A Very High Quality, Realistic Hunting Experience

First off, I am not a hunter and when I shoot an animal in this game, I feel bad. This is still a very fun game though, and you don't have to enjoy hunting to really get into it. Very few games can truly capture the feeling of being out in the wilderness like this game does. There are many animals roaming around in this game, and many of them are not meant to be hunted, but are just there to add to the feeling of being out in the wilderness. There are 24 total big game animals to hunt in the game and they range from Whitetail Deer, Grizzly Bears, Moose, and Wolves, just to name a few. The types of animals that you run into depend on the territory you are hunting in. For example, you can find Polar Bear in Alaska. The animals may even attack you if you get too close, which leads me to a major gripe about the game. When your character is attacked, the game doesn't actually show the attack. Instead, right before the attack, a sign will pop up on the screen stating that the warden has found you lying unconscious, and the game takes you back to the main menu. It just seems somewhat cheap that the game won't show a Grizzly Bear trying to rip your head off. Oh well, that is one of the very few gripes that I have had with the game.

Before you go hunting, you can choose to "Quick Hunt" or "Career Hunt". The "Quick Hunt" allows you to hunt in any location that you have unlocked in the "Career Hunt". "Career Hunt" lets you unlock stages but makes it so that you must obey all hunting regulations and manage you hunting resources. From there, you can choose the difficulty as Easy, Medium or Hard. You can choose your character out of a line up that includes both men and women ranging from young and inexperienced (poor aim) to the old and experienced (good aim). As you progress in "Career Hunt" you can unlock new characters. You can then choose your weapons and supplies from the store. You will have 12 weapons to choose from ranging from Semi-Automatic Shotguns to Magnum Pistols to Bow and Arrows. In addition to weapons, you also can buy lures, decoys, medical kits, tree stands, and tents, just to name a few. From here, you can choose your location to hunt, visit the target range or view your "trophies" in your log cabin. The "trophies" are the heads of the game that you shot that hang on the walls of your cabin. The game keeps statistics about the size, age, gender of the animal killed. It also keeps stats on the time of day the animal was shot, how far away you were when you shot the animal, and what territory you were in when you shot the animal. The target range is an entertaining mode that gives you full freedom to walk around a target range and shoot at targets that either stand still or move from left to right. You can also get advise and information about the locations and animals from a hunting guide.

The most enticing feature for me in this game is the ability to hunt in eight different locations throughout the United States and Canada. In the U.S., you can hunt in Alaska, Arizona, Montana, Texas, and some unspecified "Northwest Territories". In Canada, you can hunt in Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec. You can even choose the time of year (Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter) to hunt for each location. The environments are huge and you have the option to ride an ATV or snowmobile around to get from one location to the next faster. Of course, if you ride this vehicle around the animals, they will get scared off. In fact, you must use great stealth in order to get close enough to the animals to shoot at them. There is a wind meter in the game and if the animal is downwind, then there is a good chance that they can smell your character and they will run off.

The game controls during a hunt are not overly complex. You have the option to play the game in a first or third person perspective. You have an energy/ health meter that decreases as you walk around and your character gets tired. When your character is tired, you can eat some food in your supplies or pull out your tent to sleep. You can either hunt the animals by sneaking up on them, or you can use lures and decoys to let them come to you. Due the great size of the environments, the game makes it somewhat easy to find the animals through the "auto tracking" feature. This feature provides a red dot on the screen to indicate which direction an animal is in. It won't tell you how far away the animal is, but it is useful in letting you know if you are headed in the right direction.

In conclusion, when I saw that this game was selling brand new with a suggested retail price of a cheap $29.95 at electronics boutique, my expectations were not very high. I assumed that the reason the game was cheap was because it was probably rushed during it's programming and development and the developers knew that the game would not sell well. I was pleasantly surprised when I got home and put this game in my Playstation 2 and found a high quality game. I would certainly recommend this game to anyone (hunters or non-hunters) even if the game was selling for the regular price of around $50.