Posted in: Games, Review, Video Games | Tagged: game review, theHunter: Call of the Wild, THQ Nordic

A Game For The Obsessive Hunters: We Review theHunter: Call Of The Wild

Published Sat, 16 Dec 2017 21:20:47 -0600

Much like golf, volleyball, and NASCAR games, there will always be an audience for hunting titles. Whether they be the big and bulky arcade cabinets with orange rifles or your standard "try to hit that deer over there" games you find every fall. THQ Nordic recently released their latest edition of theHunter series with Call Of The Wild, first on PC back in March and now on console.

The game plays like a sandbox exploration game where you play in one of two different wooded areas, each complete with different plants and foliage, running rivers and lakes, hazards and pitfalls, and animals to hunt. You'll make your way through the game tracking the animal's trail and looking for subtle clues to where it might be. Once you find your target, you'll line up your shot and attempt to make the kill the way a real hunter would attempt to do so with a hunting rifle. Each area has a set of objectives and missions like exploring and tracking and mapping an area to earn points, but you can always switch it off and just hunt what's around you.

The game's biggest highlights are also its detriments and they can be summed up in one word: realism. When tracking an animal, it can take you long periods of time using the mobile device and mechanics such as footprints and scent to find what you're looking for. You have to keep quiet and make sure the animal doesn't hear you or pick up your scent. When shooting you have to take your time aiming as it moves about, while controlling your breathing and ability to keep the gun steady. There's a LOT of work that goes into simply wanting to shoot things, which some people may love but it becomes a list of chores after about twenty minutes.

Overall, theHunter: Call Of The Wild has some great things going for it but ultimately fails as far as accessibility for everyone. It should not take me the real amount of time and patience to shoot a deer as it does in real life. Not all the ATV driving and experience point spending can change the amount of time I wasted on hunting down one deer, and that becomes an issue. This is not a simulation game nor is it branded as such—this is just a game that has hunting in it. And because of that, you have to look at it from that perspective and say to yourself "should it be this hard to shoot a deer?" For this game, it shouldn't. If you're a hunting enthusiast you'll probably get a kick out of it, but others may want to stay clear.

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