Hunting games tend to come in one of a couple of different flavors. They are either so realistic and accurate as a simulation that the game has to hold your hand and tell you what to do or you'll never shoot anything. Or they are so easy and arcadey that they lose any sense of realism and just become high score trials instead of real hunting. Bass Pro Shops: The Hunt falls somewhere in between. It is a straightforward hunting sim that isn't too easy, but also doesn't have to hold your hand.
But is it any fun? Find out in our full review.
Game Details
- Publisher: XS Games
- Developer: Piranha Games
- ESRB Rating: “T" for Teen
- Genre: Deer Hunting Sim
- Pros: Realistic tracking and hunting; minigames; no hand holding
- Cons: Poor graphics and sound; bad ATV controls; super slow walking; hard to see animals
Bass Pro Shops: The Hunt has your character in a hunting tournament where you jet off to exotic locales and shoot stuff. In a realistic touch, you can only shoot specific species, sometimes with specific weapons, and you can't shoot any animals you don't have tags for. This encourages you to really scout around instead of just shooting the first animal you see since you don't want to waste your tags on smaller animals that won't help you out in the overall tournament. By shooting larger animals, as well as following the laws, you earn reputation that unlocks new locations to hunt.
In addition to the career mode, there is also a free hunt mode as well as a wealth of minigames. There is a shooting range, ATV races, and a nifty duck hunting minigame that is pretty fun.
Duck Hunting simply has you moving a cursor around the screen and shooting as ducks fly by, but it has an addictive and fun oldschool feel that makes it worth playing a few times.
Gameplay
The gameplay in The Hunt is pretty uneven. It leans more towards a simulation where you have a large area to cover and have to use your tracking skills combined with calls and scents to draw animals closer to your position.
It isn't heavily scripted or super deep, however, like some other hunting sims, so you can sort of do things your own way and be successful. Outside of training at the very beginning of the game, you are set loose and allowed to hunt however you want with no hand holding, which is nice.
Unfortunately, actually moving around the world and finding animals is pretty clunky. Walking is agonizingly slow, and entering "stealth" mode to sneak up on animals makes it even slower. Riding an ATV is much faster, obviously, but the controls are absolutely terrible and it is hard to keep your ATV on the trail. Not only that, but your ATV will get stuck on bits of the game world (rocks, bushes, grass, and occasionally nothing at all) so you end up slowly walking around anyway.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that actually seeing animals is remarkably difficult. They just sort of blend into the background. I know that is realistic, but is kind of a pain in the butt in a videogame. The solution for this is to enter stealth mode where the colors change to gray scale and the animals glow bright yellow. It makes it 100% easier to see, but at the expense of moving at a snail's pace. You do eventually get used to the methodical nature of the game and can have some fun with it, but other hunting games on the 360 are far more accessible and fun from the get go.
Graphics & Sound
Graphically, The Hunt is a bit of a mess. The environments are full of pixely, jagged trees, jagged bushes, and jagged grass and really poor textures on everything. The animals look a little better, but are pretty blocky and stiff.
The sound is also remarkably poor. Mostly just repetitive foot falls as you slowly walk around. For some strange reason, the animals in the game make a ton of noise. Wild turkeys or boar sound like they are stomping through the brush wearing army boots. The deer and elk and other animals are also just constantly grunting and calling and making all sorts of racket, which is completely unrealistic. It certainly makes finding them easier, though.
Bottom Line
Overall, Bass Pro Shops: The Hunt is pretty disappointing. I appreciate that even though it is a simulation it doesn't try to guide you too much, which is a mistake a lot of hunting sims make, but it is so slowly paced and so hard to actually see anything through the ugly graphics that playing the game feels like a chore instead of fun. The bottom line is that there are better, more fun hunting games already on the Xbox 360 that are more deserving of your attention. Rent it if you are an absolute die hard fan of the genre, but I'd say skip it.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
