Devil's Hunt

They say that an ending can make or break your game. That may be true, but it's hard to tell when it comes to Devil's Hunt from Layopi Games. This is a new beat 'em up that sees an unsuspecting twentysomething caught in the middle of a war between angels and demons. It has a solid setup, memorable characters and a whole bunch of cool looking demons to beat up. The only thing it doesn't have is a proper conclusion. Even though it's not sold this way, Devil's Hunt is very much the first part of a series. I wish I had known this going in, because when those credits rolled and I realized the game was over, I was stunned and felt cheated by the unresolved story. It doesn't matter to me if the ending is good or bad, I just don't want to feel cheated when everything is said and done.

Desmond is an over-confident 26-year-old whose day is about to go from bad to worse. Not only does he get fired from his high-paying job, lose an important fight and catch his fiancée cheating on him, but he gets into a nasty car accident and ends up making a deal with the Devil. In a desperate bid to get back to earth, Desmond agrees to work for Lucifer, starting by taking the soul of the man who slept with his future bride. This quickly spirals out of hand, ultimately revealing that our hero will either be the savior or destroyer.

All this setup leads to a fairly predictable beat 'em up that reminds me a bit of Prototype and Devil May Cry. Desmond has the potential to choose the side of good or evil, but for now he's stuck fighting both demons and angels as he attempts to free himself from his deal and save the people he loves. And to do that, he's going to get into a bunch of fist fights in small, enclosed areas and collect the souls of those foolish enough to go against him.

Desmond starts out with the basic weak and strong punches, both of which are mapped to the shoulder buttons. As our hero levels up and fights through the stages, he'll earn new supernatural abilities that will allow him to throw magical spears, raise fire from the ground, send enemies reeling with a vortex punch and more. You can cycle between three different types of powers and map three of those abilities to the face buttons, allowing you to quickly switch between nine attacks when you're in the heat of battle. This goes a long way to make up for the otherwise incredibly simplistic combat.

The one thing that really caught me by surprise was how much story there is, especially early on. The first act of the game has a lot more talking than fighting, to the point where I was starting to get restless. We walk a few feet and trigger a cinema; punch a few demons and trigger a cinema; watch a cinema and trigger a cinema. It's not until about half way through when we're able to fight a bunch of enemies in a row, which is when the action really picks up.

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I would be a lot more positive about the cinematic approach if the storytelling was better. I appreciate what they're trying to do here, but the characters in Devil's Hunt are hard to root for. Desmond is impulsive in all the worst ways and is insufferable because of it. Maybe it's personal bias, but I hate this kind of archetype. He's a meathead who immediately jumps to conclusions and always makes the dumbest possible decisions. The events that led him to meeting the Devil should have been life-changing and dramatic, but instead the whole thing is laughably stupid.

This is true of every major twist and turn in the story. The problem I kept running into is that I never understood Desmond's reasoning. He'll make decisions that seems to run counter to everything we know about him, always at the convenience of the story. It's almost as if they wrote a lengthy, detailed story arc for Desmond and then decided to randomly throw away 75% of the pages. Devil's Hunt is based on the Polish novel series Equilibrium, which I have to imagine does a much better job of fleshing this character out and making us understand his thinking. I had a hard time connecting with Desmond.

This isn't helped by the game's most glaring problem -- it doesn't tell a full story. Without giving too much away, almost none of what Desmond sets out to do at the start of this game ends up getting done. From the character choices to the big showdowns to the satisfying conclusion, they've left everything for a sequel that may or may not happen. This game offers you a cliffhanger ending that is wholly unsatisfying. And it's actually worse than that, because what they position as the big climatic event at the end ultimately doesn't make any sense because of the shoddy writing.

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This is one of those games that falls into the trap of saving the best stuff for the sequel. All the savior and destroyer stuff we're promised at the start is pushed aside for a baffling side-plot that doesn't feel all that important when placed next to the gravity of a demon vs. angel war. It's one thing to set up a story that can run for multiple games, but you still need to make each installment feel satisfying on its own. Devil's Hunt doesn't do that. And worse, Devil's Hunt doesn't advertise itself as being an incomplete story. A lot of people are going to be extremely disappointed (and maybe even cheated) when those credits roll.

Then again, it's not like the experience getting to that point was flawless. Devil's Hunt is a fairly average beat 'em up that takes inspiration from a lot of other, better games. The action is also marred by unstable frame rates and combat that never seems to change. This is a repetitive game with only a few types of enemies, similar looking levels and tons of technical problems. There's an entire portion of the game where it seems like the developers forgot to include the voice acting.

If you're looking for a fun action game with great combat and a satisfying story, then you may need to look elsewhere, because Devil's Hunt comes up short in almost every way. This is a dated beat 'em up with an awful protagonist who constantly makes the worst possible decisions. It's also only part of a story, giving players a lame and disappointing cliffhanger ending with no resolution to the potentially interesting setup. Couple that with the repetitive fighting and rampant technical problems and you have a hunt that isn't worth going on.