Hunting the Hunter ★☆☆☆☆

Hunting the Hunter, it’s not a very long hunt, nor was it difficult.

This looked sort of interesting to me, when I was browsing new games on Steam. I like visual novel type of games–even though this isn’t quite like the ones I’m used to. I’m not often a fan of comics, but I like the comic book style of art, which is what this one had.

Honestly…I was iffy on buying it, and I kinda regret it.

• Horror
• Indie
• Psychological
• Visual Novel

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Hunting the Hunter Review (with spoilers)

When you first boot up the game, the narration will automatically start speaking the lines above the game options, about modifying your experience. It will allow you to hear what the AI voice sounds like at least, for you to decide whether it’s good enough to listen to or not.

I personally didn’t have a problem with it, because it sounds a lot better than some other AIs I’ve listened to.

(Don’t tell anyone, but when I buy Kindle books, I use my text-to-speech to listen to them instead of buying the audiobook because I never know if I’ll like how they sound or not–at least with AI I know what I’m getting.)

As stated in my cons list, the problem with AI reading a script is that there’s no emotion behind what’s being said.

There’s no subtle voice change if a female character is speaking or a male or a different character in general. If a character is scared, there’s no fear in the voice. If the character is excited, there’s no giddiness to the voice. Even if there’s no words from the character, the narration of the story is still pretty monotone.

But the perk with the narration of this game is that people who have a hard time reading text for some reason, they can listen to it being read to them.

And if you don’t want to listen to some AI read lines to you, you can always turn the audio off.

Along with that option, you can turn the story text off, which is beneficial for seeing the full illustrations while listening to the audio, as well as turn auto play on, that way you don’t have to click continue every time the scene ends.

That’s what I did and I don’t really recommend it.

It’s more work than required.

I do really like the font for the title though. It’s very old school horror and reminds me more of a story relating to a vampire rather than a serial killer.

When we first enter the game, the first line is:

It was a dark and stormy night as Emily drove down the winding road, her headlights barely illuminating the way ahead.

Okay, the dark and stormy night is an oldie and not-quite goodie cliché. It’s basically just one bit of the picture that sets us up for something bad to happen.

There are a lot of writers out there–maybe more wannabes than actual writers–that say to steer away from clichés. While it’s true that you shouldn’t rely on them, because in this instance, it’s our first eye-roll moment, it’s okay to use them if you know what you’re doing.

Obviously, since this is AI writing, it’s just a bad cliché.

How would you turn something like this into a more interesting cliché? I don’t know, maybe something like, “It was a dark and stormy night when the best thing in my life turned out to be a total lie, illuminated by the shutter-fast flashes of lightning through a crack in the curtains.”

It could be touched up, but it’s more interesting than a dark and stormy night on the road that screams something obvious is going to happen.

That’s not the only cliche in the first sentence though.

First off, it’s dark and stormy, which is already bad enough. Second, Emily is driving a car on a winding road. Something that’s more hazardous in wet conditions than in dry. Third, her headlights barely illuminate the way ahead, meaning she might miss something or she might hit something.

We have a whole list of uh-ohs here.

She ends up missing the road she intended to turn on, in fact, and in doing so is now lost. In the middle of nowhere.

Are you kidding me?

No person who reads a book would write something like this.

At this point, it screams that something is going to happen to her car, like it stalling, or she’s going to hit something.

Not quite the case.

She sees a figure standing at the side of the road, which is weird considering the poor visibility. If it’s so dark out, and I can only imagine the storm is causing a downpour, and your headlights aren’t quite doing their job, how are you going to see a shadowy figure in the distance against the backdrop of darkness and rain and poor visibility.

It honestly makes no sense.

So she slows down the car, wondering if she should stop or move on–more like wondering what the shadowy figure actually is, probably.

She sees it’s a man–I have no idea how; it’s still a dark and stormy night, but he’s beckoning her to come closer.

First off, she’s coming closer whether he wants her to or not, because she’s driving in the direction of him. Second, how is he beckoning her?

This is a classic case of the saying, “show, don’t tell.” He’s obviously waving her down to get her to slow, but it’s not shown that he’s doing that. “Beckoning” to me is like someone bringing their hand to themselves in a come-hither motion.

And that’s not even the major part of it, because even if the text isn’t painting us the full picture, neither is the illustration. Instead of showing us a shadowy figure on the side of the road that is indeed a man, the illustration shows us a car on the side of the road…which Emily’s car has already passed by.

So there’s no man.

They got the dark and stormy night right, though. In fact, it looks like we’re driving a way from a town that’s on fire, so what’s the backstory here?

Also…why is there a tree growing on the pavement of the road?

I don’t really find too much wrong with the next scene, aside from the final words of the script which are:

Suddenly, the man lunged towards her, and Emily screamed as she tried to drive away. But it was too late; the man had already grabbed onto her car, and she couldn’t shake him off.

Okay, how on earth is she unable to drive off?

He didn’t grab onto the door handle and yank it open on her in order to pull her out. If he didn’t pull open her door, then maybe he grabbed onto the section of the open window, in which case she could roll the window up while driving off.

Because driving off would shake him off of the car. How would it not?

It makes no sense!

At least the image has a man as somewhat of a silhouette standing at the side of the road, as was previously stated.

And then the story starts to make sense again with her car careening out of control and crashing into a tree. When someone tries to get away from a crazy person on a slick road in the middle of a storm, they aren’t expected to be the perfect driver, so of course she’s not going to have great control of the car.

Also, it’s a horror story, and she’s not going to be able to leave the attacker behind that easily.

If crashing into a tree wasn’t bad enough, her seatbelt is also jammed. I don’t know if this is believable because I don’t know much about wrecks. I imagine it would have to be a pretty bad wreck in order for it to jam a seatbelt, but maybe not?

How hard did she hit the tree?

An inconsistency is the final sentence:

The man reached the car and started pounding on the window, trying to break it open.

Is he stupid? He thinks he’s going to break the window by pounding his fist against it? Is it already slightly shattered and he’s trying to break it the rest of the way?

Also, the last we saw, she’d rolled her window down and never rolled it back up. When did she have the time to roll the window back up as she was hurriedly trying to get away from a would-be attacker? Surely not during the process of crashing. And not after, either.

Are you understanding why AI writing isn’t the greatest at this point? Missing pieces, things that don’t add up–it’s stuff that a person would catch.

The next scene proves that the illustrations are just as AI as the writing, if you hadn’t figured that out already. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still love the comic book style going on, but our angry man is looking as p*ssed off as the Hulk with a fist of six fingers instead of five and I have to wonder if maybe that’s why he’s so mad.

Is that why he’s after her, after anyone he’s gone after before? Because they have five fingers and he doesn’t?

People have killed for less.

All right so somehow in the story he manages to break through the glass and grabs Emily by the hair and drags her out.

How?

How does he drag her out of the car when she CAN’T BREAK FREE FROM HER SEATBELT??? HELLO? And HOW does he pull her out of the car? Through the shattered window? He doesn’t even try to unlock the car door and yank her out that way?

Nope. Screw the seatbelt, it’s coming with her.

In fact, the whole car is coming with her since the seatbelt won’t free her from its clutches, which makes that boy not only as angry as the Hulk, but also as strong.

Now I know why it’s horror: Hulk gone crazy.

In our next scene we have a bit of text that doesn’t read right:

She could hear his ragged breathing, feel his hot breath on the back of her neck.

And yet, he’s dragging her by the hair, meaning she’s behind him, they aren’t side by side and he’s not walking close behind. She wouldn’t be able to feel his breath on her neck at all.

In our illustration the bad guy isn’t dragging Emily at all–he’s not even touching her. Instead, there’s a woman in the foreground while someone looks like they’re running at her from behind her, and he’s a little ways off.

At this point, why didn’t the dev put the story section itself into the art AI generator, unless you can’t write that much into the one they used?

It would make the illustrations make more sense.

Now here’s where things get really wonky.

Here’s our lines:

She noticed a sharp rock nearby and struggled to free her hand to grab it. With all her might, she managed to break free and grab the rock, swinging it at the man’s head. He fell to the ground, unconscious.

First off, of course there’s going to be some sharp rocks nearby, I imagine, as he’s dragging her off into darkness which I can only assume is maybe woods. The woods isn’t going to be just smooth moss on the ground, it’s going to have a lot of things littered about, including possibly rocks from the roadside or whatever.

Secondly, why is she struggling to free her hand when it’s her hair that he has a hold of. As far as we know her hands are completely free this whole time and she’s using them to try to get his grip off her hair.

Third, so she managed to get her hair out of his grip, which would be difficult to do without ripping your hair out, depending on the grip.

I get the feeling with how angry he is, he wouldn’t let go so easily.

Not only that, but she grabs the rock that’s nearby, meaning she had to go over to it herself, instead of it being in their path of progression.

Next, she hits him in the head with the rock rendering him unconscious? On the first hit? Really?

Deep breaths over here.

Maybe I don’t know exactly how hard you have to hit someone to make them lose consciousness, maybe she got a really lucky hit in on the first try. But I think it’d be more believable and less pictured as a bad horror movie.

After escaping the man and running through the woods, she stumbles across an old abandoned cabin, because of course she does. It’s too much to stay in the dark spooky woods, we have to enter the dark spooky cabin as well.

How in the hell is an old cabin better than being out in the open?

She’s got places to go when she’s outside running. If she’s in a house, there’s only so many places she can hide, and then what if she’s found? She’s stuck inside four walls.

And because Emily flat out sucks at making good decisions, she decides to go down in the basement, which only proves her stupidity at going inside the house in the first place, because she hears a strange noise in the darkness.

A low, guttural growl that makes me think a werewolf is about to come up on us even though I wasn’t pegging this story as fantasy, but more reality. I mean, the illustration for the staircase borders along the lines of dark and fantastical, sort of like Alice in Wonderland.

Now, when she reaches the bottom of a dimly lit room, there’s nowhere for her to hide, because it’s empty.

Empty? As in just four walls with a dim light overhead? Literally nothing?

Well the growling is now behind her and when she turns, there’s a creature with glowing eyes, sharp teeth and claws, although the illustration says differently.

The illustration shows someone who looks like a vampire, with no baring of fangs and no showing of claws.

How’re you gonna give descriptions of a werewolf and show us a vampire’s face.

Why are the AI illustrations not on par with the AI descriptions?

Our next incoming line is:

Emily screamed and ran in the opposite direction, not caring where she was going.

What do you mean she ran in the opposite direction? She came down the steps to an empty room. She turned around and saw the monster, and now she turned away from the monster to run…what, directly into a wall to knock herself out? There’s nothing in the room! There’s no mention of a door! She’s not running back up the steps because the monster was there!

What the f*ck is happening here?

Oh, here’s another cliché:

Suddenly, she tripped over a loose floorboard and fell to the ground.

You know women. Every time we try to run we just can’t help ourselves but to trip and fall down in order to have a higher chance of being caught.

So now the creature is on top of us, though we don’t get any more descriptions aside from it baring its teeth about to strike. That could honestly lean toward either vampire or werewolf at this point, but I’m really leaning toward the vampire.

Don’t worry though, while Emily closes her eyes and braces for an attack, none comes, and the creature is gone.

Come on. You’re going to ramp up the tension and then all of a sudden give us absolutely nothing? Why did the creature disappear when it was about to attack? Was it even there in the first place? Are we delusional somehow?

Her next plan of action is to get out of the cabin and away from this nightmare.

YA THINK?

She wasn’t even in the cabin for maybe thirty minutes and now she’s like screw this terrible idea that I should’ve known was a terrible idea.

The next lines made me laugh so hard:

Emily searched the basement for a way out and found a small window. She crawled through it and found herself outside, in the pouring rain.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE SEARCHED FOR A WAY OUT?

WHY DOESN’T SHE GO BACK UP TO THE FRONT DOOR?

Does she have short term memory or what? Does she not remember how she even got into the house and how she walked down the steps into the basement? Are the steps not there anymore? I mean, nothing was in this room and now we have a window, so obviously something was in the room.

Yes, a window is still a something when comparing it to nothing.

And where in the world did she think the window would lead to? Surely she could see out of it and tell it lead outside? Did she think it’d take her to the police station just as easy as that? Yes, it lead outside, and yes, it’s still raining, which means pitter patter on the pane.

My next annoyance is:

Emily started walking, hoping that she would stumble upon a road or a house soon.

SHE JUST ESCAPED A HOUSE. WHY DOES SHE WANT TO FIND ANOTHER??

As far as the illustration goes, Emily looks like she’s a zombie, straight-up. Pale skin with dirt all over her (okay, that part I can believe), but just the way that she looks, like she’s just seen some human flesh and it looks like the most delectable thing.

If not a zombie, then she look as if she’s spent years at the bottom of the ocean, her skin looks that…bad.

Thank god our next scenario is pretty f*cking normal. Emily’s going through the woods with sore feet and she’s exhausted and she’s hearing possible animals around her.

As normal a scene as we’re ever going to get probably.

She soon sees a light up ahead, and although she’s hopeful that it’s either a house or a gas station (the gas station being more helpful because the last house she went to nearly got her killed and surely a gas station will at least have a phone to call the police), it’s not either.

It’s a car.

A car that’s on the side of the road, with the engine running, and the door wide open.

What…luck. Absolutely NOTHING bad could happen now that she’s found a car that practically screams, “Get in!”

I actually hope Emily dies soon. I hope that this car is haunted by the evil spirit of the murderer that we were initially running away from and it runs her over.

It has to belong to the murderer though, right? The guy that tried to drag her off into the woods at the start? If there’s nothing else around, I see no reason why it wouldn’t belong to him, as he’s more liable to leave it at the side of the road and search a general area of the woods that he thinks she might be in.

Before she gets in the car, at least she has the idea that it might be a trap.

And while the storyline is currently fine (nor this particular scene), the illustration is way out of sorts and might be a spoiler? It shows Emily outside of the car, terrified and banged up with blood on her face while the car is on fire.

Does a part of it explode while she’s inside?

Well…looking at the next scene, no.

In fact, this next scene is pretty damn tranquil compared to the chaotic explosive fire of the previous scene. Emily is sitting in the car with a map spread out before her, as convenient as that is. And even more convenient is the fact that she’s also found a fully charged flashlight.

What does she mean fully charged? How on earth would she know if a flashlight is fully charged if it’s one of the typical ones that use batteries?

Is it the kind of flashlight you have to crank? Like in Amnesia: The Bunker?

The next scene has her driving more carefully on the road and following the map to the nearby town, hopefully. But she’s also thinking back on who the man in the woods might’ve been and what the creature in the basement was.

Okay, so that means those things did happen, but are we ever going to find these answers out? Is this like a bigfoot and werewolf/vampire encounter we had that nobody will believe us on if we tell the police about what happened?

Next we’re inside of a diner that she managed to find in a small town, but the illustration shows her having blood on her face.

Is…nobody worried?

Is this the kind of thing you expect to see of someone in a small-town diner? Or because it’s a small town diner nobody’s going to say anything because it’s nobody’s business?

Are we really not going to call the cops after what just happened to us? We’re just going to sip on some coffee and wait it all out?

Oh but we don’t stay because there’s a man in the diner that’s staring at us and we don’t like that.

We don’t like that because he’s tall and muscular and has a scar.

He’s obviously a bad man.

Anybody who’s got a scar on their face is automatically out to get you when they stare. Not that they’re trying to figure out if they recognize you, or they might want to go up and ask you a question but they’re contemplating how to go about since they look so intimidating. What if this guy’s nickname is Little Jimmy and he’s just the nicest guy?

I mean, he’s not…but what if?

All right, we’re at the point that I’m not even going to bother mentioning the illustrations anymore. They’re borderline in league with what the story is going for, but also sometimes off the mark, and while I love how they look with the dark shadows and comic book style…they’re just there to sort of be the glue that keeps your attention.

After all, the story hasn’t gone anywhere yet. She’s caught, she escapes, she’s caught, she escapes, she’s going to get caught here and let’s face it she’s going to escape as well.

Why am I listening to this?

Just to prove how bad AI writing really is? Well, it’s bad.