In Hunt: Showdown, you don't win. You survive. After the tutorial, I was already on edge and sweaty. Nearly two-dozen hours later, I'm coming out of every round much the same, only with added exhilaration at my near-deaths, kills and cleverly executed traps. Crytek's merging of survival horror and battle royale has resulted in an intense multiplayer FPS, a great foundation that's only let down by a lack of variety—there's just two maps, and relatively few weapons.

Hunt blends Resident Evil 7, PUBG, and Red Dead Redemption 2 together to produce something that's remarkably distinct. The basics are familiar: players choose a loadout, spawn on a marshy patch of dirt and vie for supremacy. The twist is you're not alone, as zombies and other ghouls prowl these knee-high lakes and abandoned cabins. You're on a mission for one creature in particular, your bounty, and have to gather mystical clues to find their exact location.

Set in an alternate history 1890s, a horrifying force is invading through interworld rifts, infecting people and animals and turning them into terrifying mutations. Framed by centuries of mythology from multiple sources, the titular hunters partake in the dark arts and hunt for sport and research. The weaponry is crass and archaic: revolvers, single-shot rifles and crossbows, all requiring slow, manual reload. Machetes and battle-axes are available, if you want to risk the intimacy, and makeshift bombs and bear-traps are handy in a bind. Your greatest asset is your wits, and if you want to last out in the wilderness of Stillwater Bayou, you're going to need them.

My early forays were rough. One time a demented canine chased me right into an Armored, a human-shaped thing with a tumorous-looking outer shell, and in trying to escape I attracted a group of regular undead and was promptly eaten in seconds. The next round, I met a similar fate after successfully getting the first of three clues I needed for the bounty. Thankfully permadeath is disabled until rank 15 so I wasn't forever losing all my loot.

Gradually, I started to find my way, and understand Hunt: Showdown's allure. Proficiency lies cutthroat tenacity and the intuition of survival.

There's no room for hesitation, and through much trial and error I started developing a feel for monitoring how much noise I was making, and switching guns or healing on the fly, and always making sure I knew my exits. Soon, my trusty crossbow and machete and I were getting closer and closer to scoring our first contract, and one blessed night under Stillwater’s beautiful silver moon, I killed the meat-cleaving Butcher and escaped to tell the tale.

In the mud

When you find the three clues, detectable using special vision called Dark Sight, you get the bounty's exact coordinates. Then, if you kill the target in a one-on-one, or two-on-one, or three-on-one fight depending on your group, you have to get to an extraction point at the edge of the map for full completion, which means getting by all remaining opponents as well as whatever hellspawn is still roaming around.

This inversion of the standard battle royale formula—it's about escaping, not killing everyone—is simple but deeply effective. It changes the whole complexion. Encounters against other players are more nuanced, sometimes coming with unspoken agreements. I helped a struggling rival kill a Hive—poisonous wretch—and after we just stared at each other briefly and parted ways. Ammo and supplies are in short supply, so picking a gunfight could severely deplete your inventory, and your only prize is whatever they're carrying.

Up to three players can enter the swamp together, and matches are limited to 12 total players. I mostly played solo, as in-game communication is limited and I preferred not having to worry about or rely on anyone. I could slip by six and seven-person shoot-outs with relative ease, letting them wear themselves out. The mix of mossy quagmire, high-grass forest and timber village allows a variety of approaches once you figure out the landscape.

Hunt: Showdown's primary issue is that by the time you've mapped out the bayou's hideouts and passageways and found a groove with your roster of hunters, a grind sets in quick. The map got repetitive, as did the relatively short list of weapons and three available bounties. After a time the only substantial unlockables are lore, which, though well-written and fascinating, isn't enough to sustain my interest long-term. It all just feels a bit lacking, especially given the price. That said, new options are in the pipeline, and I'm more than willing to get back on the hunt once they arrive.

Correction: An earlier version of this review stated that there is one map, when there are two.

Hunt: Showdown meshes a wide array of influences to make a multiplayer shooter unlike many of its peers, requiring players to reconsider what they expect. Between the swarms of zombified grunts, your opponents, and trying to find and slay each round's bounty, a lot of tact is needed to conquer Crytek's desolate wasteland.

Your loadout is crucial. All the Hunt: Showdown weapons offer strengths and weaknesses, and it's up to you to find exactly what matches your playstyle. Certain rifles may be powerful, but too loud, attracting unwanted attention. Machetes and axes necessitate close-quarters combat, putting you at serious risk if you miss the first swing. Synergy is key, both for yourself and your team. Here are the best weapons to get you wins in Hunt: Showdown.

Hunt: Showdown light weapons

Caldwell Pax Claw

Stats: Capacity: 6/9, Range: 40, Damage: 32, Control: 30, Rate of Fire: 55, Reload Speed: 40, Melee: 26, Stealth: 30, Heavy Melee: 34

A modification on the classic Wild West revolver, the Caldwell Pax Claw requires the Caldwell Pax, first.

The additional knife increases melee damage exponentially, making it a strong backup tool. Becoming surrounded by a mindless horde is a routine occurrence in Hunt: Showdown, and it's good to have something ready in case you need to explode a bunch of heads and escape. The Caldwell Pax Claw serves this purpose nicely, with the added bonus that if anything gets too close or you need to conserve ammo, the sharp end can easily cleave through flesh, zombified or otherwise.

Machete

Stats: Melee: 32, Heavy Melee: 48

It doesn't have the same heft as the axe, or grace of the Cavalary Saber, but you can swing the Machete faster and use it to cut through undergrowth—very handy for Hunt: Showdown's ample marshes. Between the exploratory uses and damage, this is a worthwhile choice if you know what you're doing with a primary long-range weapon.

Hunt: Showdown medium weapons

Romero 77 Hatchet

Stats: Range: 10, Damage: 72, Control: 30, Rate of Fire: 10, Reload Speed: 40, Melee: 32, Stealth: 20, Heavy Melee: 48

You'll have to upgrade through a couple of Romero 77 models—the Handcannon and Talon—to get this sawn-off version. But, the payoff is worth it:the Romero 77 Hatchet is a hefty medium-sized piece of kit.

Between the sheer force of this thing's blasts and the lovely piece of sharpened steel on the end, this is a rugged firearm that will make short work of any enemy you face. This is particularly good for the close-quarters battles with the game’s bounties. The major drawback is the noise generated: every foul beast nearby will know all about it. It's single-barrelled, so be wary of the reload speed. It's reliable, if you can handle it.

Hand Crossbow Poison

Stats: Range: 30, Damage: 48, Control: 60, Rate of Fire: 10, Reload Speed: 10, Melee: 6, Stealth: 90, Heavy Melee: 12

The Hand Crossbow Poison is pure assassin apparatus. At medium, there's a slight speed advantage to the larger versions; it's perfect for a bit of ranged hunting.

Not only is it precise but, even if you lose that perfect shot, hitting a limb will induce toxic damage your target has to deal with. If you're quick and quiet, you can run circles around foes.

Hunt: Showdown heavy weapons

Crossbow

Stats: Range: 40, Damage: 80, Control: 70, Rate of Fire: 10, Reload Speed: 10, Melee: 24, Stealth: 90, Heavy Melee: 36

After you've acquired the Hand Crossbow Poison, buy the Crossbow, one of the best heavy weapons on offer. The Crossbow needs practice and finesse to wield appropriately, but it's worth it.

Among the most accurate and quiet long-range guns, you can park on the outskirts and score critical shots and still be hard to spot. A single well-placed arrow—the closer the better—to the upper body will be the end of most grunts, and will deal decent damage to monsters and other opponents. Its greatest asset, however, is that you can retrieve fired bolts from dead bodies, allowing you to let the bodies pile up without spending an arrow.

Vetterli 71 Karabiner Bayonet

Stats: Range: 60, Damage: 44, Control: 50, Rate of Fire: 40, Reload Speed: 40, Melee: 24, Stealth: 20, Heavy Melee: 64

On the other hand, if you're all about sheer firepower, the Vetterli 71 Karabiner Bayonet is Hunt: Showdown's top-of-the-line heavy firearm.

This thing feels like a knock-out punch, even from 50 yards away. The Vetterli 71 handles whatever you put in its cross hairs. Sound is an issue—these gunshots reverberate far and wide—and regular reloads will make you vulnerable. Few things are quite as satisfying as running through an unsuspecting other player with the bayonet, though.

Hunt: Showdown legendary weapons

Special legendary skins for your weapons can be bought and earned in Hunt: Showdown. These variations are gorgeous and, if you choose not to spend any real world currency on them, serve as great reflections of your hard hunting work. Nevertheless, they are cosmetic and have no bearing on the gameplay.

To earn legendary weapons the old-fashioned way, you must prestige by getting to rank 100 in your Bloodline. Your ranking then resets to the prestige counter, and at each of the following levels, you’ll be given a set legendary skin: 5, 10, 25, 50, 100.

You’ll get a random legendary skin at each of these levels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 20, 30, 40, 60, 70, 80 and 90.

Alternatively you can buy them with Blood Bonds, which you can earn in-game or purchase with real money.

Once a legendary weapon is unlocked, it's locked to your account. If you die and the weapon is taken, simply buying it back from the store for the regular cost will restore it and the legendary skin to your inventory.

The Legendary weapons earned through prestige are:

Level 5: ‘Louisiana Lustrum’, Sparks LRR

Level 10: ‘Golden Ticket’, Bornheim No. 3

Level 25: ‘Silver Quarter’, Quad Derringer

Level 50: ‘Fifty Laurels’, Winfield M1873

Level 100: ‘The Centenary’, Mosin-Nagant M1891

Just 18 months after it launched into Early Access, Crytek's bounty hunting first-person shooter has just launched into 1.0. Set in the swamps of Louisana, Hunt: Showdown mixes PvP and PvE, with bounty hunter groups conspiring against one another as they stalk their quarry. Conspiring, I should add, with guns and death.

The game launches with two large maps (Stillwater Bayou and Lawson Delta) and two game modes available, in the form of Bounty Hunt and Quickplay. As far as weaponry goes, there is no lack of it: there's "57 pieces of equipment" and "33 weapon variants", according to the Steam page.

For those already playing, the 1.0 release doesn't change much: a new Legendary weapon has been added in the form of the Vanguard, and a "tentative" fix has been issued for a mission reward bug.

Hunt is definitely one of the most unique competitive shooters on PC, and is well worth a look: Steven absolutely loved it when he first played in 2017. Check out the launch trailer below:

Hunt: Showdown, Crytek's PvP bounty hunting romp, has been in Early Access for around a year, but it's about to break free. After nearly 20 updates, it will leave Early Access on August 27. 

"Developing a game alongside such a passionate community has been so rewarding. It has taken us in new directions, and really inspired us to put everything we have into Hunt," said producer Fatih Özbayram. "Now the time has come for the full release, and we couldn’t be more excited. We won’t forget the support this community has given us."

Hunt: Showdown is a supernatural monster hunting game set in Louisiana. It's hot, there are swamps and horrible things want to eat you. But, ah-ha, the real monster was humanity all along, because this is a PvP affair and you're competing with other teams of bounty hunters. You might survive a clash with a horrific spider demon only to be jumped by some sneaky arseholes as you try to leave the map. 

The monster is bait, really, and it's more of a PvP game than a monster hunting game. That's not immediately clear, but it's not a bad thing either. It works surprisingly well as a competitive, sneaky shooter, and it's one with a uniquely disquieting atmosphere.

During Early Access, it sprouted a new boss, another map, new times of day to play in, lots of weapons and a Quick Play mode. That pits ten solo players against each other, rather than teams of two, letting the winner keep everything. With all the tension, ambushes and high stakes, it's not a million miles away from a battle royale.

Hunt: Showdown is launching on August 27 and it's currently 25 percent off on Steam. 

If you've got a completely reasonable desire to spend your weekend sneaking through a creepy swamp and getting ambushed by monsters, what stellar luck you have, because Hunt: Showdown is free until Monday. 

Crytek's FPS is a competitive bounty game with monsters. You've got a monster to hunt and a bounty to collect, which will probably lead to your death, but you've also got to worry about other hunters. In my experience, they're sneakier and deadlier than any of Hunt: Showdown's supernatural beasties. Not nearly as terrifying, mind. 

It's still in Early Access, but Crytek has been steadily updating it with new monsters, like this burning fella with anger issues, and a new map, though like a lot of Early Access multiplayer games, it's had a hard time keeping people around. It should be busier this weekend, though, so even if you've already got the game, the event's a good excuse to jump back in. 

Hunt: Showdown's free weekend will run on Steam until Monday at 6 pm BST/10 am PT. If it ends up tickling your fancy, it's also on sale for 20 percent off. 

The Hunt: Showdown 6.0 update is now live, and that means that the Assassin, a new boss announced at the beginning of April, is now roaming free in the Louisiana swamps. The Assassin is a fast-moving creature made from rags and bugs—a bit like Ragman, from the sound of it, but without the chiseled pecs or rigid moral imperative—that uses vertical surfaces to enhance its mobility and can temporarily clone itself to cause twice the headaches for hunters. 

"The Assassin is the product born from a lot of investigation into what bosses mean to Hunt in its current state, since the previous two boss targets were created, the game has shifted a lot to build a better core experience," developer Crytek explained. "With this in mind, we wanted to approach the issues that came out of the other bosses and see where we can build a benchmark that offers a few things; a challenge to new and old players, a balance between boss PvE engagement and the ever looming PvP, and something unique to set each boss apart." 

Early iterations of the Assassin behaved much differently from the final version, as ideas that sounded cool in theory proved "unreadable and annoying to play" when the bullets actually started flying. Crytek ultimately opted for something dangerous but also reasonably manageable: It "will use its behaviors in specific ways to punish the unprepared and reward those who keep calm and pay attention to what is about to happen," the developers wrote. 

Also included in the update are new weapons including the LeMat Mark II revolver and Lebel 1886 bolt-action rifle, the Bomb Lance (basically a huge spear that also fires explosive harpoons), a couple of trip mines, and placeable ammo boxes. Three new character traits are also now on tap: 

• Ghoul: With the Ghoul trait, players instantly heal 50 hitpoints when looting a dead Hunter
• Vulture: The Vulture trait allows players to always loot dead Hunters they come across, even if they had already been looted by other players
• Adrenaline: Adrenaline enables players to instantly start recharging stamina when their health is critically low

There's the usual big pile of bug fixes and updates as well, including one interesting-sounding change that prevents "burning or burned-out" hunters from being looted, which Crytek described as "an attempt to introduce more choice into existing player actions."

"Now players will have to consider whether it makes sense to burn a downed player. If they burn them, they lose the chance to loot the body. If they don't, that player's partner might have a chance to go for a revive," Crytek said. "Burning should no longer be the given default choice"

Similarly, looting downed hunters is now a "hold interaction" that takes four seconds to complete, the same length of time required for a revive: "Looting is just as risky as reviving, preventing players from looting a downed hunter quickly and then setting the body on fire anyway."

The Hunt: Showdown 6.0 patch notes are available in full on Steam.

A new monster is heading towards Hunt: Showdown's Louisiana swamp. The Assassin is a spirit made out of a swarm of insects and a bundle of rags—just an unassuming pile on the floor that will quickly slice you up. Take a look at the nightmare in action in the first gameplay footage above. 

As its name suggests, the Assassin is a sly monster, but it's not necessarily stealthy. It might surprise you, leaping out of the shadows, but it's won't be cautiously sneaking around. Instead, it can trick players. It started out as a bug, with the Assassin seemingly appearing in two places at once, and then the team turned it into a feature.

“We started doing prototypes based on the Assassin spawning decoys so you didn’t know which one to attack," said designer Robert Green. "We did one where he spawned five clones that would spread out across the entire compound, but then you had to be running constantly. We ended up going with two decoys, with the boss itself circling around you. You have to correctly read the moment, otherwise you’ll get burned.” 

So it will try to keep you looking the other way and then quickly and violently tear you apart with its nasty stingers. Early on, the team had experimented with knives, but they couldn't figure out where the knives went when it transformed back into rags and bugs. That led them to a slightly more organic solution. 

At various points in development, the Assassin looked like a witch doctor, then a plague doctor, and it was slow and quiet. For its final look, lead concept artist Artem Shumnik was apparently inspired by the not remotely terrifying wood stork. There is a hint of something slightly unnerving when you look at its head, though. Something Skeksis-like.

You'll be able to try and collect the bounty on this gruesome monster when it appears on the test servers this week. In the meantime, check out this killer concept art:

Co-op horror FPS Hunt: Showdown is adding a new enemy to bring a little chaos to your monster-banishing expeditions. Its called the Immolator, and you can get a glimpse of it in the all-too-brief teaser above.

The Immolator appears as a charred, walking corpse, and it's got some serious rage issues. When it detects movement nearby it will charge, and when it's shot or stabbed it violently bursts into flames. (A blunt attachment for a sawed-off mosin is being added which will allow you to melee bash the Immolator without triggering its fiery reaction.) It can open doors, too, so that moment in the teaser wasn't just for dramatic effect—hiding in a house won't keep you safe when its on the warpath.

Having an enraged burning monster running around full-tilt might not always be a bad thing, though, and careful players may be able to turn it to their advantage.

"For example, if he can't reach your Hunter, he will blow up a barrel or kill other AI," according to designer Bence Kovacs. The Immolator screams a lot, which can attract other enemies, and when burning he leaves a fire trail in his path that will ignite those monsters if they blunder into it. It could be useful to aggro him on other teams as well by igniting him with a sniper shot and sending him searching for a nearby target to punish.

"If you need a distraction, just shoot him from a distance and he'll try to attack anything in range that moves," says Kovacs. "He definitely adds something interesting to the whole mix of the gameplay. He's spicy. He's unpredictable."

The date of The Immolator's arrival on test servers hasn't been determined yet, but it'll be soon according to Crytek's recent dev stream on Twitch. You can check out a bit of The Immolator in action in this video starting at about 1:11:00.

Lawson Delta, the new Hunt: Showdown map that Crytek teased in October, is now live as part of the 3.0 beta update. The map is built around a prison, a fort, and a train station, and is designed to give players a better sense of location and direction than the previous map. 

The update also delivers a new skill-based matchmaking system, inspired by the Elo system used in chess, that "heavily weights player vs player skill in populating matches to create a fairer experience," and "anti-teaming" changes to player grouping that are intended to prevent pre-lobby teamups. Players will now experience inertia when they move to make it more difficult to dodge attacks—the patch notes state that players were "abusing the ADAD buttons."

"Some of the [movement] changes might feel a bit sluggish at first and will require players to get used to them over a couple of games," Crytek wrote in the patch notes. "We have tried to strike a good balance between the necessity of adding inertia to player movement, while at the same time keeping the feeling and walking speeds the same. Players can still perform the same trick jumps, quickly peak out of cover, or dash around the world as they are used to." 

Melee combat has also undergone some major changes intended "to improve internal consistency and better highlight each weapon's strengths and weaknesses," and downed Hunters will now drop their weapons on the ground, where they can be picked up by others. Looted weapons are marked as contraband if they're extracted from the mission, however, and cannot be sold in the store.  

Crytek also warned that entering a game may be a slower process requiring more steps following the update, but said that it's a temporary situation necessitated by the upcoming Quick Play mode. Quick Play will be an improved version of the Solo mode, which has been removed from the game; there's no word on when it will be rolled out by Crytek said it will be soon, "to make sure our solo players can get back into the game asap."

There are a multitude of other changes and bug fixes, and of course a handful of known issues, including a "default system texture" error when trying to load the game. If you hit that, make sure you've got the latest video drivers installed, grab the latest Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 redistributable, and if all else fails, contact support. The full lowdown on update 3.0 can be had on Steam. 

Hunt: Showdown is just incredible, said our Steven after being shown an early build of Crytek's latest at E3 2017. The multiplayer survival game has come some ways since—having improved on its optimisation, matchmaking and performance during this year alone. Today, it offers the teasiest of teasers for its second and much-anticipated map. Welcome to Lawson Delta: 

Set in post-Civil War Louisiana, developer Crytek says more on the new arena will be revealed at this month's TwitchCon—where it'll also be playable for the first time. The dev also says the map will go "live shortly after the event", which runs from October 26-28 in San Jose, California. 

Not much to go on beyond that at present, sadly, but expect full details at TwitchCon and to go hands-on yourself come November. In the meantime, this short paragraph from Steven's above-linked impressions is pretty powerful—particularly considering he was yet to play it for himself at the time. 

Anyone who has played DayZ or Playerunknown's Battlegrounds can tell you that survival games are often remarkably tense. But Hunt: Showdown's stunning lighting and festering bayous are stifling. I'm sitting in the Crytek booth at E3, watching a hands-off walkthrough of a multiplayer match, but even without a mouse and keyboard in my hands, I can feel the dread mounting with each step the hunters take. 

Be sure to read that in full. Hunt: Showdown is out now in Steam Early Access.