Old-timey extraction shooter Hunt: Showdown (or Hunt: Showdown 1896, to use its more formal name as of the 2.0 update) is not something we'd reasonably describe as a 'normie' shooter. Creepy hoarder bosses who throw balls of barbed wire at you, giant beetles that you can use as exploding drones, and a commitment to slow, suspenseful play that intermittently explodes into intense gunfights with revolvers, rifles, and bazooka-spears—these aren't things you'll find out there in the world of war shooters or hero shooters.
But even by Hunt: Showdown's standards, the 2.2 update that's just dropped is pretty out there. We have Post Malone as a circus ringmaster, we have a new circus compound, we have a sawblade launcher, and we have a new mini-boss in the form of a mutant two-headed bear. Come one, come all, to the most outlandish Hunt update on Earth.
So what's going on? Well, it turns out that music producer Post Malone is a bona fide Hunt: Showdown fan (and in a legit, sweaty, giddy-when-he-talks-about-it kind of way), so Crytek have teamed up with him for an event that will be running from today through to February 10, 2025. Each match will have one circus on it, where you'll find zombified carnies shambling around, as well as the Ursa Mortis mini-boss who's guaranteed to drop a trait. The circus also has a Fortune Teller machine that gives you random rewards in exchange for Pledge Marks, as well as a balloon-shooting stall where you can earn event points which, in turn, will nab you some lovely weapon skins (only slightly marred by the fact that they're branded with the initials 'PM').
The sawblade launcher—aka the Shredder—gives a new hook to gunplay, as the circular blades can bounce off walls and penetrate enemies, letting you kill multiple hunters with a single shot. Pretty neat, and doubly so because it gives me flashbacks to rapid-firing spinning blades around corners using the Ripper in Unreal Tournament as the announcer screams 'DOUBLE KILL.'
Another big feature of the 2.2 update is the return of the Lawson Delta map, with extensive redesigns and graphical upgrades proffered by the game being moved over to a new iteration of CryEngine. There are plenty of other changes, which you can read about here, including expanded ear-ringing effects that will inevitably prompt me to scream at my teammates whenever they deafen me by shooting over my shoulder.
