Developer: Neopica
Publisher: Bigben Interactive
Platform: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Tested on: Xbox One
Hunting Simulator – Review
In the last few years ‘simulation’ games have been booming, be it those that aim to present you with a very realistic experience, or parodies like Goat Simulator which went over the top with its wacky mechanics. This time we dive into the thrilling life of a hunter, who’s out for the biggest kill he can find in BigBen’s Hunting Simulator. The latter isn’t always known for presenting quality games and even though this game sometimes hits its mark, it’s often shooting blanks. Welcome to the great outdoors, that ends up being not so great after all.
Story
While the game offers you a different set of characters to choose from in the campaign mode, with each of them having a specific background, you won’t find any story value in this game. It’s all about shooting ‘game’ and bring him the biggest kills, with the cleanest possible way of killing said animal. If you were hoping for more story content than that, you’re better off sticking to different kinds of games.
Graphics
Even though the game has a few very likeable aspects, such as the weapons, the overall quality of the game is extremely subpar for our current generation of consoles. The maps you roam around in may be rather big, but a lot of the foliage, shrubberies and so on feel like they have been copy pasted all over the surface, and the game also suffers from extreme ‘popping’, where plants, flowers and other parts of the environment will just pop out of thin air when you come closer. Not only is the latter annoying, it can also ruin a good shot by having flowers or tall grass pop up in front of your gun sight. Another poor aspect are the textures that the game used, as everything is simply flat, mostly noticeable when coming closer to rocks or other ‘solid’ surfaces.
There’s also a complete difference in the way you hold your weapon in first person view and the third person view. In the latter, you move like you’re supposed to move, and thus hold it upwards, and/or wiggle it when you’re crawling over the floor. However, in the first person view, you’ll be keeping it sideways, even when crawling. Even more strangely, when crawling, you’ll keep it perfectly still and you’re not even moving your arms around, which means that while standing, crouching and crawling, you’ll only have one visible pose in the first person angle.
Of course, the game is all about the animals, and they look fairly decent, to a certain extent. While the animals may look a bit closer to the quality of the Xbox 360, rather than the Xbox One, they are fairly attractive and diverse enough to keep things interesting.
Sound
As expected, you won’t be treated to action packed music, or even soothing tunes for that matter, you’ll have to make do with the sounds of your environment, such as the wind or rain, and your footsteps on the different types of surfaces. Truth be told, the sound is one of the redeeming qualities of the game, as it sounds very authentic, and in a way relaxing.
Gameplay
Like the name of the game implies, Hunting Simulator falls well within the simulator genre, which means you’ll be going through rather slow paced gameplay, posing as a hunter in the great outdoors. You’ll have to take into account things that you would in real life, such as wind, weather conditions, carefully creeping up on your prey and so on.
Sadly, while the above seems just about right for this game, it immediately gets hampered by getting stuck in random places, walking into invisible barriers the moment the surface shifts from sand to rocks, and animals that have a super hearing, when you are more than one hundred meters away from them. Other mishaps include the fact that there is wind, which makes your bullets go off course, which is normal. Sadly, at the beginning of the game you have no indication of wind, which feels a bit unnatural, as in real life you’d feel wind yourself. The latter makes you miss constantly, even when lining up a perfect shot, with a very imprecise targeting system.
The controls in the game are straightforward, and as far as mechanics go, things are equally straightforward. Nonetheless, it takes quite some time before you start unlocking the many different weapons and tools that will aid you in becoming a top hunter. If you’re not a fan of playing the campaign, you could let loose your anger in the Free Hunt mode, but sadly, you’ll come across more animals you can’t put down with your arsenal, forcing you to play through the campaign mode. Nonetheless, the campaign mode is fairly okay, as you’ll often get one main target, a few bonus objectives and when you pop the main target, the mission will end when you collect the carcass of your fallen prey.
If we have to be honest, the game tries, it really does, but it falls short in many departments, making this feel like a very clumsy, unfinished attempt at a niche type of game. This game has a decent amount of content to offer, so that’s one of the only redeeming qualities Hunting Simulator has to offer.
Conclusion
Truth be told, it was hard to properly grade this game, as the game succeeds in a few aspects, but misses the mark in many other ways, like its graphical prowess, the controls, the overall amount of bugs and so on. While the game has a reasonable amount of content, and true fans of the genre may find a bit of joy in this title, those who like a wholly finished game, and an overall ‘fun’ experience, may better keep this title in the woods. Hunting Simulator clearly aimed for quantity over quality.
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