Predator Hunting Grounds. Detailed review/analysis of the game “Predator”
Predator Hunting Grounds has not yet been released, but not long ago there was a Trial Weekend, during which anyone could play a new game based on the movie "Predator".
I’ve played enough and reached the maximum level in this conditional beta test of level 25, and I have something to tell you. After all, the game has problems. But first things first.
Ugly Mazafaka!
The Predator first appeared in the 1987 film of the same name, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the story, an elite squad arrives in the guerrilla-occupied jungles of South America, where they face an unprecedented alien threat. The predator decides that it would be a good idea to hunt these brave guys and get trophies in the form of the skulls of these elite fighters for his collection. It was not for nothing that I remembered the plot of the very first film, since the game for the most part refers specifically to it, copying the scenes almost one to one, and it is immediately clear where the developers drew inspiration for their game. But we must pay tribute, the game looks nice, everything is stylized well and the graphics are pretty good for a multiplayer game.
Game Basics.
Well, let’s immediately move on to the gameplay of the game Predator Hunting Grounds. It is based on asymmetrical multiplayer – one predator against four armed mercenaries.
For a predator, everything is quite obvious, his main interest and goal of the game is to kill these same fighters and get trophies from them. If the predator managed to kill all members of the squad controlled by the players, the match is considered won.
For mercenaries it’s a little https://bajicasino.co.uk/ more complicated. They arrive in the jungle not to hunt a predator, but to carry out a random combat mission: destroy guerrilla fuel supplies, kill a black market dealer, arrange hacker sabotage of a substation, aim a space laser at a target, plant a counterfeit product with a beacon to track down drug dealers, and so on. There are really a lot of tasks, and while playing over the weekend I didn’t notice any repetitions, so I didn’t get tired of them. Although it’s not that I particularly followed the plot of these tasks. They are more likely to prevent players from getting bored while the main character of this game, the Predator, is jumping towards them along the branches. What if he doesn’t come at all… No, seriously, I had matches in which the predator never showed up until the end of the game, he probably decided to hunt wild boars without attracting too much attention to himself. Or just relax on a branch away from everyone… And one day he completely left the game. We just completed the task and flew off into the sunset by helicopter.
But the whole fun of the game lies precisely in the appearance of a predator, which is designed to introduce something unpredictable into an ordinary task, to arrange what we all love multiplayer for in principle.
Let’s not forget that the fighters are from an elite squad, so they may well fight back. The fight may end in the death of the alien. If the predator does not have time to blow itself up before its death, then the soldiers will be given a bonus for the body, which will be given for experiments.
Well, the idea is not bad in my opinion. The game can captivate both the side of the fighters and the side of the hunter. But let’s dig deeper.
So, after launching the game, you will kindly offer to complete training as a predator, where they will explain to you the basic basics of playing as an alien hunter. And if I were you, I wouldn’t skip it, because while when playing as a squad soldier everything is quite clear and intuitive (especially if you’ve ever played any first-person shooter), then playing as a hunter is very different.
We play as a predator from the 3rd person, we can cling to tree branches, which are kindly highlighted in red, stick to them and move as if on rails. You can jump onto adjacent branches in the space. It’s not particularly familiar or convenient at first, but you can get used to it. In addition to this interesting mechanic, the predator can perform a special jump, with which you can, say, jump onto a building or occupy some other strategically important height.
We also have a thermal imager in our arsenal, which makes it easier for us to find people and wild boars, the latter, by the way, can improve your health a little if something happens, if, of course, we manage to find at least one within a radius of 10 kilometers. Yes, and it’s worth considering that if a person takes a perk for lower body temperature and smears himself with mud, he will not be visible at all in this mode. But to discover your goals, the thing is irreplaceable. Pressing a key X the predator will scan the entire map and highlight with a pink aura the direction where you should look for living players.
Well, where would we be without the famous advanced Predator camouflage?? As the game says, standing still you will be invisible to the human eye, but when you move, noticeable light refraction effects can give you away. Although I personally managed to notice a predator even when he was just standing still. It is worth considering that when playing as a squad member, you can mark a predator in your sight and it will be marked with a bright border for all your partners for a while, regardless of whether it is currently in disguise or not. And the antagonist’s disguise is afraid of water and will certainly pass out in it.
Initially, the Predator has 2 weapons available. You will unlock an additional arsenal, such as a net gun, a sharp disk, a folding spear and a bow, a sword and a hand-held plasma weapon, which are not available this weekend, as your account level increases, but for starters, we have access to the blades on his hands, which in seconds can annihilate anyone who is not lucky enough to be in close proximity to him, and shoulder a plasma weapon that is not so easy to use. To use it, you need to hold down the right mouse button, thereby burning yourself and your location in front of everyone who has eyes. Well, it’s true, you have to try hard not to notice such a sight… So, in the aiming mode, you need to additionally hold down the left mouse button, increasing the charge power. If you haven’t been killed by that time, then you can shoot at your victim, and if the soldier is not freaked out by the first time he saw a predator and is not dumbfounded with horror… then he will simply run away while this clot of deadly energy slowly flies to the place where he was 5 minutes ago. Of course, I’m exaggerating a little, but during the game I got exactly this impression… And if suddenly you managed to do this unexpectedly or the player is very stupid, and you hit your victim, then the soldier will be one-shotted. But he won’t die right away, he will still need to be finished off. Here we move on to another mechanic for the predator – TROPHIES The most important goal when playing as a predator is to collect more skulls of soldiers played by living people. There are 2 types of trophies: 1st is just a skull that you can very quickly pick up literally in the heat of battle, even if everyone is shooting at you. They are valued less, but this way you will immediately finish off your victim. And the 2nd type is a skull with a spine, to get it you need to watch the animation longer, and you shouldn’t do this in a hail of bullets. This is a good option if you have killed the entire squad, and nothing threatens you, or if someone, due to his stupidity, has strayed from the main group, and the rest of the squad members will not have time to return to his aid so quickly.
A player can also die from blood loss if his teammates do not raise him in time.
Now let’s take a closer look at the gameplay from the squad member’s perspective.
Before the start of the mission, you can vote for one of 4 points on the outskirts of the map, and after landing from a helicopter, the game will ask you to proceed to a certain point on the map, where you will meet enemies controlled by AI. The artificial intelligence in the game is very stupid, the enemies just rush at you and can’t do anything to you, they do very little damage, don’t use cover, they’re really just cannon fodder, and I don’t quite understand if the developers deliberately made them so stupid so that they wouldn’t interfere with your concentration on fighting the predator or if they were just lazy? In my opinion, if they made them a little more dangerous so that they at least deal more damage to players, it would only add more interest to the game. So, after shooting them, you will need to complete a simple task (find a computer with data, turn the valves, find some evidence, steal gold, burn or explode something, and so on, in principle there is enough variety), then you will be asked to proceed to the next point with similar tasks and the same stupid partisans. You may have to kill a specific NPC who is no different from ordinary dummies, steal a flash drive, protect a certain zone. That’s it, go to the helicopter, fight off the lazy waves of enemies and you’ll fly away.
If it weren’t for the predator who will try to kill you as you complete your task, you could die of boredom, but all these tasks are just a background for your confrontation with the predator, and there is something to confront the predator with, the fighters have an impressive arsenal: assault rifles, shotguns, machine guns and even a grenade launcher. Weapons unlock as you upgrade and level up. There is an upgrade for the guns themselves: the more missions you complete with a specific gun, the more you can upgrade it, for example, put new sights on your favorite weapon with or without magnification, an enlarged magazine, a silencer, and of course skins. There are both camouflage and eye-catching rainbow ones, however, there are skins for almost everything, including the predator, but that’s not about that now.
So, fighters can take with them first aid kits, additional ammunition, grenades of all types, noise generators and heat decoys, there are also perks that we will talk about a little later.
If this is still not enough for you, then know that your fighter is not averse to rolling around in the mud so that the thermal imager cannot recognize him. This is especially funny at the very beginning of the mission, when your squad has essentially never seen a predator. Well, they just seem to really like to wallow in the mud like pigs. But the dirt falls off over time, and you have to get dirty in… blood? No, it’s just dirt under a corpse, it’s okay!
Yes, and you can identify a predator by ear. He moves with such a roar and makes his characteristic crack that his imminent appearance is unlikely to come as a surprise to the player if he plays with the sound turned on.
And since the predator is already nearby, let’s see how the skirmishes happen.
Since we are in unequal conditions – there is only one predator, and there are already four fighters, then the predator has one chance to fail everything: if the soldiers can remove the hp strip of the predator, he will get a second wind. This gives you a chance to run away and heal there. But it’s not that simple. You have to run away on the ground, super jumps and parkour don’t work at this time, and the chance that joyful soldiers will chase you is extremely high. Treatment does not happen as quickly. The predator makes a roar of pain during this process, so it is very vulnerable and can be finished off. If the soldiers manage to finish off the predator during treatment or remove its HP strip a second time, then the predator can resort to a last resort – trigger self-destruction, after which the soldiers can simply run away from the blast radius or try to defuse the bomb by completing a small mini-game. Then, having fought off the waves of partisans, they will be able to take the body for experiments and receive an additional reward at the end of the match.
If a predator removes a fighter’s HP strip, the fighter will fall and be seriously wounded and will bleed until he dies or until his teammate picks him up. An alien hunter can also finish him off.
If the predator managed to kill from one to three people, the survivors can go to the radio once per match and revive the dead squad members.
After the match.
After the match, participants are awarded experience and given some faith. Experience goes towards leveling up your overall account level. As your level increases, you will unlock various weapons and equipment from soldiers and predators, plus a loot box each new level. Everyone loves loot boxes? Veritanium is a local separate currency for which you can open skins for weapons and characters, I hope that at release it will not suddenly turn into a donation currency and they will give it away enough so that you can open skins without additional financial injections into the game.
As you level up, not only new weapons and equipment are unlocked, but also classes and perks available for both predators and fighters. Classes affect not only appearance, but also parameters such as health, stamina, speed and equipment. There are a lot of perks; for example, squad members can improve their weapon reload speed, deal more damage to AI, lower their body temperature to be less noticeable on a predator’s thermal imager, increase their ammunition or the amount of their health, and so on. Among the predator’s perks there is also a lot of everything: accelerated healing, a less noticeable gun laser, receiving less damage from firearms, increased damage in melee, increased jumps and other useful things.
You can take a maximum of 3 perks, so you need to choose wisely which is more important to you.
Balance and opinion.
I played about 40 matches, and 10 of them as a predator, the rest of the times I was thrown into a squad, although I ALWAYS prioritized the predator. In the last game from the studio IllFonic "Friday the 13th: The Game" there was the same garbage, but there it was due to even more asymmetrical multiplayer – 1 versus 7 players. But, for example, in another good asymmetric game Dead by Daylight 1 player is opposed to 4, and there you can choose whether you will play as a maniac or one of the victims, why not make a direct choice in the predator? Yes, perhaps the developers are afraid of the long wait for matchmaking, but they had problems during this weekend too. As far as I heard, people searched for a match for 15 minutes, but on my last day the match was searched for an average of 3 minutes.
I was interested in how to properly understand the mechanics of playing as an alien, but most of the time I was running as a squad, shooting at partisans and a predator. Several times I personally killed an alien hunter, and the more I played as a soldier, the more I realized how difficult it is for a predator, especially when I opened a grenade launcher. Sometimes we just really ran and hunted a predator. It was fun and not very difficult, despite the fact that I played exclusively with random partners.
When playing as a predator, you shouldn’t expect freebies. Yes, maybe you will come across guys who have never played a shooter or who have entered the game for the first time and do not understand what is happening, all their weapons are closed, except for the initial one. Then perhaps you can pick them apart in a couple of seconds, but personally, for the most part, I came across experienced guys who covered each other quite well and quickly took out my health bar. I have found for myself only one tactic that can help me win: we catch everyone in a net and quickly cut them down in close combat, preferably immediately finishing off those who are down with a “quick trophy”. But there are no guarantees here either, the network is not imbued, and is destroyed by a shot. By the way, this is not a joke, if a friend has fallen into the net of a predator, just hit him with a weapon, super realistic, isn’t it??
In general, the balance at the moment leaves much to be desired. The shoulder-mounted plasma cannon is quite useless due to its frailty and slowness, and of the weapons available during the trial period, only melee blades and a net gun are of any use. Well, to be honest, this is not how I imagined hunting as a predator, it’s precisely that very feeling of hunting that is missing, and when playing as a squad there is no feeling of anxiety and fear from the approach of a predator, unless, of course, he came running close to you.
Yes, perhaps I didn’t have time to figure it out and didn’t find a good strategy for the predator, maybe a weapon that is not yet available, such as the predator’s bow, will add more strategies for hunting, but for now, from the feeling of playing for both sides, the predator looks, in my opinion, rather weak, I hope at the release of the game the developers will collect feedback from the players and somehow improve the situation.
But despite all this, I had fun and interesting playing. I’d like to play the full version when it comes out. Well, let’s wait for the release.