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.










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.

I think buttkiller's aim is dead on.

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

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