If you don’t like action, blood, hacking up zombies, or fun, then I’ll save you the trouble of reading this review and just tell you not to buy Hunter: The Reckoning. However, if any of the above are your ticket, read on!
In an Xbox world dominated by First Person Shooters and football, Hunter has very little competition aside from Gauntlet Dark Legacy in the category of “multiplayer action/adventure”. Most companies would take this as an excuse to slack off, but mega credit goes to High Voltage and White Wolf for making a game that shines in every aspect available.

What’s shine without shiny graphics? From the get go, those with an eye for detail will both notice and appreciate the painstaking detail put into the graphics of this game. From the Defender’s holster to the Avenger’s battle-axe, everything looks very realistic and well done. Only on a few occasions will you notice a less-than-perfect detail in the background, like a puddle’s funky physics, or a pool not reflecting. Across the board the visuals merit no other complaints, as nearly every single character is flawlessly done. In motion and still, the game looks perfect, and all of the beautiful graphics and effects are done with no slowdown.

The audio is quite nice, as it compliments the style of game that Hunter is. White Wolf is a company that knows what they’re doing when it comes to supernatural science fiction, and it shows. Every zombie moan, every wraith screech, every fleshcrafted oddity that makes a noise sounds right and home and downright creepy when you take the time to really listen to it. But what would the audio be without some good zombie-tail-whipping tunes, right? Thanks to Coma and some nice timing, the music is both adrenaline pumping and excellently timed. As you traverse the streets, sewers, and other undead-infested areas of Hunter, it remains eerily quiet until you get surrounded, swarmed, or both.

When the action picks up, the music follows suite. I can promise you from experience nothing is more exhilarating than pulling out a katana and going off in a group of thirty zombies/vampires/god-knows-whats to the kick-ass music Hunter provides.

The graphics and audio, however, aren’t the best part of Hunter’s package. It’s easily the story. Whether you’re familiar with White Wolf’s World of Darkness or not, whether you’ve been playing the Hunter Pen-and-Paper game or never heard of it, or whether you couldn’t tell someone the difference between a Tzimisce or Zucchini, the story will quickly take a good hold of your interest.

No, the story isn’t as long or emotionally involving as a Final Fantasy game, but it is a sick, twisted look at what the World of Darkness is and the people that live in it, particularly what motivates a certain sketchy ally by the name of Carpenter. If anything, Hunter did an excellent job of making all the major players seem very alive and real. It won’t take more than one or two sentences from a character to tell what kind of personality he or she has, and just like real people, you’ll learn more about them as the pages of the story unfold.

All three aspects combine perfectly to make a very enjoyable, fun, and immersive game. But where lies immersion also dwells a challenge. You’d better bring your A game. Hunter is downright evil in making the first few levels deceptively easy, but things start getting ugly soon after. A more skilled player may have little trouble marching through the game by his lonesome, but only after gaining significant experience in the gameplay’s dynamics. Where the real challenge is, is multiplayer, where things start to get wicked hard.

Two people is doable, but go with three or four, and things go beyond hard to frustratingly ugly, particularly boss battles. Whether or not the amazing difficulty is fun or painful all depends on the players and how well they work as a team, but I’ll warn you right now, you’ll need a good Defender.

Despite how hard the game can be, it’s well worth your time and investment. My only complaint throughout the game is that in the end it’s just too short, and you’ll be hungry for more at the end. Still, if you have a lot of friends, then buy this game now, but if you’re more of a loner, it’s still a great decision to pick it up for at least a weekend with your pals. You’ll cry, you’ll scream, you’ll laugh, and you’ll cheer, but most importantly, you’ll all have fun, which is what Hunter is all about in the end.