Co-op horror FPS Hunt: Showdown (opens in new tab) is adding a new enemy to bring a little chaos to your monster-banishing expeditions. Its called the Immolator, and you can get a glimpse of it in the all-too-brief teaser above.
The Immolator appears as a charred, walking corpse, and it's got some serious rage issues. When it detects movement nearby it will charge, and when it's shot or stabbed it violently bursts into flames. (A blunt attachment for a sawed-off mosin is being added which will allow you to melee bash the Immolator without triggering its fiery reaction.) It can open doors, too, so that moment in the teaser wasn't just for dramatic effect—hiding in a house won't keep you safe when its on the warpath.
Having an enraged burning monster running around full-tilt might not always be a bad thing, though, and careful players may be able to turn it to their advantage.
"For example, if he can't reach your Hunter, he will blow up a barrel or kill other AI," according to designer Bence Kovacs. The Immolator screams a lot, which can attract other enemies, and when burning he leaves a fire trail in his path that will ignite those monsters if they blunder into it. It could be useful to aggro him on other teams as well by igniting him with a sniper shot and sending him searching for a nearby target to punish.
"If you need a distraction, just shoot him from a distance and he'll try to attack anything in range that moves," says Kovacs. "He definitely adds something interesting to the whole mix of the gameplay. He's spicy. He's unpredictable."
The date of The Immolator's arrival on test servers hasn't been determined yet, but it'll be soon according to Crytek's recent dev stream on Twitch. You can check out a bit of The Immolator in action in this video starting at about 1:11:00 (opens in new tab).
