Review: Hunted: The Demon's Forge

Hunted: The Demon's Forge (PS3, Xbox 360)
Developer: inXile Entertainment
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Release date: May 31, 2011 (North America)

Dear Hunted: The Demon's Forge,

There's so much I want to say, but there is a part of me that isn't even sure if you want to hear it. I know the truth hurts, but believe me, my intention is not to hurt you, I just want to help you...although I'm sure we may be past that point by now. There was just so much you could have been, so much I thought you could offer me.

Maybe it's my fault. I do have a bit of a history. My love affair with Deathtrap Dungeon all those years ago may have clouded my judgment and, while I know that it isn't fair to compare you with my past loves, when someone touches you like that it's just hard to let go. I thought that maybe you could fill a small part of that void. I wanted to crawl through dungeons with you, find elaborate secrets, collect loot and vanquish my foes for no other reason than to enrich my characters life with riches and stories of heroism.

You surely looked the part. Dark corridors filled with tolken-esque enemies. A brutish male character with an overdeveloped sense of humanity pared with a elfin female who's sense of bravado and derring-do would surely get them into trouble. A decent combat system that, though not as deep or tactical as other games, still did the job, requiring more than simple button mashing. But in the end, you were never able to take these distinct parts of yourself and flush them out into something more rewarding. You wouldn't really let me explore. All of your levels were simply linear trail stomps with creatures in the way. I wanted more than that, I wanted to get lost in you, but you were never deep enough for me to get lost in. You would even go so far as to block my backtracking path with obvious elevation drops, and since my character couldn't jump they were just ways to designate the next “section” of the level. That's no way to treat a person.

I even went so far as to forgive your lack of inventory system and begin to embrace your “one weapon at a time” aesthetic. Sure, it was simpler and somewhat anathematic to an RPG traditionalist, but it was also a little more realistic and there was certainly something inviting about streamlining this aspect of gameplay. It's just that there was never much more to you than what you showed me in the first few hours we spent together. If I hacked through one section, I hacked through them all. We never truly opened up and shared anything.

Even bringing in another person didn't really up the excitement all that much, at least not as much as you would think. And having them in the same room just wasn't going to work at all...not with your horrifically incorporated split screen getting in the way of the kink.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: you aren't who I thought you were, and perhaps part of that comes down to me. But you can't completely escape responsibility in this falling out either. You could have been so much more. I wished for you, I hoped for you, but in the end, you felt satisfied being far too elementary, when you could have been so much more.

I'm leaving you.

Score: 60%