If you’d told me two years ago that a cowboy-themed FPS set in the late 1800s would completely take over my competitive gaming life, I would’ve looked at you very confused. Yet here I am, 455 hours into Hunt: Showdown and still loving its smart extraction format, antique arsenal of six shooters and lever-action rifles, and balanced permadeath consequences.
Despite never rising to the levels of Apex Legends or Warzone, Hunt has remained quietly popular, receiving regular updates through years of early access and full release. Crytek is celebrating Hunt’s fifth anniversary this month by discounting the game to just $16 (down from $40).
For a mere two bucks more, you could also grab the new anniversary edition, which comes with two legendary hunter bundles, including newest hunter Scaramuccia. Legendary hunters are mostly there for the looks, but bringing one on a hunt also gives you a slight headstart with three random perks. When my hunter dies and I have to build a new loadout, I usually pick a favorite legendary skin and then choose guns that complement the random perks I roll. Sometimes that means I’m dual wielding pistols like Arthur Morgan himself, or I could be skulking in the brush with a crossbow.
Hunt is an extraction shooter, which is sorta like a battle royale if there was no constricting play zone and a lot more AI enemies to contend with. Crytek just wrapped its two-month Devil’s Moon season this week, an event that added transformative abilities to the standard bounty hunt mode (like self-revive or fire immunity) as well as a new map variant that set the world on fire. It was pretty sweet.
You can read more about what makes Hunt so good and why it’s number six on our top 100 PC games here.