Alright, quite an old game, about 3 years old. But it has came quite a long way since then.
It is technically free 2 play, but you only get a small area and one weapon, and one animal to hunt. But it's good to get a taster of the game. However I quickly decided I would subscribe as a member. It's price is not to bad depending how you look at it. It's base price of $15 for 3 months is definitely cheap, games like WoW are that each month. Membership comes with several benefits, you can hunt every animal, have all the places open to you, server priority over non-members, a few free weapons and unlimited ammo (As a guest, you have to buy more ammo).
However, you do have to pay for new weapons and gear using there own 'em$' currency. Weapons range from about em$200 to em$600. You can pay $5 to get em$500, which is fairly expensive considering that is basically just one good gun. However, you can also get this currency for free. I've got about em$1200 with about 20minutes work. You just have to do them surveys and stuff, or sign up for trials and that kind of crap. There are tonnes of offers to fulfill, some get you as little at em$5 for just watching a 30 second video. Others are in the 3 or em$4000 range if you spend $20 at a certain store. But there are lots in the middle, where you earn 50 to em$400 for just signing up to a website, putting your card details in, and verifiying your email adress. Once you've done that, the game money is quickly put on your account and you can cancel your membership, so it costs you nothing. If your not happy putting card details in temporarily you can just fill out the surveys, which will net you 80 to em$200 a time. So I did that for a while and got me a few new guns, which was neat.
Now onto the game. First thing you will notice is how good the graphics are. Those of you that have played Just Cause 2 will start to notice similarities in vegetation and lighting effects after you've played for a while, and that is for a good reason, the game was made using Avalance 2.0 engine, which they later went on to use for Just Cause 2. And in short, the game can look stunning at times and still good at the worst of times. Overall, it's a very pretty game - and it runs okay too. I have it at max settings, 4x AA and it is very playable 98% of the time. Occasionally when a lot of stuff comes into view it can dip a bit. But most of the time it feels like about 20 to 40fps. Which doesn't sound great, but it's one of those games that still plays well at the lower end of that scale, it's very slow paced, so it really doesn't matter all that much.
The gameplay is where the fun is at, of course. Once you get the hang of things hunting animals is great fun, I never thought wondering around a forest for 30 minutes seeing no prey would be fun, but it is, because the game keeps you on your toes even when there is nothing to shoot. Every few minutes you will hear the sound of a deer, or moose, or whatever. Or you might stumble across some tracks to follow, etc. Following tracks is what most of the game is about, and it can be very difficult. I've spent 30 minutes following a single set of tracks before. The problem being is animals can hear you, see you, and smell you. And they are better at all of that than you as the hunter are. They will frequently run off before you get close, causing the next time you scan some tracks it will say "Animal status: Fleeing". You've really got to try hard, you may have to crawl for 5 minutes to sneak up on it, or find an open space and lure it back towards you instead of chasing it.. or whatever you want. On an hours long hunt you can expect to come back with anything from 2 animals to 10 animals depending on how good you are.
But it doesn't end there, once you've hunted an animal they are scored depending on certain features of the animal, such as how impressive it's antlers are or how heavy it is. These stats are recorded, and you can enter them into ongoing competitions. Competitions can also have restrictions, such as hunting using only your .44 Magnum, or at different times. And then you have player stats for each animal, such as how good you are at shooting the .308 Anschutz, or how good you are at stalking black bears. As you level up you get certain improvements, but this is a slowwwwwww process so i'm not to sure what exactley they are yet.
Overall, it's a seriously fun game. It's also hard, which makes a change. Shooting a 500kg elk ? you better make sure you hit one of the key kill spots.. hit it in the stomach and your going to be stalking that thing for the next 20 minutes while it runs off to die, and trust me, hitting a heart sized object, in the middle of dense vegetation, on a moving target.. is kind of hard. Especially as there is no way to totally steady your scope unlike other games. Even when holding your breath, theres still a fair amount of sway.
Website: theHunter - The most realistic hunting game online (Only a 800mb download somehow, so give it a try).
Here are some large screenies:
It is technically free 2 play, but you only get a small area and one weapon, and one animal to hunt. But it's good to get a taster of the game. However I quickly decided I would subscribe as a member. It's price is not to bad depending how you look at it. It's base price of $15 for 3 months is definitely cheap, games like WoW are that each month. Membership comes with several benefits, you can hunt every animal, have all the places open to you, server priority over non-members, a few free weapons and unlimited ammo (As a guest, you have to buy more ammo).
However, you do have to pay for new weapons and gear using there own 'em$' currency. Weapons range from about em$200 to em$600. You can pay $5 to get em$500, which is fairly expensive considering that is basically just one good gun. However, you can also get this currency for free. I've got about em$1200 with about 20minutes work. You just have to do them surveys and stuff, or sign up for trials and that kind of crap. There are tonnes of offers to fulfill, some get you as little at em$5 for just watching a 30 second video. Others are in the 3 or em$4000 range if you spend $20 at a certain store. But there are lots in the middle, where you earn 50 to em$400 for just signing up to a website, putting your card details in, and verifiying your email adress. Once you've done that, the game money is quickly put on your account and you can cancel your membership, so it costs you nothing. If your not happy putting card details in temporarily you can just fill out the surveys, which will net you 80 to em$200 a time. So I did that for a while and got me a few new guns, which was neat.
Now onto the game. First thing you will notice is how good the graphics are. Those of you that have played Just Cause 2 will start to notice similarities in vegetation and lighting effects after you've played for a while, and that is for a good reason, the game was made using Avalance 2.0 engine, which they later went on to use for Just Cause 2. And in short, the game can look stunning at times and still good at the worst of times. Overall, it's a very pretty game - and it runs okay too. I have it at max settings, 4x AA and it is very playable 98% of the time. Occasionally when a lot of stuff comes into view it can dip a bit. But most of the time it feels like about 20 to 40fps. Which doesn't sound great, but it's one of those games that still plays well at the lower end of that scale, it's very slow paced, so it really doesn't matter all that much.
The gameplay is where the fun is at, of course. Once you get the hang of things hunting animals is great fun, I never thought wondering around a forest for 30 minutes seeing no prey would be fun, but it is, because the game keeps you on your toes even when there is nothing to shoot. Every few minutes you will hear the sound of a deer, or moose, or whatever. Or you might stumble across some tracks to follow, etc. Following tracks is what most of the game is about, and it can be very difficult. I've spent 30 minutes following a single set of tracks before. The problem being is animals can hear you, see you, and smell you. And they are better at all of that than you as the hunter are. They will frequently run off before you get close, causing the next time you scan some tracks it will say "Animal status: Fleeing". You've really got to try hard, you may have to crawl for 5 minutes to sneak up on it, or find an open space and lure it back towards you instead of chasing it.. or whatever you want. On an hours long hunt you can expect to come back with anything from 2 animals to 10 animals depending on how good you are.
But it doesn't end there, once you've hunted an animal they are scored depending on certain features of the animal, such as how impressive it's antlers are or how heavy it is. These stats are recorded, and you can enter them into ongoing competitions. Competitions can also have restrictions, such as hunting using only your .44 Magnum, or at different times. And then you have player stats for each animal, such as how good you are at shooting the .308 Anschutz, or how good you are at stalking black bears. As you level up you get certain improvements, but this is a slowwwwwww process so i'm not to sure what exactley they are yet.
Overall, it's a seriously fun game. It's also hard, which makes a change. Shooting a 500kg elk ? you better make sure you hit one of the key kill spots.. hit it in the stomach and your going to be stalking that thing for the next 20 minutes while it runs off to die, and trust me, hitting a heart sized object, in the middle of dense vegetation, on a moving target.. is kind of hard. Especially as there is no way to totally steady your scope unlike other games. Even when holding your breath, theres still a fair amount of sway.
Website: theHunter - The most realistic hunting game online (Only a 800mb download somehow, so give it a try).
Here are some large screenies:
