Demons, they have forges, they burn and defile things, they give nuns titillating dreams (or so I like to imagine), are worshipped by metal loving awkward teens and generally get a bad rap. Poor demons. Hunted doesn’t do much to repair demons poor PR image, but it does provide a violent and genuinely challenging game experience in a dark fantasy setting with a focus on coop. All of which are good things.

I can summon up the plot with a sentence, as provided by Wikipedia: “Two mercenaries in battle, E'lara and Caddoc, go searching for a mysterious artifact about which Caddoc had a vision”. In addition, Caddoc speaks with a cockney English accent and E'lara has enormous boobs that visibly bounce as you move. I feel this is important information to pass on.

While the violence gets repetitive, it never stops being superbly gory

As a dark fantasy game things are pretty grim and gritty and the world is chock full of twisted forests, moldy ruins, dank caves and burning villages. Everyone you meet tries to kill you, or pretends to help you then tries to kill you, or imparts important plot information and then dies horribly (or often is all ready dead when they pass on the information). Despite scantily clad elf ladies the world of Hunted is not cheery, there are no Hobbits.

Your two characters both have ranged and melee options but E’Lara is far more focused on her bow and arrow and Caddoc is definitely your hack and slash character so it’s pretty rare you’ll take advantage of their secondary abilities.

E'lara is your eye pleasing female Legolas character complete with goofy bad girl tattoos, sarcastic wit and leather bikini armour

The games coop option gives it a distinctly Gears of War feel. Two players in a dark and grim world, playing in third person and taking cover behind low walls; it’s basically a fantasy based Gears game. But whereas in Gears the only advantage of a coop player was stopping you bleeding out (and maybe spooning on cold nights), the majority of the special attacks and magic powers in Hunted complement each other. E’Lara can freeze enemies allowing Caddoc to charge up and smash them; Caddoc can knock enemies into the air so E’Lara can pepper them with a rapid shot of arrows. There are a lot of options and combos to play with and new powers getting unlocked all the time as you level up.

This creature was a spider type enemy in the game, but here it looks like a skinned lemur for some reason

While single player is serviceable, the cooperative AI just wise enough to help and heal where required and easily directable to solve puzzles, the game fully expects you to play online coop with a friend or heavy breathing stranger. This is by far the best way to go and four eyes are better than two for spotting the games myriad collectibles and hidden rooms.

And when I say, ‘hidden rooms’, I’m not talking about some rubbish single offshoot with a health pack, we’re talking old school elaborate puzzles and traps that take you so far off course you forget the way back. Not to mention proper rewards for finding these hidden areas, super weapons and troves of treasure. Hunted reminded me just how much I miss games with secrets as rewarding as the main game. Another old school element is the difficulty, enemies can be extraordinarily tough and you’ll often back track to search for missed health potions. The unfortunate downside is that the hidden areas, secrets and collectibles are the best features of Hunted. It certainly alleviates the games often grinding gameplay layout of hallway, fight in a room, hallway, fight in a room and continue ad nauseum.

Searching for secret areas is one of the real charms of Hunted

While there are RPG elements they aren’t particularly deep. The main focus is on gear and loot, of which there is an ass ton in each level, and using crystals found in boxes and looted from bad guys to level up special abilities. These special abilities and attacks are the only levelling you’ll really be doing. Weapons, even magical weapons, are regularly replaced as you can only carry a single one at a time. It’s a little disappointing that you can’t recharge a magical sword you particularly like. It’s really an action game with a focus on high energy violence than an RPG game, don’t expect Elder Scroll levels of depth.

The graphics for Hunted are pretty rough; picture the same colour palette as Gears of War but plenty of jaggy animations. The game is overly dark in parts and the grey brown colours often muddy up the visuals to an annoying level. The biggest problem is that the graphics and camera work make split screen coop, one of the games major selling points, a non event. It’s just too damn hard to see what’s happening. For a game with such a major focus on coop it’s frustrating that the local coop is so poorly executed.

Your main enemies for much of the game are the Worgen and several variations pop up. I believe this is the 'had his weetabix this morning Worgen'

The controls are also lacking in polish. Melee fighting controls feel awkward, especially in terms of manoeuvring and blocking attacks in combat. Often you’re reduced to mashing attacks and special moves till all the monsters are dead. The cover scheme, identical to the waist high walls in Gears of War, feels almost useless and most of the game can be completed without it. Supposedly it’s to pop and shoot at arrow wielding enemies but by the second level you are almost always attacked by melee enemies at the same time as ranged enemies so hiding in cover is rarely an option.

Hunted is the epitome of an average game. The hackneyed fantasy tale tires almost immediately and the rough controls cheapen the challenge. But the shining moments of unlocking hidden areas and solving puzzles and the genuine fun to be had in a coop focused game, probably one of the best since Resident Evil 5,  buoys up these inadequacies and will keep you playing Hunted far longer than you’ll expect to. It’s one of those games no one particularly dislikes but everyone’s surprised when it gets a sequel. Should you play it? Well that depends, if you’re hard up for a game right now and you just want something new, by all means grab a copy, there’s a lot to enjoy here. Hunted doesn’t demand your attention, but it works hard to hold it once it has it.