Preda-don’t-bother!

Slow connection, repetitive gameplay, lazy animation and god-damned loot boxes… The eponymous Hunting Grounds of the upcoming ‘Predator: Hunting Grounds’ are clearly your wallet and inflated fan-service! But it is rather fun for a while, and worth a go if it’s cheap… Special thanks for my gaming crew for their opinions as well!

The Tl;Dr Version

A reasonable game that is entertaining for a short while, but soon becomes repetitive and lacking. Plus, considering gaming technology as it is, the graphics were a little too cartoony, yet grainy, for my liking. If it was cheap and my gaming crew wanted to play it together, sure, I’d go for it again for a bit… but even the fairly low initial price of £34.99 seems a bit much for what is on offer. Overall 6/10. Not bad, but not great.

The Detailed Version

Usually, the story with this sort of thing is that movies that are made from videogames tend to be awful (Doom, Prince of Persia, Hitman…), whereas games made from movies can actually be pretty decent (Mad Max, Goldeneye, Alien Isolation). It isn’t a hard and fast rule, and I can’t help but feel that the upcoming Predator: Hunting Grounds will be proof of that very fact.

I’ll start with the Good: The game is pretty fun. It was very fun being near the end of a mission and bricking it as you ran to the exfil and waited to get out of dodge. ‘It got my heart pumping when I ran towards the choppah! and heard the thumping behind me!’ – Levaris. The sounds are amazing, with 80s-style music throughout and exceptionally creepy alien sounds making you look over your shoulders every time you hear a peep! – ‘The noises predator makes are creepy. You know it’s near, but not where!’ – Jasesaj.

Predator’s hiding was fun. You spend a lot of time looking to the trees, wondering where the hell the next attack will come from only to find a gauntlet suddenly poking out of your chest! On the flipside, the mud-cloaking was a cool mechanic though it was a little slow. Not to mention having AIs comment on it EVERY DAMN TIME! The shooting was slick enough, and quite satisfying, though the sound of staggering an AI enemy is almost identical to that of a head exploding which can be a little confusing. Close combat was also decent, though it resorted a little bit to the old Call of Duty knife insta-kill method against AIs, which makes it a little bit overpowered.

One of the possible benefits of this game is that it should have crossplay, meaning that there is a much larger chance that it will actually survive as a game. Players from across the three main platforms will be able to compete together, and as a result there might end up being a nice little community that develops around this game. Crossplay, now that it obviously can be done, is becoming much more popular and hopefully will become the default for a lot of online games.

Now the bad… Getting stuck on things was irritating. Compared to the ‘smooth’ movement and animation of the predator (using… wait for it… ‘Predcour’… *sigh*), as a soldier there was a lot of standing and staring at walls, or else being stuck on a rock and mauled to death by a murderous alien. Similarly, in the words of Hellipsis ‘the predator running sounds like you’re being chased by a T-Rex’. Some people might feel that the predator is a little too easy to spot at times, as well. Hellipsis again believes that ‘the predator should not make any sounds when staying still and crouching in the trees.’ Personally, I found that it was a fairly decent balance overall, but that’s me.

Variety was also a major issue. While the main objective of the game is obviously to kill or be killed as predator vs. human, there was not that much to really engage the human killteam in their quest for survival. Missions were: land (with exactly the same animation each time), run to place, kill goons, press buttons, defend thing, ARGH PREDATOR, get to the chopper…. It was a bit lacklustre. Naturally everyone is going to want to play as the predator a lot, so you need to have some hook to make people want to play as humans as well, but it isn’t really there. This isn’t helped by a very limited variety in customisation as well. Things unlock very quickly and easily, with no real challenge – see the number of duplicated that appeared from the loot boxes – and even when they do unlock they make very little or no real difference to anything. Hairstyles and colours (including ‘Predlocks’…!!!*) look pretty much identical and that, really was rather disappointing.

*I should point out that Levaris did like the terms Predlocks and Predcour… so it just goes to show how far fan-service and simple minds can get you… 😛

I feel like this game has the chance to be quite divisive. Some, like myself and AtreyuOFT will generally just go ‘meh’, and play it if it ever becomes a PS+ release or is massively on sale. Some people, especially hardcore fans of the film series, will no doubt absolutely love it and play it to death. Meanwhile others will genuinely just hate it and think that it’s not worth the time. This can technically be said for any game, I suppose, but this feels like one of those where people might be quite vocal due to it being tied to a very popular sci-fi franchise. For myself, though, it was enjoyable to play for a weekend, but I’m not going to rush out and buy it.