Predator: Hunting Grounds
AT A GLANCE
IllFonic
Sony Interactive Entertainment
First-person shooter
PC, PS4
Multiplayer
Get to da console! Predator: Hunting Grounds takes advantage the Predator franchise’s cult following, throwing players into an asymmetrical multiplayer experience where a team of four hapless soldiers have to fend off a jungle full of enemies - along with a certain skull-collecting alien hiding in the branches above them. While Hunting Grounds comes pretty close to the schlocky B-movie fun of the 1987 movie, it’s also rife with technical issues and off-kilter balancing problems.
Players can choose to be either one of four soldiers in a Fireteam, or the Predator that hunts them. The Fireteam goes into a map with a non-Predator-related set of objectives - such as taking down a drug lord, searching for artifacts or scrubbing data from a computer.
Playing as the Fireteam is clearly the weaker choice. It would be one thing if you were actually playing characters from the franchise, but this game forces you into generic soldiers who only spout forced one-liners from the films.
If you’re playing the Predator, the Yautja comes fully equipped with all the various weapons and gadgetry seen in the movies. You don’t get access to all of the Predator’s arsenal at first, however. The really good stuff is saved for after you’ve levelled up and gained experience.
The Predator starts off on the opposite side of the map from the Fireteam. You’ll have very little to go on at first, since there are no floating names in the distance to alert you to your prey’s location. You’ll have to keep an alien ear out for distant gunfire, and switch to thermal vision (which feels great to use) to seek them out.
Fortunately, moving around the jungle is a whole lot more fun for the Predator - making use of what the game winkingly calls ‘Predkour’. This mechanic allows the Predator to run up giant trees and hop from one branch to another.
Once you spot your prey, you can fire off a couple shots from the treeline, but it’s only a matter of time before you’re spotted back - even if you’re invisible. The Predator annoyingly lets out a chittering noise wherever it goes, while making heavy thumping footsteps to boot. It’s impossible to not be noticed, so the solution is to play aggressively.
And now we’ve arrived at Predator: Hunting Grounds’ biggest problem. The Predator is way too underpowered, even with all its weaponry. It can be a constant struggle to eliminate just one member of the Fireteam as downed team members can be revived. Even if you go the extra mile and tear out their spine, the Fireteam can still revive the player. When the Predator is down, you can activate a bomb - which can be easily defused via a simple puzzle, but it’s also ludicrously easy to just escape its blast radius.
Tack onto that a wealth of healing items and the fact that people are literally killing the Predator with nothing but a knife right now. I’d love to say that Predator: Hunting Grounds’ problems end with balancing issues, but that’s far from the truth. This game is a technical nightmare on the PlayStation 4. Environments, while well-structured and expansive, constantly suffer from horrible anti-aliasing issues which do nothing but hurt the eye. All you have to do is turn the camera during gameplay, and you’ll see every bit of distant foliage ripple unnaturally - which seems like something play testers would’ve picked up on several months before release.
The game also suffers from horrible amounts of framerate drops and bugs, as well. While playing, I would constantly get lag while swivelling my camera around, or have my game freeze in the midst of shooting down enemies. It’s absolutely unacceptable in a multiplayer game, since it’s so easy to get downed in the seconds that the game has been rendered unplayable.
On top of that, the AI in this game is absolutely atrocious, with brain-dead stupid enemies running up to your face to shoot you, or running into walls, or even just… standing there, in the distance.
Hunting Grounds also features a grand total of three (!!!) maps, which is a sad amount for a multiplayer-focused game to launch with. It would help if these maps were diverse, but they’re all sadly set in the jungle-which means that you’ll probably play a few matches before even realising that you’ve moved from one map to the next. We couldn’t even get a city-set map in the vein of Predator 2?
I can’t recommend Predator: Hunting Grounds to anyone but diehard fans of the franchise. This game is an absolute mess with very little to offer, other than the chance to see an iconic ‘80s era villain in the mainstream again. If you’re in for that, you might just have a good time.
CONCLUSION
