There’s a graphic novel out there, you know the one, that posits that any person can go insane if they have a sufficiently bad day. Well, Desmond Pearce had an incredibly bad day, so he ended up an enforcer for Hell, and even worse, trapped in some form of messianic role in the coming war for the End of Days! This is Devil’s Hunt
The Good
Absolutely nothing…I had to force myself to keep playing.
The Bad
COMBAT….IN SPAAAAAAAACE: By which I mean the combat has no weight whatsoever, you flail, hit with sword, punch with oversized fists and none of it feels like it has any impact. It’s a combination of animation velocity, the lack of proper impactful sounds, reactions from enemies to your attacks and every other tiny detail that sells that the attack did a damn thing. You will find none of it in Devil’s Hunt and the result is that combat never felt exciting.
UFW – Ultimate Fighting Worthlessness: The combat design for this game is atrocious, the kind of thing you need to build from the ground up again to fix. I can see the intent is building something akin to God of War or Darksiders, with active unlockable special moves aside from different combos, only there are only 2 or 3 combos per combat tree, you can’t switch between them on the fly, the dodge is a ridiculous dash that overshoots and then leaves you vulnerable for a few seconds, there is no lock on to dash around enemies, the parry works only sometimes and only against the enemies that show a visible parry prompt that is confusing as all hell how it works. Oh, and the active powers feel like they’re firing or hitting enemies with foam darts, for all the good they do. It’s even worse when you transform into your “executor form,” which only flails wildly then kills enemies and never feels powerful AT ALL. It’s laughably bad.
Hell-puppy: If the intent was making you feel like a badass Hell knight in Desmond’s shoes, then they missed the mark entirely. Exploration is about going to the right spot on the map and pressing the interaction button and then watching Desmond perform the action very slowly. With a character and a title like this, you want to feel like a badass. You don’t want to interact and then control Desmond as he balances on a beam between a gap. No, you want to run and jump across the gap then keep running, never stopping. You want to kick down doors, not watch Desmond struggle to push them open with his shoulder. Besides the fact that it’s slow and boring, and repetitive, it creates a disconnect between what you can do and what you see the character do at specific times when he uses his abilities to move, throw or destroy impossibly large things. I mean, have some consistency in portrayal, will you? And watching Desmond shimmy his way between walls for the 10th time is the opposite of what I’m looking for when playing as the “Saviour and Destroyer.”
Puppet Show: Characters are stiff and nothing, absolutely nothing about them looks human. Watching a cutscene in this game is like watching mannequins. The characters are slow, they barely touch when they’re supposed to be hugging. It’s that kind of old animation that you’d think we’d have moved on by now. Hell, I know we have. Characters show no emotion whatsoever when they speak, they don’t react, they always have these lost blank stares that become uncomfortable after a while.
Bored of Hell: I’ve seen many a depiction of hell and you know which one I’m kinda over now? The fire and brimstone kind, with added guts and rivers of blood. It’s been done, it’s been done to death and by better people. If this game wanted to stand out and do something cool, then holy hell they needed a better representation of hell. I know they’re working from a novel, but come on, part of adaptation is taking some liberties and this game could’ve used some in its depiction of hell. There are two things that you will find interesting about it and it’s character designs for Lucifer and Belial, ‘cause one looks like a supermodel and the other a member of the Russian mob. And that’s about it. Everything else is tired and boring.
Torture of a tale: And I don’t mean it’s a tortuous tale, no I mean it’s torture to witness. The plot is bad, it’s bland, it’s boring, it’s simple and predictable and I lost count of clichés within the first ten minutes. The pacing is all over the place, the narrative is amateurish and nothing about it is engaging, least of all the protagonist who goes from being a massive a-hole to, well, a massive a-hole. There is no growth, there is no learning, there is no progress. It’s a story that just goes nowhere, and worse still it’s kinda the first in what might be a series or a trilogy and it’s completely underwhelming. Here’s a pro-tip, do not follow up your “badass” intro dream sequence—that is never clear that it’s a dream—with one hour of bland real world, mundane human life stuff that doesn’t so much set the stage as bore you to the brink of madness.
Fire the Orchestra: I only ever have to say things about music in games when it’s really good or in this case when it’s atrocious, human-rights-violation bad. Every single piece of music consists of the same one or two cords on an electric guitar being played over and over, with no variation, no switch up, no rhythm, nothing. It’s the most repetitive and headache inducing music I’ve listened to in a long time and never want to hear it again. And whoever decided that the credits shouldn’t have music but creature grunts should be sent to a mental facility. That person is clearly disturbed.
