Predator: Hunting Grounds is an asymmetrical shooter game set in the jungle. There you’ll find the Predator watching your every move and going in for the kill. The game is developed by Illfonic, the team behind Friday the 13th game (2017). With the first reveal trailer premiering on May 6, 2019, many people including me were excited to have a new Predator game for the next gen consoles. While the Predator character has made its way into other video game franchises such as Mortal Kombat X (DLC character), it hasn’t gotten a stand-alone game in a long time. The last time it was featured in a solo game was Predator Concrete Jungle (2005). 

Months have passed and we got a beta. In the beta, there were many issues plaguing it. While it is a beta many things should’ve been more polished to get people excited. The two main issues were the matchmaking loading times and the frame rate. It would take a long time to find a match and the frame rate made the game almost unplayable. I was skeptical about the final release since it was going to release relatively soon within a few weeks. 

Eventually, on April 24, the game was released to the public to enjoy. I noticed many things have changed from the beta and was glad that many of the issues present during the beta were fixed. The matchmaking issues were fixed to the extent that it didn’t take long to find a match. The big thing that I noticed was how the frame rate was smoother than what it was before. It felt like an actual playable game instead of a really broken game. I encountered a few bugs here and there but other than that the team at Illfonic really proved themselves this time with what they achieved with their small team. An issue that I noticed is whenever you pick up veritanium (an item that gives you xp), the symbol will appear and stay stuck on your screen. This happened to me a few times but little things like this will get fixed for sure in no time. 

For the majority of my playtime, I played the fireteam with my squad and we’ve won most of our games. We stuck together, got the objectives done nice and easy, and sometimes even killed the Predator which is no easy task if the Predator knows what he’s doing. Recently we’ve been getting the Berserker Predator class against us and we’ve been losing a lot due to that class. There are three types of classes for the Predator including Hunter (the balanced one), Scout (the faster one), and Berserker (the tank one). When I played as the Predator I’ve had a few good games but there were many times where the fireteam would obliterate me. Playing as the Predator requires patience because you can’t just go in expecting to kill the full team. It’s different from its counterparts like Friday the 13th the game for example because in that game you were unstoppable. There were items that could stop Jason, but not kill him. So while playing Jason you didn’t have to worry about getting killed (even though there was a way which is almost impossible to pull off). All in all, while I do enjoy the game there are still issues at hand that need to be addressed but in the coming months this game should be more polished and become the game Predator fans have been asking for.