Hunter: The Reckoning Wayward

A huge improvement over its predecessor. Being surrounded by a pack of creatures that want to tear the flesh from your bones doesn't get much better than this.

A truly entertaining and addictive gruesome action game and a perfect sequel to the original.

Dig down even deeper that you'll truly begin to appreciate what benefits it has to offer -- an incredibly challenging Nightmare setting, solid character designs, intelligent controls, and old-fashioned arcade shooting and slashing to name but a few of them.

It's a pleasingly solid sequel, and doesn't leave the inexperienced out in the cold.

If you have one of the other games in the series, and you're not a die-hard Hunter: The Reckoning fan, you probably don't need this game. Unless you feel the need to play through a different story, you'll pretty much have the same experience as you did with the other games, but with worse graphics.

It blends the genre lines seamlessly in a fast-paced game that is both fun and challenging. The new story line and gameplay improvements will appeal to fans of the original and it also does a good job of bringing newcomers up to speed.

High Voltage retooled everything in response to fan requests, and it shows. This game rocks. [Sept 2003, p.40]

It's disappointing to have a game that shows so much promise, and yet could have been so much more.

The fact is, since you never get to control the camera angles, every time you pass a certain spot in the game you are viewing it from a different angle. What I am getting at is, you never get any sense of where you are in any given area because you’re always given a different angle to view it from.

My only real complaints are that the game is too easy, too short, doesn’t have enough players, and doesn’t let you fight nearly the same amount of walking dead as in the first one.

A decent multiplayer game that you and a friend can probably enjoy spending a few hours of your time with.

I think this can be a fun but addictive arcade shooter, and with a horror theme, easy controls, and guns galore, it will not be overlooked.

It's a decent little game but without a four-player mode it's only half as fun as it could be.

It's as mindless as they come, and combing over the uninspired levels looking for needles in haystacks isn’t particularly fun, but if you're looking for a PS2 meatgrinder of a game, Wayward’s a top candidate.

If you're interested in action, without too many adventure strings attached, Wayward is worth taking a look at, but it's also a short enough game that you could easily get by with a rental instead.

May contain a high replay value (for some), but in the end that was not even enough to keep me playing. The uninspired and flawed game play hurts this title in the long run.

While I certainly find myself wishing the developers would fix the problems with the game and incorporate more of the pen-and-paper game's RPG elements, it's still a game that I look back on with more fond memories than bad ones.

The camera often becomes a liability, especially in areas where you can't zoom out. Character advancement is bare-bones, which hurts replay. [Sept 2003, p.107]

Assuming you have friends then you're in for an average time too. Are these levels atmospheric or just murky? Murky.

Tries hard to bring the mythology of the White Wolf universe to the PS2 after a successful run on the Xbox, but unfortunately these days, endless hordes that fall to melee combat and a few rounds from a chosen weapon just don’t have legs if they’re not accompanied by some kind of presentation, and with all the richness of the White Wolf background, it’s a shame that there isn’t more of a real story taking place in Wayward.

The frustrating combat system needs an overhaul, and players need to be rewarded more for their combat efforts.

Wayward needs something to keep it interesting, like stronger melee weapons to discover or moves to learn. [Sept 2003, p.117]

Even worse, fixed camera angles prohibit exploration of the wide-open environments, leading to five-minute levels that frustratingly take 30 because you can't find that one newspaper kiosk to destroy to find the item you need. [Sept 2003, p.97]

The levels require a lot of unnecessary exploration, setting up missions of collection and inevitable labored backtracking; add a strike for boring objectives that have you scouring confusing areas for far too long. [Oct 2003, p.71]

Never has decimating hundreds of undead bad guys with a friend by your side and bad-ass weaponry at your disposal been so boring, dull and depressing.