I feel hunting games have always been a bit of a niche market in gaming. Plenty of people have played Big Buck Hunter at their local bowling alley/bar. During the PS2/early PS3 era I played a few of the Cabela’s games, namely the Dangerous Hunts series. It seemed once those Cabela’s games died off, hunting games went into a bit of a drought. Finally during the later years of the PS4 era, Hunter Call of the Wild was released.
First thing you’ll notice about this game is the graphics. It is an extremely beautiful game to look at, but also an extremely taxing game. I have this both on PC and PS4. I had it on PC first, but it required a lot of space and pushed my laptop to the limit, the PS4 version is still pretty, but with the added benefit of stability. There are several different hunting reserves you can hunt on, each with a different theme; Russian taiga, Mexican desert, the Pacific Northwest, African Savannah, and each is lovingly created. The maps are huge and can have smaller variants in their different regions. I was easily immersed in the settings and enjoyed just exploring the worlds. This was helped by the dynamic weather and the natural sounds of the world. There’s also the cozy hunter cabins and firewatch towers that add to the world. The animals you hunt also look decent, the only thing that looks a little low-res is your DLC hunting dog. The fur looks printed on.
The gameplay goes for a very realistic simulator approach. You can’t just run off into the woods and start blasting away and anything that moves. The animal AI is programmed to react to you realistically, most of the time. There were a few occasions the deer I was stalking would get confused and start acting up. But in general, this game really drives you to use actual hunting styles. There’s an inventory management to this game. You can only carry so much, so you have to determine which rifles, calls, baits, and scents you want to take with you. The inventory system isn’t so restrictive you feel underprepared, but you can’t go hauling a whole steamer trunk of hunting supplies with you. The first step is scouting out the area and finding out where the particular animal you’re hunting frequents. With a DLC, you can use an ATV to cover large areas of the map, but it’s noisy, so you want to dismount once you get close. Then you can either stand hunt or stalk hunt. I usually prefer to stalk hunt, because it’s a little more active and keeps the game interesting, but you have a selection of ground blinds and tree stands you can set up near feeding or bedding spots and try to call in the prey. With the stalk hunt, you follow an animal’s trail of hoof/footprints, calls, and droppings to catch up to it. But you have to stay aware of how much noise you’re making, how visible you are, and keeping downwind of your target. If you spook the animal it will run off without a second thought.
But if you are able to get in a good spot to line up a shot you’ve a new set of things to consider. As a hunter, your goal is making the cleanest, quickest kill, which means hitting the right spot, usually around the heart. If you don’t get it in one, you get to track the wounded animal. This is where your bloodhound comes in handy as it can track that trail better than you can. Following the trail, either droppings or blood trails, can be a little confusing, especially since the animals like to run in circles and double back which makes it hard to know if you are still on the right trail or if you’re chasing your own tail. Once you do collect your trophy you see the most gamey part of the game. A score screen pops up that tells you how well you did. It gives you stats about the animal, where you hit, how clean it was, the range, and your star rating that is calculated from all those stats.
This game has a light RPG function to it I wasn’t expecting. As you level up, you get points to unlock skills that are a boon to your hunt. They give you abilities to pinpoint animal calls to exacter locations, identify an animal’s gender from it’s tracks, or make it so you are stealthier in the rain or at night. It does add some depth to the game to keep it a little fresher once the draw of hunting wears off.
There’s also some light story beats to this game, which is rare for hunting games. Usually the story is “go hunt”. This game isn’t a narrative driven adventure by any sense, but you get little open-ended side stories from the local game wardens, naturalists, survivalists, and other nature types. They help add context to the world. One warden talks about how they are dealing with delinquents vandalizing the reserve, another has called you in to consult on setting up a new hunting reserve. There are little missions that can help to direct your game, sometimes it’s “hunt 4 male deer” or “reach Northern Watchtower”. The overall tone of this game is coming from a more “hunters are conservators who care for the land, guard nature, and hunt responsibly as a part of the natural cycle”. Which given some people’s adverse reaction to the notion of hunting, it’s a good tone to take over just a bunch of country folk out there shooting deer for the sport of it, and the meat.
One thing I don’t enjoy about this game is their content distribution. The base game, which still carries a $40-60 price tag, gives you a good selection of firearms, but only two hunting reserves. Other reserves are sold as DLC around $8 a piece, which would be fine if you had 5 or so included in the base game and there were only 2-3 DLC ones, but it’s reversed. If you want a hunting lodge to display your trophies, that’s another paid DLC; ATV, paid DLC; Hunting dog, paid DLC. It feels a bit predatory. There’s also lots of gun pack DLCs, but those I can forgive a little more.
All in all, this game does a great job in immersing you in a virtual nature reserve with the sights and sounds. The gameplay is engaging, but it’s also a good weekday, after work, chill game. It’s very peaceful to simply walk amongst the woods, until you come upon an elk you’ve been tracking for the last half hour and line it up in your scope, it’s a thrilling and tense moment. If you like the hunting simulators, Hunter: Call of the Wild stands as the definitive hunting game currently offered.
