Over this past weekend, I’ve been playing the closed beta of Hounds: The Last Hope, a free-to-play online MMO shooter from Korean developer Netmarble.
A cross between the likes of Battlefield and Left4Dead, with a spoonful of Team Fortress 2, Hounds: The Last Hope is a fun, quick-paced war game where you play as the human soldiers against the AI aliens and infected that have infiltrated and are destroying the city. Unlike Battlefield, Call of Duty and the like, Hounds is pretty easy to play and accessible for new players to the genre. The degree of accuracy you need in war simulation games can often alienate newbies, but Hounds doesn’t have this problem. Hounds‘ aim and accuracy is more akin to L4D and Payday: The Heist. This allows casual players of the genre to feel included rather than left out if they’re not as sharp or ultra skilled with virtual weapons.
Although the controls are easy to master due to their similarity to others of the online multiplayer genre, Hounds has done the right thing by having a tutorial level that also acts as a scene-setter to help both the player understand the controls and the context of the world they are about to play in. In the tutorial, you learn how to crouch, jump over obstacles, move obstacles, change weapons and kill targets, with the tutorial eventually allowing you to play unaided to complete the level. After this initial introduction, you’ll find yourself back at base camp where you get to learn more of the facilities you can use such as buying new weapons, upgrading and crafting weapons and storing items in your mailbox. These quests are rewarded so it’s worthwhile doing them. If you’d rather jump straight into the action, you can open up the rooms list and join a game with other individuals across the globe.
My first impressions of Hounds: The Last Hope are pretty positive. I really like the feel of the game and how it handles. The quests are simple in idea but enthralling to play and can often pose a challenge towards the end of the level. The detailed maps are easy to navigate with plenty of environmental objects to use as cover and provide the opportunity to replenish ammo and fix weapons regularly. The opening cutscenes of the game featuring the spaceship hovering over the city is quite impressive, though the quality drops during in-game which is to be expected. The graphics as a whole may be slightly dated but for a free to play game, I certainly don’t mind.
When playing the game, you get to create your own profile as a character. You can create multiple different ones as you see fit. You get to choose the gender, clothing and faces from a few options, name your character and also choose the class: Assault, Tech, Specialist or Support. Each of these classes have their own weapons and skills, so unless you end up having 4 separate profiles, choose wisely.
The enemies of the game are a bunch of infected people and creatures who either walk or run straight at you. They feel different than those in L4D, and the way in which you and the other players approach these enemies is much more military in feel rather than a bunch of civilians armed with a baseball bat. In Hounds, you’re equipped with pistols, rifles, sniper rifles, sub-machine guns and the like. You can even resort to smashing an infected with your gun or stamping on their head, and for the hoardes, you can throw a grenade at them to quickly clear the path. The level of difficulty of these enemies differs, with the general infected easy to kill whilst the larger species can be more of a struggle. Though, an unstoppable swarm of the infected enemies can prove just as difficult, especially if you’re crammed into a small building and your teammates are lying on the floor injured.
The game has various maps that can be downloaded and played with other users across the world. The maps style range from co-operative patrol and rescue to players-vs-players in a kill match where the first team to reach 50 kills wins. Those familiar with Team Fortress 2 will be right at home during the pvp matches.
Hounds: The Last Hope shows quite a lot of promise. Whilst I didn’t get too far during my gameplay, I look forward to seeing what sort of beasties lie ahead. The fresh ideas with familiar playing style will make this a quite attractive choice for gamers of all abilities worldwide.
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