I told myself I'd revisit my review of this game once the new patch dropped and I got some experience with it. And fair play to the developers, many of the changes I hated over the last few months were either reverted, or reworked. I think previous changes are a dead horse that doesn't have to be beaten anymore, so moving on to the new patch.

Holy cow, Crytek. The promises for the new user interface fell short of the mark in almost every conceivable way. I'm convinced this was not even play tested, because anyone who plays more than one match back to back would see just how cumbersome editing your loadout is. So many clicks to just equip your loadout. The menus are a little confusing in some areas, having adopted a Call of Duty wide banner style user interface. One would think that this formula, one of the most commonly used in gaming at this point, would be pretty close to being foolproof. Crytek once again surprises me with their lack of effort.

On the note of lack of effort, let's talk about the rebranding. Many of the changes are superficial and don't really mean all that much, they just had to pack some filler in to make it look like they did a lot of work on the game. Firstly, the updated name Hunt: Showdown 1896. This isn't new. It has canonically been 1896 for 3 years at this point. They didn't advance the timeline chronologically. It's exactly the same. Secondly, they changed the names of some of the weapons, like the Winfield family, the Uppermat, and a few others. Other than the obvious bullet drop, they didn't change anything about these weapons apart from the name. Thirdly, NUMEROUS old bugs and a score of new ones made it into this new version of Hunt. Pre-saved loadouts don't carry everything over, often missing entire rows like consumables, making it a painstaking effort to go through all the different menus to rectify Crytek's mistake. Your ammo count in game will sometimes just vanish without rhyme or reason. Lobbies are, yet again, finnicky in letting people join/reconnect. Weapons both in your hands and in the kill view screen will often times not render fully for a few seconds, and sometimes they will not render at all. The same goes for walls and roofs, which will flicker in and out of existence regularly. Server stability has not improved at all, and as always during the event there is constant lag and desync. In many ways this doesn't feel like a relaunch at all, it just feels like the same buggy game as before with a new coat of paint.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad. The new map slaps and is very well designed, the updated gunplay is going to take some getting used to but seems fun still. Crytek has definitely done some good, and no one expects perfection. But almost everyone in the community expects effort, and this patch largely depicts a stark lack of it on Crytek's part. I really, really want to change this review to a positive one, I hate contributing to the recent nosedive of negativity surrounding this game. But holy Hell guys, wake up a little bit and pay attention. That's all most of us ask for, and you can't even deliver on that much.