Hunter: The Reckoning - Wayward review

Everyone knows that setting fire to your hands is the best way to defeat the undead.

Hunter: The Reckoning was only available for Xbox and GameCube, but now Interplay are releasing a sequel for the PS2, named Hunter: The Reckoning - Wayward. Like its predecessor, the game is based on the pen and paper role-playing game from White Wolf and its story picks up right where the last game ended. Our four heroes had just defeated every evil entity in the town of Ashcroft and believed that peace has been restored as a consequence. But no; once again evil forces are pouring into the city by the bucketload and when a distress call reaches our friends, they are left with no choice but to return to the town and finish the job.

Rack’em up

...but white women CAN jump, it seems.

Hunter: The Reckoning - Wayward has a simple goal: you must return as many undead creatures as possible to the foul places from whence they came. The action is seen from an elevated third-person point of view and when you’ve got the hang of that, it’s time to kick some zombie butt. The sooner you rid the town of evil creatures, the sooner you can get home.

First of all, you need to choose which character you want to use in your fight against the undead menace. The four characters in Hunter: The Reckoning - Wayward are all different classes. There’s the powerful Avenger, the evasive Defender, the magic-wielding Judge and the lethally swift Martyr. However, you can switch characters between levels, so your choice isn’t final.

Easy peasy

Aaaagh, it hurts!

The game’s controls are straightforward and don’t require much time to get to grips with. The R1 button is for melee attacks and will, when pressed repeatedly, enable you to execute dazzling attack combos. By holding the button down you can charge a powerful spin attack, which will be unleashed to great effect when you release the button. The R2 button governs long-range weapon attacks. Furthermore you can jump using the L2 button, use magic with L1 and change weapons and reload with the face buttons. You control your character with the left analogue stick and strafe by using both sticks simultaneously.

That’ll teach ya!

Easy on the glyphs, there...

There is a short tutorial at the beginning of the game, which informs you about things such as the use of glyphs. These magic symbols heal, restore your magical energy, give vital information or simply yields bonuses. The tutorial is simple, given the straightforward nature of the game and you’ll be playing in no time flat. This is one of the best things about Hunter: The Reckoning - Wayward.

Some of the levels require you to solve certain tasks, usually by locating various objects, while others have you escorting an AI controlled character to safety. Along your way, you will build up an interesting arsenal of firearms, which is of course very handy for blasting the horde of demonic adversaries to smithereens.

At first, my strategy was to kill everything in sight, but I quickly learned that this is not really an option. Instead, I went for the safer way of doing things, namely rushing past all the horrors to my target.

Get a friend with you

You people are ruining my midnight barbecue. Go away!

In spite of its simplicity, or maybe even because of it, Hunter: The Reckoning - Wayward is just not much fun at all. Most levels have to be played through multiple times, if you wish to find all items, but battling a horde of undead creatures has rarely been more tedious. The array of different weapons and magic doesn’t help matters much.

Between levels, you get bits of information and some tips on how to defeat the different monsters. You can also see the game’s various movie clips again, but this isn’t really very exciting. What is quite exciting, however, is playing this one with a buddy. You can play cooperatively, but even though this is fun it doesn’t really make Hunter: The Reckoning - Wayward a very good game.


Source: Boomtown DK
English version by: Jonatan A. Allin (neonwolf)