Horizon Hunters Gathering was announced earlier this year, Guerrilla's co-op multiplayer spinoff, and it was quickly torn apart online.
We think that knee-jerk reaction was a little rash, because from what's been released so far, it shows a lot of potential, and that divisive art and animation style looks fantastic from where we're sitting.
The game's official social channels have shared a few new gameplay clips, focusing on the game's Cauldron Descent mode, and to us it looks like good fun.
The mode reminds us of the structure of something like Hades; you delve deeper and deeper into a dungeon, opening new rooms and beating their challenges to receive rewards that power you up before a big boss at the end.
If Guerrilla can balance it out with meaningful upgrades that provide lots of ways to amp up your chosen character, it seems like this could be a really fun, highly replayable mode.
For what it's worth, we still reckon the visuals look great in these clips.
The real litmus test for Hunters Gathering is going to be understanding how it plays in pre-launch beta tests.
If it feels satisfying to play and has those "one more round" hooks, this could well be a winning gamble. We're fairly confident it will feel good to play; this is Guerrilla we're talking about, a studio that's made two very fun machine-battling action RPGs, and has a lot of multiplayer experience.
Obviously, the quality of the game doesn't mean much if the audience isn't there to play it, but Horizon is a franchise that's sold over 40 million units, so the name alone should mean people will show up.