For a limited time, Hunt: Showdown’s map is literally on fire
Devil’s Moon takes an incendiary turn.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Grab a bucket. Stop drop and roll. Dive into a river (even though it’s filled with electric eels). Hunt: Showdown is burning.
Today the game’s German developer Crytek has torched portions of Hunt: Showdown’s three maps, Stillwater Bayou, Lawson Delta, and DeSalle. For the next 24 hours, fixed areas within these maps are set ablaze. It’s a controlled burn, technically: the “Inferno Wildcard Condition,” the name for this special game state, is part of the Devil’s Moon event that kicked off earlier this week.
I jumped into the event this afternoon to take in the heat. The environmental fire doesn’t spread, but it can turn portions of your health bar to cinders just as other instances of fire do within Hunt. It’s a disruptive and thematically interesting change, but it isn’t so dramatic a change that it will turn gunfights on their head. The fire is mainly confined to arcs of forest, and though it does create roadblocks as you’re traveling across the map, there are enough gaps to find a safe detour through it.
Otherwise, the orange, soot-stained sky reminds me of living in California, which is a little unsettling.
Creative players might be able to use the walls of fire to stage daring ambushes. The flames provide a lot of visual cover, and bottlenecks that they create might be able to be exploited. Forest fights are certainly going to be trickier, and any extract path that passes through one of these blazes. And the map modifier certainly provides a use for The Infernal Pact, a special trait players can unlock during the event that protects a character from catching on fire (you can also use it toburn yourself to heal).
Oh, and don’t think you’ll be able to roleplay as Smokey Bear: the forest fires can’t be put out by Choke Bombs.
Given the long, 60-day duration of Devil’s Moon, I think it’s great that Crytek is breaking up the grind for event points with micro-events like this. Crytek has plans for more Wildcard conditions in the future, presumably based on how players feel about this first one (the Hunt Reddit communityseems to like itso far, at least). The Inferno will return “on select days” while Devil’s Moon runs until February 15.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Evan’s a hardcore FPS enthusiast who joined PC Gamer in 2008. After an era spent publishing reviews, news, and cover features, he now oversees editorial operations for PC Gamer worldwide, including setting policy, training, and editing stories written by the wider team. His most-played FPSes are CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress Classic, Rainbow Six Siege, and Arma 2. His first multiplayer FPS was Quake 2, played on serial LAN in his uncle’s basement, the ideal conditions for instilling a lifelong fondness for fragging. Evan also leads production of the PC Gaming Show, the annual E3 showcase event dedicated to PC gaming.
Best Black Ops 6 PP-919 loadout and class setup
Best Black Ops 6 KSV loadout and class setup
How to get the best ending to Dragon Age: The Veilguard—or the worst, if you’re curious
