The Haunted: Hell’s Reach is the latest over-the-shoulder, ultra-violent, third-person shooter to feature an accented hero blowing away flesh-eating monster from Hell with outlandish weapons. Also, it’s totally not Shadows of the Damned.
Wait… what?
Being the winner of Epic’s 2010 ‘Make Something Unreal’ contest, The Haunted: Hell’s Reach, has actually been around for some time. Bear in mind that Grasshopper Manufacture’s woefully under-appreciated and under-performing Shadows of the Damned only released this year and wasn’t actually unveiled to the public until last year’s Tokyo Game Show. On top of that, the over-the-shoulder shooter isn’t exactly a novel concept at this point, either.
That being said, the similarities in theme and gameplay are pretty striking and will no doubt invoke comparisons to the Suda51/Shinji Mikami joint. We might even have a full-blown Warhammer 40,000 vs. Starcraft issue at hand, in which one fanboys (and fangirls) on one side claim they smell a rip-off, when in fact one project was clearly started before the other.
We won’t know until the game is released whether or not those comparisons will be favorable or smack of the predicted claims of a rip-off. No solid release date has yet been revealed by THQ or KTX Software, developer of The Haunted, but if you have already made up your mind about the game you can pre-purchase it now, on Steam, with a neat little 10% discount.
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