The Hunt: Showdown's tech takes survival horror suspense to a new level

At its best, rendering technology doesn't just make a game look great and run smoothly, it has an intimate relationship with gameplay - and it's for that reason that Crytek's The Hunt: Showdown is well worth checking out. In this fascinating multiplayer first-person survival horror shooter, CryEngine is used for more than just window dressing. Yes, it looks beautiful and well up to triple-A standards, but the technology is fundamental in creating some of the The Hunt's most impactful moments, as well as establishing its unique atmosphere.

Even the basic set-up of the game is somewhat different, based around the concept of up to five two-player teams battling undead creatures, finding clues to the locations of boss monsters, banishing them and escaping - all the while avoiding or battling the other teams. It's slow-burning, brutal in short bursts and creates a remarkable feeling of suspense. CryEngine beautifully renders dark, oppressive environments fashioned after a turn of the century Louisiana bayou - a bleak and wretched place where the atmosphere is enhanced still further with genuinely disturbing audio. So much of the gameplay is designed around the audiovisual experience, playing with what you can see and hear, and what others see and hear of you. The soundscape alone builds tension in ways far more reminiscent of a single-player game than a multiplayer one. On start-up, the game recommends playing with headphones - and I wholeheartedly agree.

But it's the cutting-edge features of CryEngine that really empower the experience - specifically in how Crytek utilises its state-of-the-art global illumination solution. The sparse voxel octree GI solution allows for light to bounce around environments in real-time, creating secondary shadows and re-lighting areas that are only directly lit. The impact on gameplay is huge: enemies sit perfectly within the environment, blending in seamlessly, the contrast between lit and shadowed areas creating a unique sense of tension - and providing genuinely shocking moments when you realise just how close you are to a deadly zombie. Even when an enemy is effectively right on top of you, sometimes it's actually the audio cues that give away its precise position.

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from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2LQAUQN