Gaming World Forums
General Category => Entertainment and Media => Topic started by: UPRC on April 24, 2010, 12:26:31 pm
-
I bet you clicked into this topic expecting something cool, something gritty. Well you're getting a topic about a deer hunting game. If you're not disappointed by that, then read on.
The Hunter was apparently released in March 2009 much to the anticipation of the two people worldwide who even cared. This game seems really low key, and I only found out about it yesterday when I was browsing The Escapist and found an article that they wrote up on it.
Developed by Avalanche Studios (lol), The Hunter throws you on a fictional island where you are free to take on hunting missions from Doc (a guide and instructor of sorts) or just roam around looking at the beautiful environment while searching for animals to blow a hole through without Doc's guidance. It's free to play, though you are able to subscribe to the game (meaning real cash) which will grant you premium hunting items, licenses to hunt other animals, and so forth. If you don't pay, then you just get to hunt a certain kind of deer and the number of items you can have are limited. This is a hunting game and not Call of Duty though, so it honestly doesn't matter that you're not carrying around several guns, explosives, and traps. At the moment, my hunter just has his rifle, scope, ammo, deer bleat lure, digital camera, binoculars, and the ever so handy HunterMate device.
I'm really enjoying the game so far, and I typically find hunting games to be boring. The fact that this game is extremely beautiful helps, and the ambient sound effects are fantastic. The game is frighteningly immersive, and when I find a deer (or track one) I really feel 100% involved in it. Deer behave extremely well, by the way. I've made a few kills so far, but I've botched a few others as well after letting deer get to close to me (which results in them scampering away) or by missing when I fire. I even hit one deer and it ran off, so I figured that I missed. A minute later, Doc told me that I had in fact shot it in a critical location and that it was dead now. He wanted me to go find the corpse. I was dumb and didn't think to look for a trail of blood, and my random wandering off in search of the deer carcus failed horribly. Also, there's a full day/night and weather cycle.
Anyway, enough of that. Here's some screenshots/videos showing off how nice looking this free game is.
(https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/UPRC/hunter1.webp)
(https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/UPRC/hunter2.webp)
(https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/UPRC/hunter3.webp)
(https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/UPRC/hunter4.webp)
The Website: http://thehunter.com
-
that's some beautiful island wasted on a disgusting idea. thanks anyways.
-
beatiful graphics
-
i agree with ramci's post.
-
Guess it's less homo than actually going to shoot some deer but I'm sure the only people who play this do both.
-
Guess it's less homo than actually going to shoot some deer but I'm sure the only people who play this do both.
Agreed on the "less homo" point since I'm not a real hunter at all. Fishing's cool and fun in real life, but I could never bring myself to hurt something like a real deer. This a game, all in good fun. Just like the games that let us shoot and kill pedestrians on the streets and such. Killing virtual fuzzy animals isn't really that much worse, but that's just my opinion I suppose.
It's actually pretty cool just to explore and watch nature too, I find. When I attract animals with lures, I'm actually tempted to just sit and watch them curiously walk around wondering where the noises are coming from, it's quite well done.
It's the nature lover in me that's really enjoying the game... Which sounds awfully strange considering what the game's focus is.
-
Fishing's cool and fun
The UPRC Perspective.
-
It's the nature lover in me that's really enjoying the game... Which sounds awfully strange considering what the game's focus is.
well that is the thing. you are in a serene forest...nothing but the sound of birds in the air......THEN YOU SCARE EM ALL AWAY WITH THE ALLMIGHTY RICOCHET OF A BULLET BWEHEHEHEHHHhHTHTHthat's why this game is kind of gross. it's selling the idea of deer hunting along with the nature loving as being part of the same thing and i dunno...it isn't. it depresses me to think of gross, heavy breathing men staring some hapless mammal down the barrel of a gun. what are they aiming for here? is it 'the beauty of mother earth is the thrust while the pull of the trigger is the euphoric release'? it seems like they are way off target...
talking about people killing people isn't the same thing. like for a start this is methodical hunting. what if there was a game where you stalked people and got into their life and then slit their throats. i think people would say 'wow what a yucky and crumby game', and i think they'd be right. GTA is such an irrelevant example because it's just about the crunch of things in that, plus it's a joke, not the idea that you marked your prey....heh heh heh.....and Claimed it.
i don't WANT to shoot the deer. i want to be it's pal. i'd love to clap it on the head sometime. i don't get people who want to shoot the deer.
-
can you just walk around the island and not kill stuff and maybe pet a deer or something
-
can you turn the gun on your own reprehensible hunting self and end your life in a beautiful idyllic paradise adn then the deers can lick up your blood
-
I think buttkiller's aim is dead on.
-
bullseye askdjhd,jnbm
-
Sorry, I just took a look and can see I am maybe suffocating this topic. I am willing to talk about it! I just didn't want to be too accommodating to something I don't like.
-
man you guys.
also i tried this when it was new and didnt have the patience to play for longer than 20 minutes PEACE
-
No manual entry for you
No manual entry for guys.
also i think the graphics actually look kinda crumby! they look like little dioramas and not real at all and is it just me or do the trees in the screenshots look like theyre using the 90s method of "place 2 2d branch graphics orthogonal to eachother and itll TOTALLY look 3d" or are there really trees that grow like that
i would be impressed
-
This game looks like a bad Bryce rendering
-
this game is garbage
that said i hope everyone is aware that without deer hunting deer quickly overpopulate and would destroy their ecosystems
-
man you guys.
also i tried this when it was new and didnt have the patience to play for longer than 20 minutes PEACE
this of all things shouldn't be self-evident or a STANDARD, this is just disgusting. the proposed values. no actually it's justifying THIS shit with first-person shooters being a standard or common entertainemnt. i'm propably misreading you though, jester, and i don't want you think that i got any beef with you dude! i know you play casual games all the time and actually i'm fine with not taking stuff seriously all the time but let's just say i'm watching very carefully for the first person to go 'lol it's just games, it's just entertainment... ~~brown'. if that was REALLY a rolleyes over the condemnition to the deer hunting then ahhaha fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yoooou. go to heck. the eagle has spread it's wings, his eyes set on his prey...
-
also i think the graphics actually look kinda crumby! they look like little dioramas and not real at all and is it just me or do the trees in the screenshots look like theyre using the 90s method of "place 2 2d branch graphics orthogonal to eachother and itll TOTALLY look 3d" or are there really trees that grow like that
i agree but i think the weird artificiality of the graphics makes them more appealing! a lot of games are kind of doing this thing where GRAPHICAL POWER is equated with making all the textures as vivid as possible and the overall effect is that everything is made out of moldy clay and this kind of takes this to ridiculous extremes. the treebark in the first screenshot is a pretty good example of what i'm talking about. i mean the leaves and branches in the backround look like something out of donkey kong country and it's kind of a startling effect! you could make a case that in warping the landscape to look as vivid and detailed you feel like you're looking at it for the first time or whatever but really i just like the strangeness of it.
the hunting aspect is pretty awful although i'm not sure i could say why without sounding like a hypocrite for not feeling the same revulsion for all those games where you kill people. maybe it's just that in other stuff you're shown them as the enemy to some degree, or else just some kind of toy, while the fact that you have happy deer quietly grazing in sunlit meadows etcetera makes you very aware of how gross it is to climb through it all just to kill something. i don't think there'd be anything near the same effect if you were stalking and killing innocent people here, though. maybe we are........the deadliest game
-
i'd rather just play that game where i am a deer with a human's head and walk around looking for my friends who can't chat to me so we have to come up with some signal so we know who the other is
-
fuck i think myst had better graphics than this
-
this of all things shouldn't be self-evident or a STANDARD, this is just disgusting. the proposed values. no actually it's justifying THIS shit with first-person shooters being a standard or common entertainemnt. i'm propably misreading you though, jester, and i don't want you think that i got any beef with you dude! i know you play casual games all the time and actually i'm fine with not taking stuff seriously all the time but let's just say i'm watching very carefully for the first person to go 'lol it's just games, it's just entertainment... ~~brown'. if that was REALLY a rolleyes over the condemnition to the deer hunting then ahhaha fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yoooou. go to heck. the eagle has spread it's wings, his eyes set on his prey...
what
-
well that is the thing. you are in a serene forest...nothing but the sound of birds in the air......THEN YOU SCARE EM ALL AWAY WITH THE ALLMIGHTY RICOCHET OF A BULLET BWEHEHEHEHHHhHTHTHthat's why this game is kind of gross. it's selling the idea of deer hunting along with the nature loving as being part of the same thing and i dunno...it isn't. it depresses me to think of gross, heavy breathing men staring some hapless mammal down the barrel of a gun. what are they aiming for here? is it 'the beauty of mother earth is the thrust while the pull of the trigger is the euphoric release'? it seems like they are way off target...
talking about people killing people isn't the same thing. like for a start this is methodical hunting. what if there was a game where you stalked people and got into their life and then slit their throats. i think people would say 'wow what a yucky and crumby game', and i think they'd be right. GTA is such an irrelevant example because it's just about the crunch of things in that, plus it's a joke, not the idea that you marked your prey....heh heh heh.....and Claimed it.
i don't WANT to shoot the deer. i want to be it's pal. i'd love to clap it on the head sometime. i don't get people who want to shoot the deer.
let's face it though, unless you're veggie, you are probably supporting a terribly inhumane form of animal husbandry whenever you eat meat. at least the deer lead a free life in the woods with its deer friends.
hunters that eat the deer are ok.
if you kill it without a gun, you are not only ok but in fact a certified bad ass, especially if you employ a machete
-
we should all just go live in the wooooooods
-
let's face it though, unless you're veggie, you are probably supporting a terribly inhumane form of animal husbandry whenever you eat meat. at least the deer lead a free life in the woods with its deer friends.
man even if you are a vegetarian you're probably supporting it somehow, i don't really see any way that you can be NOT supporting it in one way or another unless you live naked in the woods under a log
it's just about MINIMIZING it
-
what
i know
-
i really liked ramci before he went crazy
-
this game makes me want to see a golf game that uses some highly advanced Far Cry/Crysis engine and the golfing tournament takes place on this beautiful lush island but all you do is... play golf. Like there is all this beautiful rendering of individual blades of grass and subtle changes in lighting as time progresses but it's just golf game
I do think RPGs need to reassess themselves as like, when they started out they were the only sort of thing where a WORLD meant a real world and not a fucking flat sheet f you mario and some games you wouldn't even talk to anyone there was no text whatsoever and they had this elevated status because it did involve killing things a lot but they were this freak thing where whoa you do several things besides killing. Like some people you converse with and don't kill them at all. But yeah it seems like a lot of people who liked RPGs jumped to first-person shooters and I thought this was an odd transition but really RPGs take you out of the game more than shooter games do these days. When in a Half-Life type game you can do all this minutiae including but not limited to literally taking a piece of trash and throwing it in a garbage can it makes RPGs feel a little cheap esp. now that Final Fantasy whittled down those little interactions do any of the background objects in Final Fantasy ever do anything anymore? Like bookshelves where the books have one page are corny but it felt good that whoa this game world really has books in it. Meanwhile FPSes have been doing exactly this, you can take some random box of cereal and look at the nutrition facts it feels like RPG companies didn't realize what the fuck made their games appealing because they really should expand on that feeling of 'wow I can do something I can't believe they put that in there' maybe as an example in Elder Scrolls Oblivion I know there was a lot of nature trees etc. could you pick fruit off the trees if you wanted? Would birds nest in certain trees would walking under different trees make different crinkly sounds depending on the variety/decidous vs. coniferous
-
Yeah that is one thing that is always really disappointing about new RPGs that come out. I don't know if Elder Scrolls can be picked for an example of this though - you can't pick fruit out of the trees, but you can spend hours reading the books in that game and there is just loads of crap to find. It's all pretty boring and samey but I don't think it's an example of this streamlining that RPGs have been doing for the past 10 years or so. It's just the pursuit of being the best looking game around because people seem to think that this even matters. I played FFXIII recently and the game looks very detailed and everything but you just KNOW that there is nothing behind it and it isn't exciting at alll. 'Wow look at that giant city over there in the distance! Well, back to walking in a straight line and doing boring fighting' is the kind of feeling I get playing alot of recent RPGs. I played Lost Oddysey ages ago and it had the same problem. They just cut everything out that doesn't contribute to the appearance of the game. The gameplay itself in these games is still boring, there just is even less to distract you from that now.
The sense of awe and excitement at wandering around in a different world comes less and less because games seem to think the way to acheieve this is by alot of flashy graphics instead of making available to you the detail of that world in a convincing way. Once you know everything about a game that feeling fades away, and if a game is just about showing you a bunch of nice looking places you can't explore then that feeling dries up just as soon as that thought hits your head.
I haven't played alot of PC RPGs in my life but the few I have played make it pretty obvious this isn't as big a problem with them. Maybe they have different problems. Like having too many numbers and class choices and everything being huge but totally generic.
For exploring I think first person is probably the best way to do it. You've got the most control over what you see and the most detail, without some abstraction in front of you making you feel a bit alienated. That's probably why FPSs have turned out to have more detailed worlds than RPGs, just because the mechanics that are best for shooting also happen to be best for exploring and it is easy to include them both in the same game for that reason. Not that most FPSs do it really well or anything but I think most of my favourite games for exploring are first person, apart from a few story driven ones (where it is better to see the character you are playing as on screen, because you aren't supposed to really be getting sucked into thinking YOU are there as much, but it's about exploring the story).
Older games are different, though. I remember when I was little the feeling of wandering into an area in some open-ish world game that you weren't supposed to be in yet was usually pretty scary! Like the usual colour of the bushes would change to a slightly different colour...and that meant trouble. You were far out of the safety zone now. That's something you could still do nowadays, but I think I brought it up to explain that way that older 2D games can still be pretty immersive and exciting to explore. I think you mentioned something about this ragnar, where the limitations of what the designers could actually show you meant alot of games winded up alot more interesting than they might have otherwise. There is enjoyment you can get out of games that doesn't really come from anything the designers themselves thought up, but just as a fact of you being sucked into this other place and how you react to it and feel.
It's like how people sometimes talk about how games like Super Metroid are 'lonely' games. I didn't so much get that feeling from that particular one, but I totally get what they mean when they say this. It's present in games like metroid, and in other games now like Shadow Of The Colossus, where it is kind of the point of the game and definitely intentional but then you get alot of games where things can feel really barren and lonely in a similar kind of way, while it isn't the intention of the developers at all. Like I just played through the first Sonic game and this is a game which is supposed to be light, breezey fun but that game is actually kind of empty! It's just you, this blue hedgehod (with none of the usual sonic stuff attatched), wandering through these kind of generic levels, fighting this big fat man in a hoverboat. The second level especially feels a little isolated and threatening while you are playing it.
The examples I am giving aren't great, I wish I could think up some better ones.
-
It's like how people sometimes talk about how games like Super Metroid are 'lonely' games. I didn't so much get that feeling from that particular one, but I totally get what they mean when they say this. It's present in games like metroid, and in other games now like Shadow Of The Colossus, where it is kind of the point of the game and definitely intentional but then you get alot of games where things can feel really barren and lonely in a similar kind of way, while it isn't the intention of the developers at all. Like I just played through the first Sonic game and this is a game which is supposed to be light, breezey fun but that game is actually kind of empty! It's just you, this blue hedgehod (with none of the usual sonic stuff attatched), wandering through these kind of generic levels, fighting this big fat man in a hoverboat. The second level especially feels a little isolated and threatening while you are playing it.
The examples I am giving aren't great, I wish I could think up some better ones.
I want to just emphasize how much I agree with you about Marble Zone. I played that zone as a kid so many times and it still freaks the shit out of me even to this date. Man, that game was totally boss though and I'd rather have the simplistic sonic than the rest of the added bullshit that came later in the series though.