CRYSIS POINT

IN HUNT: SHOWDOWN, A PARTICULARLY BRUTAL TWIST ON BATTLE ROYALE, NOISE IS DEADLY

It took Crytek’s latest game, Hunt: Showdown, to teach me how to play its very first. The studio’s 2004 debut, Far Cry, had seemed like a devolved stealth game—a stunted halfway point between Doom and Dishonored. But there’s a satisfying throughline from where the company began to where it is now.

In , a particularly brutal twist on battle royale, noise is deadly. Gunshots telegraph your position not just to the zombie mobs that roam the map, but to other players hungry for the same bounty you’re after. Yet