When I reviewed Hunt: Showdown for a different parish back in 2019, it was a swampy, stealthy, slow-paced extraction FPS that consisted of weaving through mouldy undead and pockets of inconveniently noisy wildlife, ears pricked for the rustle of a rival player in the bushes. It was a game in which every footfall felt like a gamble and every second lasted an eternity, even before you entered the lair of a giant spider. Fast forward to 2023, and streamers are playing Hunt: Showdown like it's Titanfall 2, scurrying along walls with scant regard for the NPC cannon fodder below, duelling each other on rooftops with pistol shotguns, and tearing through those poor, befuddled boss monsters like sandcastles.
Thus the fate of any competitive shooter lucky enough to acquire a seasoned pro following, I guess. But still, returning to Crytek's PvPvE shooter has been a shock, and speaking to the development team, it sounds like the devs themselves have been struggling to keep up with the more ambitious players, too. Showdown was never expected to endure quite this long and evolve in quite this way, according to general manager David Fifield, and managing the community's ambitions for the game is as much of a challenge as compensating for the limitations of its ageing engine.
