Thanks to a free weekend event, I was finally able to try theHunter: Call of the Wild on Steam. Even though I’m practically the polar opposite of an outdoorsman, I was curious about how the game’s systems functioned to simulate the art of hunting. That’s a fancy way of saying: I wanted to see how animal tracking worked in the game.
Turns out, the way you track animals in theHunter: Call of the Wild is by walking from one glowing hoofmark, bloodstained patch of dirt, or pile of poop to the next until you find yourself looking at an animal. Then you click on the animal with your gun out and if they fall over dead you can loot the lifeless body for a score and some cash. If they don’t fall over dead, the real hunt begins.
Shortly into my three-hour experience, I spied a big ole moose, antlers and all, out near some water. I crawled to within about 100 meters of it and took a shot (literally and figuratively) at guessing where its heart was. Judging by how the behemoth pranced off, my first guess wasn’t on the money.
For the next hour and a half, I moved from one blood stain to the next, from one hoof print to the next, tracking this fella throughout the woods. I could tell my first shot at least landed due to the blood, but even after catching up to it a second and third time and taking two more shots at guessing where the heart was, I failed to cash in on those fancy antlers.
While you’re tracking, you have to contend with the fact that other animals are in the area. While the game gives you a vague idea of the direction the tracked animal is heading in, if there are two of the same animal type and they happen to cross paths, it can be easy to pick up on the trail of the wrong animal.
At some point during my pursuit of the moose I shot at three times and hit at least once, I picked up on the trail of a different moose. So you can imagine the sense of utter disappointment when my long awaited white whale emerged from the underbrush just ahead of me…completely antlerless. It was a lady moose.
I took aim and fired my fourth (and final) attempt of a heart-seeking bullet to no avail. This lady moose wasted no time in trampling me to death.
While my first major hunt turned out to be a flop (I did some research and turned out the bullets I was using were nowhere near strong enough to kill a moose, whoops), that is partly the allure of the game. There is the chance you’ll come back empty-handed….or, in my case, I won’t come back at all.
OK. Technically, I came back, the game just respawned me at the base camp…but you get what I’m saying.
I get why people are really into this game. There’s a healthy amount of depth and obvious replayability. A swarm of DLC content also appears to expand the hunting zones to well beyond the Pacific Northwest themed forest I found myself in. Will I venture back in for another attempt? Probably not, but I’m not mad about my wild moose chase.
Check out theHunter: Call of the Wild on Steam.
