If you are yearning for a taste of the great outdoors this summer, what better way to experience it than through a computer screen? I’m serious! No more will you have to put up with long travel times to reach a remote destination; no more painful struggling under the weight of an overly-heavy rucksack and, best of all; no more awful, itchy mosquito bites! Hunting Simulator 2 is one game that promises to surpass the fun of stepping outside through providing a faithful recreation of going hunting in the distant wilderness which you can experience all from your sofa.
The great outdoors
The first thing that struck me about the world of Hunting Simulator 2 was its graphics. Few games attempt a wholly photorealistic look, instead opting for some degree of stylisation, but here the environments around you look about as realistic as they come. The forest environments are lush with huge valleys, streams, rock formations, cabins and countless trees that really benefit from the game’s superb lighting engine. The first time I saw sun rays piercing through a jagged treeline on a backdrop of snowy mountains I was blown away by just how great it all looked.
Whilst some of the six included maps, particularly those set in Colorado and Europe, follow pretty much the same art direction and feel very much the same as one another in play, the Texas and Savannah environments are a refreshing change of pace. These wider, flatter environments have little in the way of plant life and are painted with a radically different colour palette. All three maps present a different set of challenges for the player to overcome and contain a solid variety of distinct animals for you to hunt.
It’s also worth noting that parts of the included maps are based on real locations. Although I cannot fully vouch for their authenticity, having never actually visited any of the nature reserves or national parks that are featured, I can safely didn’t spot any obvious discrepancies when comparing the in-game Colorado locations to photos of the real world Roosevelt National Forest and Pawnee National Grasslands I had found on the internet.
When you’re not exploring the outdoors, you can explore your hunting lodge. This small area serves as your hub world, allowing you to access the in-game shop and change your gear. When you first launch the game, your lodge feels eerily empty as there are many blank spots allocated for you to display your hunting trophies and a gun room which showcases all of your purchased weapons. Watching your lodge gradually fill up with trophies and tools as you progress through the game is quite satisfying, and there are enough customisable display spaces to allow you to feel like you’re lodge is somewhere truly unique to you.
The lodge also allows you to, through interacting with a laptop situated on a coffee table; access the in game shop – portrayed as an in-universe website. The shop lets you pick up a plethora of new guns, all faithful recreations of real world models and brands, in addition to a wide selection of useful tools and clothing that you can use to customise your character. Like the weapons, the clothing is also based upon real brands and serves a more practical purpose beyond just aesthetics by helping you blend in more easily with your surroundings.
Money is gained by selling the animals you have killed on your hunts, with credits awarded based upon the stats of the animal and where exactly your shot has hit. This is the cornerstone of the game’s basic gameplay loop. You hunt animals to earn money, which you then use to upgrade your gear and then in turn allows you to hunt more animals and thus earn more money. To stop you snowballing through the game too quickly, and adding a further degree of realism, a hunting licence is required for a species of animal before you can legally kill it. These work on a per region basis, are quite pricey and can only be purchased from your lodge.
The licence system means you’ll end up travelling back to your lodge quite frequently and the harsh fines incurred for killing animals without a licence penalises players who become a little too trigger-happy.
Man’s best friend
Despite the large number of available weapons, the majority of gameplay involves tracking animals rather than shooting at them. Players are granted a canine companion in the tutorial section of the game who is able to detect and follow animal’s trails automatically. There are a few dogs available to purchase from the in-game shop, each with slightly different base stats which upgrade gradually as you spend more time with your companion. You can even name your dogs and, perhaps most importantly of all, pet them whenever you like.
Whilst the AI of your animal companion is overall serviceable, only occasionally glitching out or getting stuck, the creatures you are hunting showcase considerably more advanced artificial intelligence. The time my slow stalking of some of deer was loudly interrupted by the arrival of a huge bear was both very exciting and very memorable. These organic animal encounters, whilst sometimes a little inconvenient, make the game world feel considerably more real than those found of most other hunting games I’ve tried, in which the worlds feel more like a virtual shooting gallery that exists specifically for the player rather than anything particularly real.
Near miss
Although the game’s gunplay is suitably satisfying, I found the reloading animation for some weapons appeared a little stiff and unnatural. Playing in the third-person mode only exacerbates this issue, as it places the unimpressive character models, which are otherwise seldom seen, in the forefront. It’s not that the animations or character models are particularly poor by any means; they just don’t seem quite up to the high standard set by other aspects of the game’s visuals.
I found that, on the Xbox One version of the game at least, there were in-frequent bouts of lag and the occasional bit stuttering throughout my playtime. I also encountered an annoying bug in the tutorial section of the game where the in-game map-screen refused to load and when I got lost and had to consult it, it just wasn’t there. Luckily, this issue seemed to resolve itself after a quick restart of the game.
Verdict:
Although it may be a little too slow-paced for some, Hunting Simulator 2 offers a robust simulation which faithfully recreates many of the most important aspects of real-world hunting. There are a huge variety of distinct weapons to try out on the three included maps which are of an impressive scope and scale. The whole thing comes together to create an immersive world and an overall experience that the right player will enjoy getting lost in; quite possible for many hours at a time.
Just so you’re aware! In order to facilitate a review this product was given to our organisation free of charge.
