Developer: Neopica
Publisher: Nacon
Platform: PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch
Tested on: PC
Hunting Simulator 2 – Review
Where the first Hunting Simulator got released in 2017, we now get a sequel three years after. Hunting Simulator 2 is exactly what the title allows you to expect, a game that’s supposed to replicate the experience of going on a hunt. Patience, tracking, and going in for the kill. It’s all here and ready for you to pretend-kill some beautiful specimens.
Story
Hunting Simulator 2 feels a little bit like playing as a nut who finally gets to ”shoot dem guns”, but it tries to compensate by putting restrictions on whatever you want to shoot, so you don’t look like a total murderous maniac. You start the game by picking either the male or the female model (no further customization possible) and do a tutorial that shows you the ropes of the game. After that, every animal is pretty much fair game. You can start hunting whatever animal is available as long as you buy a license to hunt it down, and that’s about the gist of it. You have a comfortable hunting lodge all to yourself which is your base of operations, but other than unlocking new items there, there’s no real progress in the game. The story basically exists of ”kill and buy” whatever you can.
Graphics
There are details in Hunting Simulator 2 concerning the dogs, the guns, and items that actually all look great as the models that they are. Holding the guns also feels realistic up to the point that you actually have to aim through a scope and fire it. At that point, the heavy shots of i.e. a bolt-action rifle are completely wasted by the poor execution. The same goes for the environment. Yes, it’s a lot of bush and the different areas that you can hunt in change up some of the environment, but the trees are not nice anymore when you get closer. They are too rough around the edges, and the same goes for a lot of the animal animations where creatures almost glitch through the terrain instead of having a realistic run.
Sound
The ambiance of water and birds that surround you as they will often do in nature sound good. But that’s about it. The issue with the sound is that it does not seem to have any logical placement whatsoever. Most of the time you find yourself running around in an empty-looking forest. Having birds surrounding your ears is a bit weird at those times. Also, besides these generalized ambient sounds, the forest seems awfully quiet. Now, some might call this a genuine hunting experience, but even your own footsteps often sound weird, and your dog doesn’t make a lot of doggish sounds. It just feels far from polished, much like the graphics. The only positive is the three songs to choose from in your Hunting Lodge.
Gameplay
If Hunting Simulator 2 would be a literal sandbox, the gameplay would be sand without toys. Nothing to build a sandcastle makes for more of a walking simulator than anything else. Fair enough, the game does feel like it recreates an experience of slowly going on a hunting path, taking one step at a time. But why would you literally want to play the hours it will take you in real life? That’s barely ever a good idea to put in a game. On top of that, you have terribly poor visibility on any possible animals, tracking them sucks, and the A.I. essentially makes any animal flee before you are even within shooting range. That is, unless you want to move at an excruciating half a mile per hour by sneaking, hoping you will find something somewhere by coincidence.
You can buy guns, rifles, bows, animal callers, and dogs. All great, though you need to keep in mind that certain items need certain calibers to shoot them. Aside from that nothing feels like it works properly. So all you will do mostly is walking around. Hunting Simulator 2 has a poor perception of what’s fun to play. Imagine playing Euro Truck Simulator and having to drive Route 66 in real-time in America. It’s comparable to that and just plain boring. Furthermore, once you finally kill something with a terrible time-frame of about half a second before an animal looks at you and escapes, it feels like you still have no idea what you are doing and that your shots are pure luck.
Hunting Simulator 2 could be interesting, and it has some good ideas. To some extent, it even succeeds in making you feel like you are on the hunt. But once you passed the initial start-up phase you start to see all the bland things that the game hides from you at first. The game is neither fun nor is it realistic enough to really feel like a hunting simulator. And that’s why in its current state, you should probably look for something else.
Conclusion
Hunting Simulator has a tiny bit of good in it, where mainly the models such as the guns and dogs look fine (when not moving). But there’s a lot of things in Hunting Simulator that make it either a boring walking simulator or plain stupid/unfair to play. It misses the goal on many fronts, and it’s highly likely that it’s not worth your time.
Hunting Simulator 2 - Review,
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[…] NACON and Neopica announced today that they intend to bring Hunting Simulator 2 to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S as soon as possible. With no concrete date announced, it will be somewhere in early 2021 for sure. In the meantime, they also dropped a free update for the game. Aside from greatly enhancing the graphics, updating the in-game interface, and a bunch of other small tweaks, the update also introduces 27 new animal species into the game. Some can be hunted, while a few others are endangered in real life, meaning you’re not allowed to hunt them in the game either. Instead, players will be rewarded trophies for discovering these rare specimens. Our review of Hunting Simulator 2 can be read right here. […]
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