Hunt Showdown is one of the only modern shooters that I could truly stomach, and actually loved. This game offers a hardcore first person shooter experience, with skill being heavily rewarded. The brutality of it’s core game design reflects onto the atmosphere and world. It's full of horrible malformed amalgamations of rancid flesh, famine, disease, and horrible bleak lives for all that inhabit the area of Louisiana that you and your fellow hunters explore. The game is Player vs Player focused with major Player vs Environment elements. It’s also very reliant on phenomenal sound design, gun-play, and overall map design.

A fair warning: This game does have perma-death per Hunter. This does not take place until you acquire level 16 in the Bloodline tree. (Bloodline is your account level.) After that point you will begin to lose hunters on death, which means everything on that specific hunter will be gone. Perma-death, speaking from personal experience, has made this game more fun for me and hasn’t soiled my experience whatsoever. If anything, it makes me play better and pushes me to think about what I’m doing before I end up dying and losing all of my progress. It's important to mention this as it may before very off putting to new players.

Now the real meat and bones of this game is the heavy mix of PvE and PvP it has. A total of 10 players (Or 5 teams) are pitted against one another while all having the same goal, that being killing, banishing, and claiming the bounty monster. There’s a total of 1 - 2 bounties per match, which are randomly generated on the map. The hunters must find clues using their "darksight" to navigate their way to the monsters den to kill it. The hunters are all hostile to one another, the ultimate goal is to be the last time alive with the bounty, and then escaping with said bounty. Engagements between hunters are fast and deadly matchups that always lead to a victor. Be it a squad wipe, or leaving a duo half dead while the other is licking their wounds. This leads into my next point.

The gun-play, Hunt Showdown has some of the best feeling gun-play I’ve experienced in a first person shooter. All the guns feel and look powerful. Shooting a gun has a loud distinct noise for each weapon, a bright muzzle flash ejects itself from the front of your weapon, and the kick really does move your weapon. But it’s not all in the animation, with the era this game is set in you must really take the time to think about every shot you take. Lever actions, revolvers, bolt actions, shotguns, and repeaters are this games bread and butter. (With the exception of new guns that have been added since the 1.0 release). Every shot counts, most guns have time between each and every shot, such as pulling the bolt, or pulling back the hammer. It rewards patience and aim skill. And that’s what I love about this game, pure aim skill helps tremendously. From my personal experience the satisfying crunch of another hunters skull will never get old. If well crated fun to use weapons are a high point for you in a shooter, I'd highly recommend this game for that alone.

Adding one more major thing before this review becomes a full on essay. The sound design is so well done in this game, which actually makes stealth a core element of gameplay. It’s not everyday you play a multiplayer game that relies so heavily on sound and visual cues. Events such as crows flying away, some grunt moving to a place where it heard a noise, or brief white flashes of another hunter’s weapon being fired. Information is your best friend in this game. The information you can get in this game is what makes stealth actually viable, if they can’t hear you or see you, they can’t react to you when you blow their head off out of nowhere. I would highly recommend that you use headphones or ear-buds with a dynamic audio range if you wish to take advantage of a major part of this game.

For optimization sake: The game runs okay on my 1070, unfortunately I have to run my game at all low to reach my target FPS. But newer cards shouldn't have much trouble, especially after the optimization updates that are coming with update 1.8. Most people shouldn't have any trouble running this game.

TL;DR: Hunt Showdown is a hardcore perma-death shooter that rewards time investment and getting better as you play. It has great sound design and gun-play that keeps me coming back. Since 1.0 the game has added so much content and it never makes the game worse (Unless it's Cain). It's worth buying anytime you want it.