theHunter: Call of the Wild – Review

Name: theHunter: Call of the Wild
Developer: Expansive Worlds
Publisher: Avalanche Studios
Released: 2nd of October, 2017 (On PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, already out on PC)
Platforms: PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4
Reviewed on: PlayStation 4

I just found out that I do not have the patience to become a hunter, but the nature sure seems nice.

Graphics

The graphics in theHunter: Call of the Wild is good, but not as breathtaking as I’d like. When the whole game focuses on wandering around in the woods it becomes very annoying that the trees in the distance looks so two-dimensional, and not very sharp either. I’d also like to point out that when you’re out in nature, not all trees look exactly equal, so I don’t understand why I can’t see any differences between 95% of the trees across the map.

Gameplay

Obviously the gameplay is focused on; walking, tracking, and shooting. And unfortunately I found it extremely boring after a couple of hours. The process is too repetitive, it doesn’t matter what you’re hunting. A bear, a deer or a coyote, they all act pretty much the same. All the animals are also so sensitive to sound. I kept being heard by the animals, even though I hadn’t moved more than a couple of inches in the last hour. A cool feature however is the wind tracking. Short summary; never let the animal you’re hunting be down-wind. They’ll smell you immediately and scoot off to a safer place. This means you’ll have to use several of yours tools to gain the advantage you need. Be it using a “fake-mating call”-box or a scent-remover, you will want that extra couple of meters you can get closer to the prey.

There are also a selection of different guns, some are handguns, some are shotguns and some are rifles. You can also choose to use the bow and arrows, if your heart desires. It is cool that they include a few different options, but I didn’t really understand why. I kept using a rifle, because the bow and arrow felt too used up in other games, and I don’t think shooting a deer on 200 meters range is possible with a shotgun. I feel like there should have been more rifles (not that it was few), and I think it should have been more focus on letting the player get a good feeling about the capabilities of each rifle, instead of broadening to all the guns that ended up in the game.

Story

There are some story missions, but these are all just in the background, and doesn’t really do much of themselves in the game. It’s an okay feature to have, but as almost all of them revolves around hunting and/or tracking footprints they don’t really offer much other than some voicing. Shooting a deer doesn’t get any different just because you get a bit more money, and a line with “Thank you”.

Controls

For me the controls were far too sensitive on a Dualshock 4, even on the lowest setting. It probably works much better on PC, where you can play with a mouse. I’m also wondering why the photo-mode is activated by holding down the square-button (which with a press makes you activate a track, for example), instead of for example the touchpad? The touchpad is used for bringing up the map, but the options-button does exactly the same, and the map just isn’t that important.