Hunt Showdown is the best extraction shooter right now
Before I get the whole 'preaching to the choir' clapback. I'm aware of where I'm at. Just reflecting on how lucky we are to have this game.
I haven't played in a long time. Last event I played was Judgement of the Fool. I've got about 1.2k hours, and when they consolidated star rankings I briefly hit 6* (God help me...). I'm not great, but map knowledge and good positioning will usually help me seal the deal where my aiming skills are lacking.
Anyways, I decided to post this because of the recent update with the Marathon game. Which imo, was a great experience. Very close to Hunt mechanically, but they fubarred the execution with overly polluted soundscapes, being strangely resistant to team structure flexibility (1v2v3 or dedicated lobbies), and now capitulating to the PvE crowd. Which seems like every other extraction shooter is doing. ABI is getting one too or had one
Hunt is now eight years old and even during the EA, Crytek did an amazing job. Early game was kind of obnoxiously difficult - but they saw a vision, stuck to it and followed through. A PvP extraction shooter where monsters are more like sound traps or potentially lethal consequences of negligence (looking at you every zombie that killed me during a gunfight). Sure their design choices were sometimes unusual and the game had a number of technical and network hiccups that feel shitty at times. But even after so long, Hunt Showdown is still holding it down in the steam charts and even eclipsing Tarkov and Marathon (last I checked). It's still the only extraction that I 'itch' to play and it's still the best damn sound design in a game I've ever played.
I hope they continue to refine their vision and give us one of the best pure extraction shooter experiences in the industry... At this point, my hope is that Beautiful Light and/or Hunger are the next milestones in what real extraction shooters are supposed to be about.
But thank you Crytek - for learning to crawl, walk and then run, for the development of this genre. Still waiting to see who will successfully sprint
So yeah... what are you thankful about Hunt, or are you not and you just hate the game with a passion; valid. Wounds take time