E3 2010: Hunted - The Demon's Forge Impressions

Hunted: The Demon's Forge (HDF) is one of those games from E3 that I've been thinking a lot about.  Sure its been mostly visions of Portal 2, Vanquish and the 3DS that have been dancing in my head like so many sugar plumbs on a Christmas morning, but HDF has been there too with its alluring promises of dungeon crawling goodness.   In fact, I will even go so far as to say that there is a very good chance that HDF could come out like a modernized, cooperative, version of DeathTrap Dungeon from the PlayStation 1 era.

I'm a big fan of Deathtrap Dungeon. A little Tomb Raider inspired dungeon crawler that game out for the PS1.  The game had style, enemy dismemberment, puzzles and a ton of subtle atmosphere in a time when the 3rd person exploration genera was somewhat lacking it in. But it was an underrated and underappreciated gem for its time.

HDF seems to be following many of the same ideals that I believe made Deathtrap Dungeon a development success, if not necessarily a financial one.  Much like Metroid, DeathTrap Dungeon's quite and claustrophobic atmosphere brought a sense of isolation and dread to the Tomb Raider mechanics which it employed.  Though its hard to recreate that in a cooperative game many of the other subtles I enjoyed so much in those earlier titles seem to be employed here as well.

In the game you take the part of one of two warriors, E'lara and Caddoc, in single player with an AI companion or in multiplayer in full co-op.  E'lara is a female ranged support class while Caddoc is an "in your face" melee class.  Both however have the ability to use both ranged, melee attacks and magic so no one really feels completely defenceless at all times.  Together they crawl their way through swamps, forests and dungeons as they help each other to mow down the usual monstrious foes and solve puzzles.

I was able to play a pre-alpha build with Travis Granger and even though what we played was a little rough around the edges it was also loads of fun.  And already the graphics were quite beautiful for a title still so early in development.  So far inXile Entertainment is doing a very good job with getting the setting right, and also giving our hero's a good sense of diversity in the ways they can utilize combat. Long and short range weapons, offensive magic and defensive magical buffs are all preasent.  As well as the ability for the player to purcahse skill sets and special moves much like God of War and Dante's Inferno.

The developers have stated that even more functionality is set to be introduced and I'm excited to see what they can come up with.  In the meantime I'll be writing to Sony in an attempt to get DeathTrap Dungeon on PSN.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge is being developed by inXile Entertainment and published by Bethesda for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.