Fake Deer, Real Fun

Going out on a hunt is a fairly easy task but can take a lot of patience, in real life as well as in the game. First you’ll need to make a decision on weapon – three are offered giving you slightly different play experiences. Shotguns are great for people with less skill at aiming but are experts with deer calls to draw them in close. Rifles give you better distance and will take the deer down in one shot, but if it’s wasted you won’t get another one before the buck is out of sight. Hunting with the bow doesn’t seem to offer any real advantage/disadvantage over the other guns but will likely appeal to the audience looking for authenticity.

Once your gun selection has been made you’ll need to make a choice out of two locations and a handful of hunting points within each. Most will be locked down at first but successfully bagging a deer will allow you to progress to another. Simply giving the player the ability to choose among them would have been fine but locking them actually gave me a purpose, making me want to come back more than a few times. Out in the hunting post you’ll need to move around a map in a 270 degree angle, scanning for any movement. You can clash antler’s together, make buck grunts as well as a soft doe bleat to attract their attention. Once a buck is shot you’ll receive a trophy head as well online bragging rights.  It is a very simple design.   

Real Deer Hunting won’t win any awards for the presentation, but it won’t turn you away. Two hunting locations are designed with plenty of objects between you and the background to create a 3D effect. Animals do seem to get really skinny when moving away from you, making them extremely difficult to hit. Different weather conditions add a level of realism to the sixteen different hunting stands found in the two separate locations, ranging from snow to rain. Graphical anomalies can sometimes bring you out of the experience; you can easily see where the environment backgrounds were linked together with a blurry pixel line.

Control wise, Sunstorm made the right choice by putting in tilt control but not turning it on by default. You can also choose between a digital or analogue control stick as well as direct control with touch sensitivity adjustable from the options menu. You'll never feel like the gun is out of your control but precise shots may take a little practice.

A buck for a buck hunting experience is hardly going to break your checking account and the time you'll waste playing this game on the way to the next bus stop or at the office is worth all 99 pennies.

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