Nintendo Switch code provided by Easy Trigger Games.
Huntdown, an indie action side-scroller from Easy Trigger Games and Coffee Stain Publishing, released on May 12th, and it’s a nostalgia-fueled leap back into the world of dystopian sci-fi and hard-boiled action flicks that pervaded the ‘80s.
It’s a modernized ode to old-school arcade games; the hand-painted 16-bit pixel art and the heavy synth tracks drag the player kicking and screaming back to the time of epic one-liners and pulpy gore. This is a 60-fps homage to the gameplay that many older gamers cherished in earlier years.
Heavily-stereotyped characters. Horribly cheesy dialogue. 16-bit graphics. And a profusion of references to all the ‘80s classics that are either famous or infamous. If it wasn’t done right, it wouldn’t land on its feet at all. It would crumble under the weight of all that it’s trying to hold.
That’s the million-dollar question: does this bounty-hunting adventure live up to the blood-soaked hype?
STORY
The world is a mess. The future is overrun with criminal gangs and there is only one person who can stop them—or three, technically.
In the mayhem-filled streets of the future where criminal gangs rule and cops fear to tread, only the bounty hunters can free the city from the corrupt fist of felony. Lay waste to the criminal underworld and make a killing.
If Judge Dredd cleaned up the entire city, this is what it would look like. This isn’t a 90-minute action flick. It’s a cleansing.
You can play as three different bounty hunters in Huntdown—Anna Conda, the ex-commando with an itchy trigger-finger; John Sawyer, half-man and half-robot with a full thirst for vengeance; and Mow Man, the recon droid who never misses a bullet.
Whichever one you pick, get ready for a wild ride.
GAMEPLAY
There are two ways to enjoy Huntdown: single player or local cooperative play.
And twenty levels offer players a lot of ground to cover in a game that demands focus and fast reflexes. It’s an accurate recreation of the manic gunfights and relentless enemies that featured in arcade cabinets more than three decades ago.
The cityscapes are flooded with gangs and memorable bosses, and each sector is under the control of one group with several smaller bosses before the final big bad that runs the show.
Here are the gangs that you’ll face in Huntdown:
Hoodlum Dolls: Punks who run the streets and terrorize the cops
Misconducts: Hockey-padded brawlers who skate and shoot and blow things up
The Heatseekers: Motorcycle gangbangers with speed and big guns
No. 1 Suspects: Martial art fighters with the discipline to match their deadly skills
You’ll fight them with melee weapons, pistols, assault rifles, projectiles, and so many other weapons. It mixes the possible with the improbable and the totally ludicrous.
And it works.
You don’t have to have grown up in the ‘80s to appreciate what Huntdown has to offer. It’s an entertaining side-scroller that has such love for its source material.
Playing on the Nintendo Switch, I was able to enjoy the game in bed at night, outside on the back porch, and docked on my entertainment console in the office. While I recommend playing with a Pro controller on the Switch, it was nice to be able to play Huntdown in different places. It’s possible to use the Joy-Cons on the console and still be able to complete Easy difficulty. I would likely find it a more problematic game on a higher difficulty without a more ergonomic controller.
But all of that is just noise. What matters is the gameplay.
Each bounty hunter has a different primary weapon and secondary projectile. While I started off the game with Mow Man on Normal difficulty, I eventually switched to John Sawyer on Easy difficulty in order to progress more easily and try out another gun. John’s massive pistol and boomerang were a nice change of pace.
And each gang in Huntdown fights with different tactics, so it’s a nice change of pace throughout the game. Combat with weaker enemies can sometimes feel ordinary, but the different environments, combatants, and weapons help to spice up the fighting.
With 20 levels, 20 bosses, and 4 parts of the city to explore, there is a good bit of variety for this action arcade shooter.
My favorite parts of the game were the boss fights. Each one was so unique, and the best angle of attack meant that I was utilizing the few controls in wildly different ways for each encounter.
I particularly enjoyed a guitar-wielding road-rager who drove a monster truck who morphed into some ropey Gollum creature halfway through the fight after falling into what I can only assume was lava.
Did I mention he looked like Elvis?
Huntdown doesn’t take itself seriously. And that’s part of the charm.
VISUALS
Time and effort went into re-creating the look of ‘80s arcade games and it paid off. The hand-painted graphics are pure pixel-art joy and the hand-drawn animations never get old.
It helps that the gameplay is super smooth, but I love the aesthetic of Huntdown. It’s a nice break from modern graphics and the nostalgia-needle is hitting the far end of the gauge.
REPLAYABILITY
I died not infrequently on Easy difficulty. I stopped Normal difficulty before the final boss of the first gang in order to start over for the sake of speed and efficiency.
So there’s a high ceiling for skill in Huntdown. I can’t imagine what it would be like to play on the hardest difficulty.
All of this means that you can throw away a lot of hours trying to chase perfection. For the completionists out there, each of the 20 levels has three objectives that can be achieved during gameplay: 1) kill a certain amount of bad guys, which is usually the easiest objective; 2) find the three secret stashes throughout the level, which is harder; and 3) complete the level without dying, which can be ridiculously hard.
Taking all of that into consideration, Huntdown is packed with fun gameplay and the possibility of a long diversion from other games.
WHAT IT COULD HAVE DONE BETTER
A few things do take away from the experience.
When receiving mission intel from the bounty hunter’s boss, I noticed several spelling errors or grammatical issues that could have easily been fixed. That’s not really anything impacting gameplay but it does ruin the immersion sometimes.
The objectives of each level are the same. For all twenty levels. Kill a certain number of baddies. Get the stashes. Don’t die. While the first encourages wanton mayhem, the second encourages eagle-eyed exploration, and the third encourages zealous determination, there is a missed opportunity here. It would have been nice to try for other objectives, like killing a certain number of enemies with a particular weapon or completing a level within a time limit. A little more variety could have made the playstyle and purpose in each level different.
A game’s difficulty is always subjective to the player but one thing to keep in mind is that Huntdown does not allow you to change the difficulty in a save setting. What you start it in is what you have to play through unless you start a new save slot. That might not bother some gamers, but it can be irksome if you were wanting to avoid starting all over again.
That’s about it, though.
VERDICT
Huntdown is a blast. Super boss fights, a killer soundtrack, slick action gameplay, and style exploding off the screen make this a game that’s well worth your time and money.
Grab a gun and start shooting.
