If you didn’t bother watching Sony’s State of Play for new and upcoming PS4 titles, one of the surprise reveals during the stream was for Predator: Hunting Grounds, an asymmetric multiplayer PvP game where a team of paramilitary soldiers drop into the jungle on the hunt for a well-armed, space-age equipped Predator.
The game is pretty much like Turtlerock’s Evolve, where one person will play as the Predator and the rest of the players will assume the role of the paramilitary forces. The objective is for the soldiers to kill the Predator before he kills them.
The teaser trailer for the game features pre-rendered footage that clocks in at just a minute in length. It sports a handful of soldiers trekking through a muddy jungle while the camera tilts and zooms out to reveal a cloaked Predator lurking on a treetop overlooking the soldiers.
The trailer ends there.
You can check it out below.
The most obvious thing that stood out to me was Illfonic.
For those of you who don’t remember who they are, they were originally contracted to work on Star Marine for Star Citizen before that fell in and it had to be scrapped and remade. They then moved over to begin work on Friday The 13th: The Game.
The game eventually released in 2017 after numerous delays and developmental hiccups, but after it launched it had an even rockier launch due to a number of bugs that plagued both the home console and PC versions of the game.
While Illfonic definitely has experience working on asymmetric multiplayer PvP games, the question is: how competent are they in bringing to life the most dangerous hunter in the galaxy on the PS4?
The major problem is the studio’s rocky history and the fact that Friday The 13th: The Game was abandoned in a rather incomplete state when all was said and done following a lawsuit involving the Friday The 13th license, as reported by GameCrate. A lot of gamers were left with a sour taste in their mouth after that. They even carried it over to the Twitter feed of Wes Keltner, who worked as the lead developer on Friday The 13th under Illfonic.
Seeing a lot of hate thrown towards @IllFonic on the Predator announcement. Food for thought: I guarantee it will have a bigger budget than F13 had. Illfonic is bigger & more seasoned now. Also, Sony is a massive pub compared Gun. We launched F13 with a team of 4 publishing.
— Wes Keltner (@weskeltner) May 10, 2019
Imma step away from social for the night. Too many dum dums filling up my timeline. But also a lot of love, so thank you to all of you that sent kind words. I just get a little “mama bear” when people talk shit about my friends @IllFonic
We seen some shit together.
— Wes Keltner (@weskeltner) May 10, 2019
Now the good part is that the quality may be kept in check due to Sony. Yes, Sony Interactive Entertainment is publishing the game exclusively on the PS4, so maybe they’ll keep close tabs on the development and ensure we don’t end up with another Friday The 13th: The Game. Then again, just because Sony is the publisher doesn’t mean that it may escape some of the roadblocks and developmental obstructions that have plagued Illfonic in the past. But I suppose we’ll see how well the game turns out once we get a glimpse at some actual gameplay footage. Heck, it can’t be any worse than that garbage that was The Predator, which came out last year.
Predator: Hunting Grounds is due out in 2020 for the PS4.
