HUNTDOWN

This is a very mild don't recommend review. Huntdown looks good, sounds and controls decently, but just doesn't grab me. Perhaps because I was expecting something more like urban Contra/Metal Slug and got something more like Mega Man without much platforming or Castlevania with guns and cover based mechanics. I suppose technically Huntdown is a run 'n gun. Though, it feels more like an action platformer. Enemies take several shots to put down and the game wants the player to make use of 2D chest high boxes, crates and barrels along with garages and perpendicular hallways to stay clear of incoming fire. Which slows down the run 'n gun element. Likely the source of why Huntdown didn't impress me as much as I thought it. Boss battles are pretty frequent as well. The early fights have pretty easy to read patterns to exploit. But I have yet to encounter a boss battle that just went on fair too long because the boss is way too bullet spongy. Even holding on to a limited ammo weapon, some grenades and using the character's special weapon, each fight felt like whittling away a Mega Man boss with the buster cannon. The little too long of a fight along with boss fights happening too often just ruins any sort of flow for me. There's just nothing particularly interesting to hold onto slog through slightly bullet spongy enemies during the fair short stages to fight a fairly bullet spongy boss a couple minutes later. Then repeat. The stages themselves look interesting with a bunch of interesting background details, but on the short side. At least early game. Huntdown isn't a bad game at all. Some might think it is a bit on the difficult side, but as someone that played a lot of NES, I don't think it is that bad for as far I made it before this review. If I had rented it for a weekend way back when, I would probably enjoyed it okay enough. Though, I doubt I'd rent it or think much of it once it was returned the video store. Like Metal Storm, I thought Huntdown was going be something else based on the visuals, but what it actually is doesn't interest me enough to play it much. Not really the game's fault, beyond I also didn't especially find the gameplay it does offer enough to continue playing. Which is why I can't personally recommend it.