS the other day, which I've also never played, and I'm going to give that ago instead. Hopefully it's not quite as needlessly punishing as this.

[Benny]

Oh dear...

 

Spoiler

Gunstar Heroes is a whole lot more unfriendly!

 

I also very much disagree about Huntdown being "needlessly punishing". On Easy mode you get a lot of health, you can restart at regular checkpoints within a level, and bosses have very specific patterns. I think it's one of the most accessible games of its type.

[Pob]

6 hours ago, K said:

It's a hard game, but as you play you gradually get better and better, to the point where bosses start to seem quite easy. It's like Halo, in that you don't have to actually consciously learn anything - you just improve through playing, probably because it's just so enjoyable. 

 

This is an all-timer for me, I would say. It's like the platonic ideal of the 16-bit shooter/platformer - it takes that form and pretty much perfects it. It doesn't do anything more than that, but within that super-specific framework of the violent side-on Mega Drive game (the kind of thing Probe used to make), it's hard to imagine anything better. Everything about it feels like it's been so carefully considered, and tested and reiterated to the absolute limit. 

 

This is a great sales pitch. I've had it on my Xbox wishlist for ages but it never seems to come down that much. Might be time to just bite the bullet. I love Robocop arcade, Rolling Thunder, Shinobi, Alien 3 (MD), Contra etc and especially like the aesthetic of the MD era Terminator games and that whole 80s vision of the future where crime was predicted to take over every city and everyone would have mohawks and jackets with the arms ripped off.

[Benny]

1 minute ago, Pob said:

I love Robocop arcade, Rolling Thunder, Shinobi, Alien 3 (MD), Contra etc and especially like the aesthetic of the MD era Terminator games and that whole 80s vision of the future where crime was predicted to take over every city and everyone would have mohawks and jackets with the arms ripped off.

 

This is literally the game for you. At any price.

[K]

17 minutes ago, Pob said:

 

This is a great sales pitch. I've had it on my Xbox wishlist for ages but it never seems to come down that much. Might be time to just bite the bullet. I love Robocop arcade, Rolling Thunder, Shinobi, Alien 3 (MD), Contra etc and especially like the aesthetic of the MD era Terminator games and that whole 80s vision of the future where crime was predicted to take over every city and everyone would have mohawks and jackets with the arms ripped off.

 

This is exactly that game. You've almost perfectly described one of the loading screens.  The music especially sounds like something Matt Furniss would have knocked up for Alien 3 or the Terminator if the audio technology of the Mega Drive was up to the job, and it even uses that synth sound that seemed to pop up in every Probe game - it's hard to describe in text, but you'll know it the instant you hear it. I have no idea if the developers were specifically referencing Probe, but it really feels like a product of that era. It feels authentically late-eighties/early-nineties, rather than nineties in inverted commas.

 

I waited for ages for it to go on sale on Xbox, but it does go down to half price on occasion. TBH, I'd say it was worth 16 quid (or however much it costs now). 

[Robo_1]

12 minutes ago, Pob said:

This is a great sales pitch. I've had it on my Xbox wishlist for ages but it never seems to come down that much. Might be time to just bite the bullet. I love Robocop arcade, Rolling Thunder, Shinobi, Alien 3 (MD), Contra etc and especially like the aesthetic of the MD era Terminator games and that whole 80s vision of the future where crime was predicted to take over every city and everyone would have mohawks and jackets with the arms ripped off.

 

My friend, this is the no-brainer of the century for you. I love all the games you've listed and this is about as close a spiritual successor (if not quite a carbon copy) to them as there is. As Benny says, this one will be worth your time at whatever price you can find it.

[Benny]

And I hate to be all cult of the "new" about it, but I actually prefer it to all of those games. It's a modern classic like Streets of Rage 4.

[K]

It's way better than all of those games. It takes the vibe and aesthetic of that era, and marries it to the 30 years of game design that's taken place since.

[Jamie John]

16 minutes ago, Benny said:

Oh dear...

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Gunstar Heroes is a whole lot more unfriendly!

 

I also very much disagree about Huntdown being "needlessly punishing". On Easy mode you get a lot of health, you can restart at regular checkpoints within a level, and bosses have very specific patterns. I think it's one of the most accessible games of its type.

 

Well, maybe that was a poor choice of words. It's 'needlessly punishing' in the sense that I don't think it needs to be as punishing as it is to still be enjoyable; I didn't enjoy it enough to keep playing it, anyway, and had it been less punishing, and less frustrating to play, then I would have continued. And I'm not sure if I was playing on Easy mode or not - I just chose the default difficulty - but it certainly didn't seem easy to me.

 

Maybe I'm just not used to these sorts of games. As I've said before, I played through Cuphead and liked that enough to grind through it, and I completed Mushihimesama recently, too, which, while not a run-and-gun like this, is still essentially about avoiding bullets from a 2D perspective, so I feel like I've got enough patience to get through certain old-school-style shooters, but this just seemed too much like hard work. At no point during my play through was I thinking to myself 'I'm definitely going to have a go with the other characters once I've finished, or try a harder difficulty'. It was more like 'Let's just get though this'.

 

I felt similarly about Streets of Rage 4, which I played last year; I'd never played a scrolling brawler before, and although I finished it on the default difficulty and could appreciate it for what it was, I certainly didn't want to keep going through it again and again on the harder settings. Having not grown up with these sorts of games, I suspect the resilience you need just isn't hard-wired into me like it is for people who grew up with this sort of stuff in the late 80s-mid 90s. Most of my early gaming memories are centred around PS1-era RPGs and other 3D games.

 

It's disappointing to hear that Gunstar Heroes is more difficult than this. I was hoping to enjoy that one and see what was the fuss was about, having never played it before. I'll still give it a go, anyway. Maybe on Easy mode 🥲

[Down by Law]

On 02/03/2021 at 11:11, Down by Law said:

Lining up a bunch of enemies in a row and vaporizing them with the blaster's charge shot is proper cathartic.

 

 

Going for the 100% on normal at the moment and it's playing each stage without dying that shows just how tightly designed this game is. You really need to think about hoarding specific weapons and explosives for bosses and vehicles, so mastering and switching to your default gun becomes ritualistic as opposed to the thing you just use when the power weapons run out. 

 

Music's awesome too, I haven't heard that sample at 0:28 since Probe games on the Mega Drive 

 

 

 

 

 

@Kthat probe sound is in this post, I know exactly what you mean !

[Pob]

59 minutes ago, Benny said:

And I hate to be all cult of the "new" about it, but I actually prefer it to all of those games. It's a modern classic like Streets of Rage 4.

Yeah man, scrolling beat em ups are my other true love from that era and SOR4 is both a love-letter to the genre and better than all of them. I played Final Fight the other day, which I was addicted to back in the day, and it’s shit compared to SOR4. 
 

I still play those old side-scrolling on-foot shooters quite often and love them, crazy difficulty curves aside. 

[Benny]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/598550/HUNTDOWN/

 

£3!?!

[Robo_1]

5 minutes ago, Benny said:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/598550/HUNTDOWN/

 

£3!?!

 

With these prices, I'm slowly replacing the indie games I bought on Switch / PS4 with Steam copies!

[matt0]

2 hours ago, Jamie John said:

 

Well, I just came in here to say that I'd rage quit and deleted it from my Switch, ha! I got up to the Dudson Twins, but after two dozen goes of getting merked, I've had enough.

 

I know that I could push through and probably finish it if I wanted to, but, crucially, unlike other hard games I've completed, I don't want to. The satisfaction isn't worth the frustration and the tedium of repeating the same sections (and listening to the same fucking voice clips) over and over again. It's a shame, as when it's good, it's very good, and it looks and sounds fantastic. I'd have liked to have played more, but I can't be done nowadays with playing games that make me want to smash things like a big baby, so this is off the hard drive and onto the abandoned pile, I'm afraid.

 

I can definitely see how this would appeal to someone with a lot of nostalgia and love for the Mega Drive-era games you mention, but that's not me, so I don't have that to push me through.

 

I bought Gunstar Heroes on the 3DS the other day, which I've also never played, and I'm going to give that ago instead. Hopefully it's not quite as needlessly punishing as this.

 

Probably too late but, you can skip levels. You can just select any level from the off. 

[Darwock]

Is that a Switch feature? On the PS4 version (which I also bought for £3.99) all the levels are locked until you have beaten the one prior - pretty much as you’d expect.

[Fry Crayola]

I don't remember all the levels being available until I beat them, no. That was on Switch.

[matt0]

1 hour ago, Darwock said:

Is that a Switch feature? On the PS4 version (which I also bought for £3.99) all the levels are locked until you have beaten the one prior - pretty much as you’d expect.

 

I could've sworn they were all unlocked from the start on the xbox, but I just started a new profile to test it and it turns out they're not. You can scroll through them all though, which is probably where I got the impression they were all freely selectable.

[Jamie John]

On 16/03/2023 at 16:24, Jamie John said:

Well, I just came in here to say that I'd rage quit and deleted it from my Switch, ha! I got up to the Dudson Twins, but after two dozen goes of getting merked, I've had enough.

 

I decided to take a long, hard look at myself in the mirror, reinstalled this, switched to the Deckard-looking guy with the more powerful gun, took my time a bit more and, after about 15 tries...just took down the Dudson Twins.

 

 

That Shogun fella best watch himself, because I'm-a-coming for him.

 

Additional bonus reaction gif:

 

Spoiler

 

(If I end up smashing my Switch out of frustration in my attempt to complete this game, then I'll blame @Darwock.)

[Stanley]

So on easy mode is it, err, easy, or just not as hard? 

[Down by Law]

You get 5 hit points instead of 3. 

[Jamie John]

4 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

You get 5 hit points instead of 3. 

 

You get 5 hit point on the default (normal) difficulty, or at least that's what I've got on Normal.

[Down by Law]

Oh right, is easy mode new then as I only remembered three difficulties . I thought it was 5 3 and 1 health points. 

[Jamie John]

6 hours ago, Jamie John said:

That Shogun fella best watch himself, because I'm-a-coming for him.

 

And finished!

 

What a great game. Who would ever be silly enough to think otherwise?

 

[alex3d]

13 hours ago, Jamie John said:

 

I decided to take a long, hard look at myself in the mirror, reinstalled this, switched to the Deckard-looking guy with the more powerful gun, took my time a bit more and, after about 15 tries...just took down the Dudson Twins.

 

 

That Shogun fella best watch himself, because I'm-a-coming for him.

 

Additional bonus reaction gif:

 

  Hide contents

 

(If I end up smashing my Switch out of frustration in my attempt to complete this game, then I'll blame @Darwock.)

 

Does it really make a difference which character to choose? That'd suck.

One boss into this game, liking it very much so far on SD.

[Jamie John]

59 minutes ago, alex3d said:

 

Does it really make a difference which character to choose? That'd suck.

One boss into this game, liking it very much so far on SD.

 

Not really, no: they each have slightly different weapons, but health and movement are the same, ASFAIK. You can change at any time, too, but it resets the level.