Nostalgia can be a cruel mistress. When Microsoft announced that the original Xbox game Hunter: The Reckoning was now backward compatible on the Xbox One, I thought to myself, “Hey, I still have that game.” Then I realized I probably never beat that game either. So what better excuse to pop it in and finish it off once and for all?
I installed it and booted it up, and visually, the game holds up surprisingly well. The frame rate is rock solid and smooth, the texture and model work is decent enough, considering its age, and the controls are still pretty responsive. The problem comes in the actual game itself, which isn’t nearly as fun as I remembered. The game, when played single player (I didn’t have a couch co-op buddy) can be awfully repetitive and boring, and some of the backtracking required can be a huge buzzkill.
The story is nonsense, but that’s okay, these games aren’t played for their story anyway. My problem with it is that it just plays too slow. While I do think this is due to the fact that technology has improved since then and we’re used to faster, more frenetic games of this type, it doesn’t excuse the amount of wandering and backtracking. Couple that with poor hit detection and weirdly unbalanced boss battles and you’re in for a test of wills. Out of the final three boss battles, the big bad at the end was the least challenging. In a way I was a bit relieved, as the other two bosses were eating up my lives like candy and I really didn’t have much left by the end, both in terms of remaining lives and my own patience.
For what it’s worth, Hunter: The Reckoning isn’t that long of a game. I didn’t time it, but I guess I put about six hours into it, if even that much. It felt like much longer, though. My recommendations are to play this game with a friend, so you can keep each other awake.
