Hunted: The Demon's Forge Xbox 360

Released on 02/06/2011

• Hunted: The Demon's Forge Review

  Dungeons & Demons
  

  Back in the good old days before Nintendo distracted us all with primary colours and jumping, a lot of our time was spent crawling around bleak-looking dungeons on our PCs and hacking at things with swords. Hunted: The Demon Forge hopes to bring that sort of thing back into fashion - it a game about roaming through caves and forests slashing at Lord of the Rings rejects, collecting epic swords and saying yeand orsootha lot.
  

  Actually, nobody says orsooth but the two main characters - brutish Caddoc and scantily clad Eara - do spend a lot of time talking about sending demons back to hell. Acting at the behest of a voluptuous, fair-skinned spirit called Seraphine, theye on the trail of some Wargar orcs who have been enslaving humans from the town of Dyfed. Caddoc and Eara are mercenaries, so they don particularly care about the whys and wherefores, but they do care about money, so they take the job and soon find themselves bound up in conspiracy.
  

  Angel investment
  

  It all very silly and clich, but it just the right backdrop for some entertaining hack-and-slash combat and dungeon-crawling. Designed as a co-operative game for two players but very playable on your own, Hunted sees Caddoc wading in to battle with a variety of swords and axes while Eara fires arrows from distance to provide cover. As you progress you can swap your current weapons for more exciting and en-chanted ones, and you can unlock and upgrade magic that embellishes your blades and bows with special powers and bonuses.
  

  Although it generally linear, the game is perhaps most fun when you can deviate from your task and wander off into a disused mine or a quiet-looking antechamber and discover that it splinters off into a little side mission full of riddles, skeleton war-riors and other distractions. Most of the game feels like a journey, but these bits feel like exploration, and the rewards you reap are more delightful as a result. Working through them with a friend on PSN or Xbox Live is even better.
  

  Forsooth!
  

  Developed using Unreal Engine 3 - the same technology that powers the Gears of War series - Hunted looks and feels like a lot of the games youe played before, which may be a turn-off. Let face it, the only difference between the war-torn streets of ancient fantasy-land Dyfed and the war-torn streets of futuristic, science-fictional Sera in Gears of War is the passage of fictional time - theye both still brown and full of rubble. And it would be fair to say that the dialogue is a bit flat throughout and lacks the gravitas of a Lord of the Rings.
  

  But there is something really compelling about the core combat - whether youe busting heads with Caddoc slow-motion finishing moves or firing explosive-tipped arrows from a distance with Eara - which sustains it over the course of its eight-hour campaign. You can also extend your time with the combat using Adventure+ mode - a harder version of the campaign with various gameplay tweaks available - and Crucible Map Creator, where you can make your own dungeons from pre-set blocks then populate them with custom waves of your favourite enemies.
  

  E'lara lara fun...
  

  Hunted probably won bring the traditional dungeon crawl back from the dead, and it is not quite as exciting a co-operative experience as a title like Left 4 Dead, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for in its core combat. If you like fantasy action games and have fond memories of the old days hacking and slashing, this might be just the game for you.
  

  

  Level up:
  + Co-operative dungeon crawling.
  + Huge range of weapons and magic upgrades.
  + Enjoyable exploration.

  Level drain:
  - Generic story and graphics.
  - Not as good a co-op game as some others.
  - Campaign quite short for a fantasy game.

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