In the Hunt (Arcade)
As I began to play In the Hunt, known in Japan by a more descriptive name that translates to Undersea War, I couldn’t help but compare it to Metal Slug. The gorgeous sprite details and creativity in enemy designs coupled with a forward moving shooting style where one hit will instantly kill you evoked the run and gun series even if In the Hunt had you play as a submarine instead of soldiers running into battle on foot. This comparison was more apt than I initially realized though, as In the Hunt was created by the team that would later go on to create the Metal Slug series. In this 1993 shooter, you can see much of what they would later refine into that enjoyable series, but that doesn’t mean they had everything down from the start unfortunately.
In the Hunt is a sidescrolling shooter where you play as the submarine Gramvia that has been tasked with stopping the Dark Anarchy Society. The D.A.S. has already pulled off a monumental feat in melting the polar ice caps to flood the world, using the chaos to exert their military might and achieve near global conquest. However, some of the remaining cities above the water level still desire to fight back, so the Gramvia is sent to take down the D.A.S.’s bases and their powerful superweapon in the hopes of freeing the planet’s people from their tyrannical grip.
Despite having the hope of the world on its shoulders, the Gramvia is actually a rather humble vessel, at least compared to the incredible might of its opposition. When you press one of your attack buttons, a front-firing torpedo shoots forward, the player able to launch as many as they like by hammering the button over and over. The other button is reserved for two vertical attacks, one launching missiles upwards to anything floating above your sub and the other attack being depth charges that slowly sink and blow apart anything below. You can hammer both buttons with impunity, but while the action mostly takes place underwater, there are enemy aircraft and special foes like a cargo train that will appear above the water’s surface. Even your missiles that fire upwards can’t touch these normally, just disappearing the instant they touch the ocean’s surface even though the enemies above can easily fire their shots down towards you. You need to surface to target these enemies, with your weapons shifting to anti-aircraft shots that can actually harm these dry foes. All of your weapons can be upgraded by picking up power-ups, their general power increasing as well as new aspects getting added to your shots. You can get a special type of torpedo that bursts into small scatter bombs after firing and balloon mines that will float up to the surface to replace your missiles, as well as different weapons for when you’re poking above the water level like a machine gun you point by moving back and forth. Death will take these away unfortunately, and while these weapons are all very effective at wiping out foes if they hit, the game is filled with plenty of ways to destroy your submarine with similar ease.
The Gramvia is not only a decently sized vessel but a slow one. Navigating the water doesn’t feel very fluid, which is actually a major problem due to the game’s six levels being packed with all kinds of foes wielding special weapons. The screen can get flooded with enemies and their attacks quite easily, and your maneuverability really isn’t up to the task of avoiding it all unless you’ve previously played the game and learned how everything is going to move and behave. Even with that foreknowledge, the game crams a lot into one area. Squid shaped submarines in one section are abundant enough even before they fire their homing shots, and they’re joined by other enemy types to further crowd out your options for safe travel. You get to determine how quickly the game progresses, the screen only scrolling when you start reaching its borders, but some enemy locations spawn foes indefinitely and a timer also means taking your time will still lead to a life lost if you try to be cautious. Certain foes will shoot out blasts that require you to be in the exact right spot to slip through, and other little hazards like mines that burst when shot will be placed near enemy submarines that you can’t afford to leave alive. The aerial enemies become more bothersome because of the overabundance of enemies as well, the foes in the sky either dropping more trouble or asking you to surface so that you’re left vulnerable as you can’t add vertical movement into dodging unless you want to stop firing at the aerial opposition.
The difficulty in surviving is certainly a step above Metal Slug and your limited shot types feel a worse fit for the job than that series’s weapons, but the creativity in enemy and level design makes it all the sadder that they’re not enjoyable to fight. Level 5 takes place in an undersea ruin where a giant three-faced golem is constantly climbing upwards, the player needing to outpace it until it’s time to actually fight it. Level 2 has one of the major cities that was flooded serve as its backdrop, the player even blasting their way through skyscrapers to make a path forward. However, sometimes the ideas lead to cute concepts that play rather poorly. In the Hunt is already a game that feels cramped, the sub barely able to get around incoming enemy shots, and yet one of its levels, The Channel, has incredibly shallow water where you can barely move vertically at the most generous parts of the stage. The Deep Dark Sea features volcanic caves where the rocky walls already box you in before you factor in exploding rocks that move in initially unpredictable ways. Everything moves in a set pattern that you can learn if you die to it a few times, but unless you’re training yourself up to get a no continues run to see the admittedly worse ending, repeated runs don’t feel justified. Having a second player along can sort of ease the burden of needing to shoot at so many foes, but the levels won’t open up more just because player two is joining the adventure.
The bosses are basically just a continuation of many of the ideas seen elsewhere. When the fist-shaped sub that serves as the first boss comes at you with wiggling tentacles and missiles that actually drift backwards towards it due to the current, its easy to be wowed by the presentation, but its erratic tentacle movement is meant to catch you as most of your damage must be dealt by facing it head-on. The underwater city’s twin boss is perhaps the most tedious though, the player given little safe space to fire on them as they hog screen real estate and make aiming at them with anything but your depth charges dangerous to attempt. The size of such large bosses is an obvious problem, and many like the last boss even feature attacks that flood the screen with shots that you might just be in the wrong place to dodge and have to eat the death. However, death might be your best hope in these fights, since during the brief invincibility you have on revival, you can float into their body and fire your weapons rapidly to earn easy damage. With the final boss especially slow and full of likely deaths, giving in and racking up damage this way is often a better option than fighting the enemy fairly, and as long as you have the quarters to keep playing and wish to avoid spending more by playing fair, its practically in your best interest to utilize this unusual strategy.
THE VERDICT: While it looks impressive and its stage design is filled with creative backdrops and varied enemies, In the Hunt’s submarine action is let down by how bad it is to play as the submarine. The Gramvia’s limited movement and attack types can lead to certain bosses dragging on, the game fills the screen with attacks that are too difficult to reliably avoid, and your power-ups don’t do much to change the tides of battle if you even manage to hold onto them for a while. In the Hunt’s gorgeous spritework is wonderful to behold, but the game pushes too hard against the player despite the submarine not being able to really handle it. All off this makes In the Hunt into a game you’re either packing enough quarters to brute force or one you’d have to slog through many times to accurately be in the otherwise unpredictable and hard to reach safe zones during enemy attacks.
And so, I give In the Hunt from the arcade…
A BAD rating. Most players will likely play In the Hunt through something like an arcade emulator or the Arcade Archives series, and thus the difficulty will be assuaged by the fact you aren’t popping real coins into a machine to keep the action going. However, dying repeatedly to a screen crowded with too much danger isn’t exactly an appealing adventure even without stakes. A cool background or a fun boss concept isn’t helped by the fact your slow sub is constantly running into trouble it can barely handle, and aspects like the power-ups feel like they don’t get to shine because more emphasis is put on killing the player quickly and in ways they can’t always escape. A seasoned player of the game will know where not to position themselves, but there are many portions where there isn’t much room in the water and if you tried to escape danger by moving in one direction, you’ve sealed your fate on an upcoming unavoidable death. The shooting wouldn’t be so bad if things were tweaked to better accommodate your vessel’s drawbacks and the game isn’t a constant barrage of nearly unwinnable scenarios so you might find a rhythm for a while. However, then something interesting like the maze of rockets asks you to slip through small holes and fire at their thrusters to move them around so you can get you through and you find yourself better off just using your after-death invincibility to push past what could have been a cool set piece if it was designed with more restraint.
Being big enough for impressive detail means many things are more dangerous than they have the right to be, and with levels constantly restricting your movement to make it even more likely you’ll run unknowingly into the next danger, it’s hard to really justify playing In the Hunt for anything more than a lot of impressive enemy sprites. Metal Slug can be very hard and certainly packs in some surprises that will kill you when you first encounter them, but In the Hunt’s extra dimension of movement means the whole screen is crowded to try and force dodges horizontally and vertically. This just makes In the Hunt a less polished experience because the dangers aren’t placed with care, feeling more like they’re gunning for your wallet than trying to provide interesting foes to face. Some bosses and setpieces would work in a better balanced game, but In the Hunt’s enjoyment sinks quickly once you realize that it will not divert its course from overly punishing enemy placement.