Deadhunt = 3D Crimsonland-like Action!!

[LordGek]

Hey Folk,

I just snagged this one and am having a lot of mindless zombie splattering fun. Its clearly an arcadey FPS in the style of Crimsonland (one big arena filled with swarms of baddies and interesting powerups). In sort of a tip of the hat to Crimsonland's perks this game uses runes which you're character only has a finite capacity to hold (I'm not sure if this increases over time or something) that will grant you extra hitpoints, ammo capacity, extra damage, etc. Forcing you to make some choices while running around out there, do you put a little speed boost in one of your final slots or are you going to hold out for more health?

http://www.deadhunt.com/

[Ben Sones]

I gotta admit, I'm not too impressed with this. It's very much like Crimsonland in 3D--almost a carbon copy, in terms of the basic game structure. But Crimsonland was designed to be played from a top-down view, and the concept just doesn't work well as a first-person game.

For one thing, the big, flat, mostly empty arenas filled with spawning monsters that beeline for you is a lot less compelling when your field of view is as limited as it is in a first-person game. In Crimsonland, you can see what's going on all around you. In this game, you can only see what's going on in the direction in which you are facing, unless you look down at the radar. But you can't do that and shoot at the same time, and you need to shoot constantly or you'll get swarmed. If the levels had more detail or tactical variety, this idea might work better. As it stands, I'd rather play Crimsonland.

[DrCrypt]

I want to stress the positives first: it's about time a game was made that was entirely centered around the gameplay of killing black people! The only enemies the two demo levels threw at me were "black man in underpants", "black man in underpants and helmet" and "black person in gold armor but no helmet OR underpants". So big thumbs up there - in today's PC culture, where a white man can be unjustly reviled for calling a black person "niggardly" even though that was just a slip of the tongue and they didn't mean to put the "d" in and anyway "niggard is as niggard does" as my mama used to say, it is a refreshing to take back the "streets" (or, in this case, Easter Isle) and strike a blow (with a shotgun!) to "black power" and "ebonics" and all that other crap. I haven't invested in the full version, but I understand one of the weapons there is a pick-up truck with a chain and a harness attached to the bumper. Can't wait!

But otherwise, I'm disappointed at first blush. As Ben Sones says, Crimsonland throws an insane amount of action at you but it is still playable because you always know where you are in relation to the monster hordes thanks to a top-down perspective, which allows you to stealthily weave through clouds of monsters. Not only that, but it starts off slow, it gives you weapon choices, power-ups are clearly identifiable, etc. It's chaos, but witheven marginal skill it can be organized.

On the other hand, Deadhunt is just confusing: you have no spatial awareness. Running backwards or strafing makes you move slower, and the monsters are way too fast to begin with. I'm constantly getting stuck on in-game geometry, which is basically instant death in a game like this. You're stuck with whatever weapon the game gives you at the start of the level. The first level actually has entire swarms of monsters that can't be killed except by headshot(!). Power-ups are almost impossible to tell apart from any distance, and you can only pick up so many. Etc.

Crimsonland has it's problems too: there's no real way to beat it except by one or two perk/weapon strategies. But at least you can tell where you are, what you're doing and what's attacking you most of the time. In the meantime, if you want an insane action FPS, play Painkiller or Serious Sam.

[Erik]

I can't deny any of Dr. Crypt's complaints. They're all valid. But I still like this game. Well, I like the demo. I don't want to bore and confuse you with a lot of technical New Games Journalism, so let me just say that Deadhunt's fun. And hard.

Wait - I actually just read Dr. Crypt's complaints. The moving slower when you run backwards thing is all part of the game's strategy and tactics - the strategy being "plan to run forward sometimes", the tactic being "now run forward!" It's not a bad little idea since it forces you to make a stand for a few seconds and then turn tail and haul ass to a safer position. Limiting the number of permanent rune powers (there are other powerups that are unlimited and temporary) seems like a good idea, too - more tactics! Also, even though the animation for the enemies is kind of stiff, they have lots of shoot-offy parts. I like that.

Still can't argue with Crypt's other observations, though. It's really baffling that they managed to confuse zombies and blacks. On the other hand, the developers are from Europe, where they've probably only ever experienced white people and draculas, so they may not know any better. I also don't understand why there's only one weapon per level. Maybe that's not the case in the full version.

Deadhunt's no Crimsonland, but it's no Robotron 64 either. It's in the middle there innoffensively taking up space until Serious Sam 2 comes out.

[DrCrypt]

Being united under a White Power Gamer's flag as we are, whose emblem (if I get my say) will be one of those impish Calvins I have on my mudflap wearing an X-Box t-shirt and urinating on one of Louis Farrakhan's early mambo recordings, I think we can both comfortably agree to disagree. For me, though, trying to keep a thousand black gladiators controlled necessitates unimpaired movement in any direction, a la Crimsonland. Which Deadhunt doesn't deliver, what with the limited movement speed when trying to get a bunch of Black Panthers off my back, plus the fact that I keep on running into trees and pillars. Also: are there any powerups (like Crimsonland's fire bullets, freeze bonus or nuke) that will allow you to get a handle on the negro hordes if they start getting the one-up on you? It needs that too.

As for the confusion, re: "Do Europeans think black people are zombies?", I wouldn't be surprised. Not only is the complexion the same (after a certain amount of ripening), but Europe doesn't really have black people, which is lucky for them as it allows them to pompously pontificate to Americans on end about "ze raze proh-blemz" we have in a country that actually has different races. I can only assume they saw Dawn of the Dead and, due to faulty subtitling, thought it was a documentary on mid-70's Pittsburgh race riots. Meanwhile, the Eastern Europeans who designed Deadhunt are busy ethnically cleansing motherfuckers that an American would need to do a DNA test on to even discern a racial discrepancy.

[Ben Sones]

Wait - I actually just read Dr. Crypt's complaints. The moving slower when you run backwards thing is all part of the game's strategy and tactics - the strategy being "plan to run forward sometimes", the tactic being "now run forward!" It's not a bad little idea since it forces you to make a stand for a few seconds and then turn tail and haul ass to a safer position.

See, that's a tactic I can already enjoy in a number of other shooters, some of which (specifically, all of them save Deadhunt) feature level design that makes the running part more interesting. You can run, using the level architecture to try to get the drop on your opponent, or you can turn and fight. But Deadhunt doesn't have any level architecture, except for a few random trees and rocks that seem to exist merely to provide a disincentive for running backwards. There's only one place to run--away from the zombies--which makes it sort of like a poor man's rail shooter. Or maybe a biatholon game with zombies and no skis.

The "big empty level" concept works well in Crimsonland because the enemies themselves become the level architecture, sort of an ever shifting mass of hazards all around you. But as the good Doctor and I were saying, that really only works when you can see the ever-shifting mass of hazards all around you, so that you can move accordingly. Deadhunt doesn't give you that experience, so you are forced to resort to cheesy shooting gallery tactics just to stay alive.

[Erik]

cheesy shooting gallery tactics

I don't know what this means, but it's a nice sounding string of words. I think I like cheesy shooting gallery tactics. I do understand the overhead vs. 3D complaint, however.

If the majority the game's black people moved a little slower, I'd say the whole experience would be 20% better. They're not operating on the fabled CPT, that's for sure. They also need to add some serious visual and audio cues to the item pickup sequence, which currently features total silence and whatever you call the eye version of total silence. After that, they should loosen the area of effect for remote pickup, because with everybody running so fast and since you can't stop moving for more than a second, powerups are a real bitch to home in on.

And for how tightly they're integrated into the interface and how not especially powerful they are, the game needs to be a lot less stingy with the grenades. I mean, you get like 1.

I don't know why I'm defending a game I essentially like armed with nothing but complaints. Again, you can probably thank the New Games Journalism.

are there any powerups (like Crimsonland's fire bullets, freeze bonus or nuke) that will allow you to get a handle on the negro hordes if they start getting the one-up on you

One level has a fairly satisfying nuke powerup that destroys everything in an expanding ring that radiates outward from Stonehenge. There's a slowdown powerup. But since it slows you down too, it doesn't seem especially useful. It just gives you some time to really reflect on how screwed you are without actually helping. That's about it for the demo, though. Somebody should buy the full game and figure out what's going on there. I guess since I love it so much, that person should be me.

[DrCrypt]

They totally need more grenades and they should probably ditch the pick-up power-up system for an XP perk system like Crimsonland, which would make a hell of a lot more sense in a game where your field of view is so limited. Half the time, I can't even tell what power-ups have even spawned, even if they aren't obscured by the Million Man March of the average Deadhunt level. But since Deadhunt's already been released, I guess bitching for improvements is a bit too late... maybe for Deadhunt 2: Back in Black.

[LordGek]

Uhm...ouch.

But, yeah, I like the idea of limited rune spaces but its kinda cheesey that there then isn't anyway to see what I ended up choosing for my 8 slots. Like, sure, somethings like increased ammo capacity are pretty self evident the second you re-load but whether you loaded up on increased armor or score boosters isn't as obvious later in the level.

[Erik]

Weeeel, I picked up and finished the full game. There isn't a whole lot more there than what you get in the demo. There are a few generally boring new weapons like a faster-firing auto shotgun, an uzi, and a completely useless sniper-style gauss gun with only five fucking bullets per clip. They also added some spiders and the reanimated skeletons of what I assume are black people. There's one type of enemy that runs towards you and then explodes like the headless bomber guys in Serious Sam only this time they're spiders, which doesn't make them any better and in fact makes them worse.

In a shocking display of laziness, the final game has only a pair of maps. There's the one you get in the demo and a second one set in Hell. Amazingly, they didn't even manage to work out the obvious kinks in all two of the levels - I found a safe perch on the Hell map that enemies can't reach. This is a really embarrassing oversight since it's pretty much a big empty red circle.

So after my initial mild enthusiasm, I've kind of soured on Deadhunt. While I awarded it two points for its pacing and racial politics, I subtracted two points because of the spiders and because it only has two maps. That leaves it with a score of 1 out of 3, which is the lowest you can get on the scale because the scale starts at 1. Deadhunt is not the new Crimsonland.

This game from Russia, however, might be. Or it might be the Total Carnage to Crimsonland's Smash TV. I'm not sure how well the big scrolling battlefield will work.

[MrLipid]

Worth keeping in mind that Deadhunt was created by the folks responsible for Web Link Validator: The Broken Links Doctor. Maybe after working on WLV: TBLD for an extended period, Deadhunt seemed pretty neat. Or not. ;)

[MrLipid]

A modest update to the Deadhunt saga.

The title is now up to version 1.01 and features an additional level of difficulty (or ease...the level is TOURIST) as well as cheat codes that unlock all levels, enable god mode, provide 99 grenades and infinite ammo, activate slow down and multiply ammo damage 10x.

For those who downloaded the original, just go back to the same URL and download the update. Your system should remember your unlocking code if you uninstall the original and install the update in the original's directory.

[LordGek]

DANGER DANGER!!!

DO NOT COPY OVER WITH NEW DEMO! I found out the hard way that the retail version was a whole seperate slightly larger download.

I have to hand it to folk like this that have seperate retail/demo versions when they release updated versions and no easy way for the few idiots that actually registered their game to update to the new version OR a courtesy e-mail that a new version even exists. Obviously once they have your money you're not really that important (I think I'm also a bit bitter since soon after I purchased the game I suggested they consider an easier difficulty level and felt that they pretty much condescendingly dismissed the idea).

[MrLipid]

The demo and the full game are indeed different. The demo folds the game .EXE and the GtEngine.EXE into a single file. The full version doesn't.

Those who bought a download link from Regnow for the original can use that link to download the upgrade. At least that is what I wound up doing.

That said, the level of marketing communication from the guys behind Deadhunt has been a bit low. One should not have to haunt the website to learn that a new version is available. I suspect the only reason I've heard from them is that I have been bugging them for a god mode.

Oh, and in the new version the safety platform has been removed from the hell level. Pity. Standing on it while everyone ran by was pretty amusing.