Several years ago, The Ship and Assassin’s Creed multiplayer mode were popular games on streaming sites like Twitch. The ‘hunt-and-kill’ gameplay was what attracted so many players to these games, especially in large groups of friends. However, the more recent Assassin’s Creed games have dropped their multiplayer components and The Ship’s player base is not that active anymore. That’s why Blazing Griffin, the team that remastered the original The Ship, has made a new game that combines both titles’ gameplay into one.
Story
The premise of Murderous Pursuits is fairly simple. You’re aboard a gigantic Victorian airship that’s owned by the villainous Mister X. He chooses you and several other characters as candidates to become his assistant. How do you win? By simply killing the other candidates and ranking up the highest score. What benefits does Mister X’s assistant get? Well, not much further information is given about this so your guess is as good as mine. There’s a hint that the airship is capable of time-travel, for some reason, but this is only mentioned once. It’s obvious that the story in Murderous Pursuits is a mere setup for the game itself, which is fine, but it makes me wonder why the developer included a time-traveling airship without doing anything with it. Maybe it will be further explained in future updates, but as of right now the story is basically non-existent.
Gameplay
As I’ve mentioned before, the story in Murderous Pursuits is nothing more than a setup for the game. The focus of Murderous Pursuits lies entirely on the multiplayer gameplay. You and seven other players (or AI bots) are assigned a target you have to kill. Killing a target, called Quarries, rewards you with points for the scoreboard and Favor that can be used to buy better weapons. To find your target, you have to use a proximity meter that turns green when your quarry is in the area. Once you’ve found your next kill, you have to make sure there are no guards or witnesses in your surroundings. These can attract attention from other players, who have to kill you, by yelling loudly and running wildly. If another hunter finds you, you have to run and hide by blending in with other NPC’s. But hiding won’t keep you always safe since the other players also have the proximity meter at their disposal.
To make the gameplay a little more varied and easier, you can choose two skills that can help you in several ways. One skill activates a counterattack when a hunter tries to kill you, while another makes you invincible for a short time after you’ve killed someone. These kills are a good addition to the gameplay, but some of them are useless. For example, one skill activates a taunt whenever you kill someone. It doesn’t offer anything beneficial except a few extra points, but it’s nothing noteworthy. The disguise skill, which can change your character’s appearance, also doesn’t have much use, due to the proximity meter giving your hunter enough information to see through your disguise. It doesn’t hurt the overall gameplay experience that much, but it definitely could use some tweaking and changes.
While I have some issues with the skills, I must say that I have found quite some enjoyment in Murderous Pursuits. Successfully finding and killing your Quarry is a satisfying feeling and getting outsmarted by an opponent never felt unfair. However, the simple gameplay and single multiplayer mode make this game repetitive after a while. The level design is decent, but there’s not much variety in terms of structure. They all consist out of several large chambers connected with each other by small corridors, filled with people you can use as hiding spots. It would have been nice if one level consisted out of one large area, like a dining room, or multiple floor levels.
Visuals and art style
Visually, the game is a mixed bag. The graphical quality is not that great, as it’s filled with flat textures and some obvious copy-paste visuals like a cluttered desk that is placed next to seven other yet identical desks. The lighting effects also leave much to be desired since most objects don’t have any shadows and dark areas have this weird bright shimmer that pops out immediately in a negative sense.
Yet, a lot of the visuals are uplifted by the game’s art style. Murderous Pursuits takes place in a Victorian-era styled airship and every character looks the part, in their own cartoony way. Come to think of it, Murderous Pursuits is kind of like the popular Dishonored games in terms of visuals. The graphics themselves are nothing special, but the art style is what grabs the attention.
Technical issues
I didn’t experience that many technical issues with this game, but there’s one I do have to mention. When I played the game for the first time, I initially couldn’t start it without experiencing a crash error. After some time searching for a solution, I was finally able to fix it by reinstalling my graphics driver. It’s possible that this issue was caused by my system, but since this was the only game that brought this up, it’s also possible the problem lies with the game itself. So, should you buy this game, make sure your drivers are up-to-date and working without issues.
Conclusion
Murderous Pursuits can be quite fun the first couple of times you play it, especially when playing with friends. However, the simple gameplay and single multiplayer mode will make you stop playing it after a couple of weeks (or days, depending on how much you play). The graphics are not that great, but the art style makes up for it for the most part.
