Devil’s Hunt is a story driven action game for consoles and PC. Unfortunately, that’s most of the good I can say about it. What started off as a good attempt by Polish developer Layopi Games unfortunately panned out to be strung out and exhausting.
The game begins with failing property developer and aspiring underground boxer Desmond Pearce not having a lot of luck. Desmond loses his job, gets his ass handed to him in an underground boxing fight, and has his fiancé cheat on him on the first day of being engaged!
Mondays, right?
Desmond’s story doesn’t get any better from there. After the day he’s had, he decides to drive off a cliff and… well, he’s not OK. But it’d be a very short game if it finished there, so Desmond gets sucked straight to hell. Once he’s down under, he he has to wade through a bog of blood and corpses, fighting evil demons, and try to find a way out of hell.
Hell of a day
Desmond’s not alone though, and help comes in the unlikely form of Satan. Yes, that Satan. The Devil offers Desmond a deal with the devil, allowing him to return to Earth to take revenge. Desmond gets vengeance, Satan gets souls, it’s really a win-win, and Desmond happily ditches the hot shackles of hell to be an immortal hellhound for the rest of his existence.
Desmond spends the next few chapters getting his ass kicked by angels and demons alike, struggling to find his powers in this ever-expanding world he didn’t know existed, and meeting countless enemies along the way. New game, same story.
I won’t spoil the ending for you, but it took me 307 minutes to finish this game beginning to end including cutscenes and I didn’t enjoy any of them.
What the Hell
Devils Hunt lacks fluidity, a functional storyline, relatable characters, or even understandable dialogue. There’s nothing pushing Desmond on his path beyond a vague ‘world was bad to me’ feeling (which, to be fair, is a bit of an overreaction). I’m also really glad they didn’t make it an open world game, because I would be super lost if they did. That being said, just because I’m glad it’s not open world does not mean I want an arrow constantly telling me where to go. I guess this is to help new players, but it’s incredibly irritating.
Yes it’s Early Access, so you expect some growing pains. But there’s a difference between an unpolished product and one that’s actually rough.
The story was drab and boring. There was no ‘oomph’ factor to it. It just felt like I was moving from location to location, going from one beat-em-up situation to another. Honestly, it felt like the same fight over and over again.
Not even the bosses were that good. Most of the time I didn’t even know I had reached a boss stage, because by the time I noticed they had a huge health bar on my screen, they were already half dead! There was even a boss who was supposed to be the badass angel who forced you into hell; his boss fight was basically him slowly walking across the stage. He was so easy to avoid, there was no challenge or feeling of accomplishment after the fight. And I need that.
Hellish performance
Unfortunately, on top of the lack of a story, slapdash level and boss design, and the many, many bugs that I came across, there was also an issue with the game itself. Playing on PC, I experienced way more frame drops than expected, playing a game that basically has the look and feel of Tekken 5 on PS2. The sound wasn’t much better; most of the time it was just a generic ‘fire’ sound effect. Even at the end of the game, when they could have added a fantastic final score to sum up the past 5 hours of my life, they just left me hanging with 5 minutes of a demon grunting and breathing over and over.
What’s that about?
The combat system is just another reason not to pick this game up. There were so many inconsistencies. Sometimes my spells would hit enemies, sometimes it would go through them, or they would teleport around them. The fighting often felt stagnant; there just wasn’t any fluidity, which I find is the best thing to have in a beat-em-up game.
Been through Hell
Finally, the game costs around $30NZD at the moment, which would be grossly overpaying for it in its current state. I understand that the game did just come out, and they are constantly patching it. Hopefully it might be worth this eventually, but with how it is at the moment it isn’t worth paying for.
I personally didn’t have much fun playing this game, and unless you’re so in love with the various elements that you can look past the glaring flaws, I don’t recommend it. But, if you do insist on subjecting yourself to this unfinished game just know that if you press pause you can always see a recap of what’s happening in the story.
The only problem is that it’s just as confusing as the dialogue.
- Overall
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