Crytek goes on an old-time monster hunt and produces one of the freshest, brutal, and crucially, interesting, multiplayer experiences of the past ten years. Its newest creation Hunt Showdown takes established ideas from different games, and fuses them together into a brand new beast. One that is unforgiving, intense, and methodical.

It’s a bubbling pot of juicy parts from the likes of DayZ, Left 4 Dead, Evolve, Crysis, PUBG, and Red Dead, but the meal it creates is something quite unlike any of those.

Set in Louisiana at the end of the 19th century, players are cast as monster hunters, fighting it out to pick up bounties on nefarious creatures stalking the swampy South. There’s a competitive element to it, as up to ten players in teams of two or solo, race to find the location of the target monster and escape. But that’s not the end of it. Every player has to uncover clues to that location whilst avoiding not only the other players, but also the lesser zombie-like beasts that roam the map. A battle royale-esque aspect comes into effect because when you’re eliminated, you’re out, so there’s no gung-ho and reckless play that won’t see you taking a bullet or getting gutted by a foul beast.

So begins a PvEvP cat and mouse game, where every player is trying to outthink the other. Sure you might be the first to uncover the clues to the monster’s location, but a bit of smart thinking from another player means they could just quietly follow you to the location, let you do the hard work and then swoop in and take the spoils. In short, paranoia and cunning are as useful as a good gun when it comes to Hunt Showdown.

An average match of Hunt Showdown is no quick fix. Expect to spend upwards of half an hour methodically journeying across the map, listening for gunfire, the groans of the undead, and getting into brief encounters that usually end up with someone dead. Of course, a bad choice or two can end your time in the match a lot sooner.

That pace is perfect for the melting pot Crytek has going on. In the quieter moments, there’s still plenty of atmosphere and tension as you really don’t know what’s happening next. Sure you can make a basic strategy for how to approach a mission, but given the human element can drastically change the in-match dynamic each time, there’s very little in the way of safety to even a seemingly serene situation. There’s a perverse pleasure in soaking up the hazy Louisiana atmosphere when death is around every corner. In terms of horror, the creepy Louisiana setting is unnerving in broad daylight, but when it’s dark? Suddenly the unknown becomes just that bit more terrifying.

When the action does kick in, it’s faithful to the methodical pace of the rest of the game, but in the moment it seems fleeting, brutal, and often sweat-inducingly tense. Weaponry is of the era, so there’s slow reloads and noisy gunfire. As a result, every shot you make needs to be hit, lest you end up funneled by someone else’s bullets, or worse, attract more attention than is necessary to your location. More often than not, confrontation is best avoided, and to that end, you can use the impressive sound design to steer clear of trouble spots, or use it to drive that trouble into the waiting arms of other nasty things. Hunt Showdown’s audio is so good, you can roughly tell exactly how far away a shot has been fired. Rarely has a game been better served by headphones or surround sound than this one. With it, every footstep, creak of a door, jangle of chain, and click of a gun is perfectly represented, and listening truly becomes your greatest tool.

Adding to the bounty hunting drama is the fact that when your character dies, that’s it. They and everything they held is gone. General progression carries over still, but it adds another pinch of spice to an already hot multiplayer dish. Happily, the game tells you this early on and allows you to keep your character alive regardless up to level 10, which is certainly long enough to get to grips with the way Hunt Showdown works. In fact, despite the unforgiving nature of the game, Crytek has done a splendid job of easing the player into the game.

Obviously making off with the loot unscathed is hard work and most games aren’t going to end that way, so Crytek ensures you get XP rewards for all sorts of things, be it discovering clues, killing lesser monsters, or just lasting to the end, prize or not. The option for risk is there, but there are at least measures to remind you that you don’t need to sacrifice a precious character to a half-baked attempt at stealing the loot.

There’s plenty of fumbling quick deaths early on that act as little lessons in just that. For example, In one match during my early hours with the game, I stood atop a wall, trying to find the quietest, least confrontational route to my target. There were several lowly monsters scattered about the most direct route, and I could hear the crack of rifle fire close by, so I teetered along the wall, trying to go around, and eventually spotted a lone zombie-type enemy wandering frantically in front of where I wanted to go. No problem, I’ll just go and hammer it with a melee attack, right?

It saw me, screeched, and started moving toward me, so I panicked and fired at its head, missed, and hit its chest instead. Then it burst into flame and ran full pelt at me, and began trying to tear my poor bounty hunter into barbecue strips. I just about killed it after much panicky running and reloading, took a breath, went to heal myself, and promptly got shot in the head by another player who had clearly been watching the whole thing play out from a distance. I admired the smarts of the bastard, but boy, did I feel stupid for getting sucked into that situation. The key thing though was that I was desperate to dive right back in, because Hunt Showdown’s emergent randomness makes for so many exciting one-off situations.

Oh and the reason that monster burst into flames? Well, you soon discover that there’s not just your garden variety zombies wandering about Louisiana. That particular enemy was an Immolator, which as you probably guessed, turns into fiery rage once provoked. Other unpleasant humanoids include bloated monstrosities that drip giant leech-like creatures as they walk, and water-dwelling hags that try to drag you to a swampy doom. They all have their own patterns and weaknesses, and again, as time goes by, you better understand how to tackle them, avoid them, and use them for your own gain. But they remain a threat long after you think you have a handle on things because the situations that get thrown up are so out of your control.

The creatures you are here to collect bounties on are something else though. These twisted nightmares include a spider with a human head and a pig-headed giant with a worryingly large blade in hand. They are faced in arena-like encounters, and each uses the environment to better stalk and slay you. They are essentially boss fights in the middle of a battle royale-esque survival game that dole out a reward you can only keep by escaping the map without being killed. It’s quite different from how the rest of a match feels, but still, it slots into the overall tone perfectly. As mentioned before, Hunt Showdown snaps together aspects of so many games, but makes them all gel into a seamless whole with impressive ease,

The only gripe I actually have is that the visuals suffer from a few minor technical hiccups, but honestly, given how bad some Crytek-made games have performed on console before, this is a largely smooth experience. I hope it retains a healthy audience though, because at present that’s the only real problem I can see going forward. Hunt Showdown is a worthy alternative to the usual multiplayer types out there, and it deserves to be seen as an important step in how the future of multiplayer shooters goes.

Hunt Showdown review code provided by the publisher.

Hunt Showdown is out now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.