Worth Checking Out - Sir, You Are Being Hunted

Big Robot’s Sir, You Are Being Hunted presents an interesting take on the survival genre, throwing you into a world where you are constantly looking over your shoulder, fearing every step you take. The game pits you against the environment where your task, a simple one, is to collect fragments of crystals scattered across five islands of an archipelago in which the game takes place. These crystals represent your ticket off of this island.

You're the prey this time around.

Before you begin the game you are given a choice of several different classes ranging from an artist to an officer or a cook, dictating which items you begin with. These classes ultimately offer different difficulty levels, such as the officer starting with a pistol and rifle, who is capable of easily defending himself, whereas an artist starts with a useful map of the island and a not so useful painting. Your only ally in this game is a voice that goes by the name Mr. Walters, who guides you on your journey with narration and helpful hints. That’s pretty much it, from there you’re left to handle the situation any way you’d like. This is where the game excels; it makes you feel as if you’re on your own left to use anything you can find in your surrounding, and boy is it awesome.

Sir's worlds are also procedurally generated, leaving this fresh feeling every time you start a new game. On top of that, before you do in youbegr new game, you have the option to customize your experience changing which biomes you’d wish to explore. There are four to choose from: Rural, Industrial, Mountainous,and Fens and each presents a different world to explore with varying architecture and terrain. In many circumstances, you’ll find yourself developing different tactics that only work well in particular biomes.

Enemies in the game are varied and interesting, some utterly terrifying. The AI is relatively strong; enemies react the way they you’d expect and are quite good at tracking down and slaughtering you. All of them are robotic in some form or another and all function in a way they should. From robot hunting dogs, classic pipe smoking British huntsmen robots who sometimes ride on a hybrid pit bull/horse/hover bike combination, hot air surveillance balloons, and a very large, almost grandfather looking enemy wielding a cane that is absolutely terrifying to deal with. Factor in that ammunition is sparse, you find yourself running for your life screaming most of the time.



While Sir is currently in alpha there is enough enjoyable content, and constant updates to justify joining the early access. Given the procedurally generated nature of the levels, every replay feels fresh and offers conditions that are unique to that playthrough. Sir You Are Being Hunted does a fantastic job of making you feel as if you’ve been thrown in a reverse robotic industrial European society world where humans are constantly being hunted for sport. It truly is the stuff of nightmares, and one hell of a fantastic game. The game's available for early access on Steam for $19.99.