| http://www.dadsgamingaddiction.com/sir-you-are-being-hunted-preview/ |
You hear voices approach and you slow your breath, hoping that they will ignore you and move past. You hear the wet thumps of metal hitting mud as the pack nears you. Your body tenses up just like the metal demons that are hunting you. You attempt to stay quiet as they search through the nearby brush. You look down at the pistol in your hand, its empty. Your only option is to create a distraction and run. You find a rock lying next to you, you throw it to your left, hoping the hunters will investigate. It worked! They turn, and just then is when you start your escape. The next thing you hear are their guns....
Sir, You Are Being Hunted, is a procedurally-generated world, in which Robots guise as British gentlemen to hunt you for sport. It is a first person, stealth, survival, and horror game with a touch of humor. It is set in a British archipelago with 5 islands labeled only as Central, North, South, East and West. When you start the game you have the option of choosing the landscapes of the 4 surrounding islands: Castle, Industrial, Rural, Mountainous, and Fenland. You also have the choice of a starting class. These classes all start with different items, for example the Artist will start with a map of the islands, while the Officer starts with a pistol. These factors do give this game a replay ability as you can pick different island environments, as well as starting classes for every world you create.
The vague story behind this twisted world is a science experiment has very gone wrong. Your job is to explore each of these 5 islands and retrieve "artifacts." These artifacts are then brought back to a Stonehenge-like monument for storage. The only problem is that these islands are crawling with many different varieties of robots whose only desire is to hunt. As you roam the British countryside you must try to keep out of sight of these machines while scavenging abandoned houses for supplies, weapons and food. There are 4 docks on the central island in each of the cardinal directions, each leading to its corresponding island. There are a set amount of artifacts on multiple artifacts on these islands to traveling to and from the central island is required.
Also worth noting is the length of game play. This is not a game where you can boot up if you only have a few minutes to kill. My sessions have run from 30 minutes to over an hour. The reason for this is that you can only save your progress at one of the previously mentioned boats or at the stone structure where you started from. If you were to successfully be hunted by these killer robots then nothing you did that session will be recorded.
| http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/sir-you-are-being-hunted/screenshots/gameShotId,645882/ |
Gameplay is easy and it explains from the beginning what is needed to survive. In the bottom left you see your health, vitality, and visibility. Vitality is essentially how hungry you are. If it drops to 0 you start to lose health until you find something to eat. When you get hurt, a higher vitality will help regenerate lost health. Visibility is how noticeable you are to the robots. Running and jumping will cause you to have more read rings around the open eye while crouching in the bushes will remove them completely. In the middle is the inventory screen. This player is currently looting a house and deciding what items to take. The inventory is a grid system and can be maneuvered to fit all the items you need. To the right and bottom of the screen are the equipped items. You can sot 7 different usable items from guns to empty bottles, the bottom of the screen is showing the currently equipped item. Each of these items have some use in fighting and surviving against the robotic menaces that hunt you.
The last thing I will mention is the music and sound effects of this game. This game does a fantastic job in this aspect. One second you are walking in the woods, you can hear the birds chirping and your feet on the grass, but then it changes the music slowly fades in with and ominous sound, you can hear the beeping of the the robot hunters as they draw nearer to you and the BOOM of their shotguns when they finally spot you. There have been a few times in my explorations where I jumped out of my seat. It does a great job of creating suspense when there needs to be, but moments later have a peacefulness about it.
This game can be found on the Steam marketplace for Windows, Mac,and Linux systems. It can be played with either a mouse and keyboard or a controller. I enjoyed playing this game, from hiding in the brush to avoid the laser red eyes of the hunters, to finding a pistol and turning into the hunter myself. I probably wont finish, due to the amount of time needed to sink into it, but if thrillers, with a hint of British humor, are your kind of game I would suggest this title.
