Way of The Hunter

Way of The Hunter is a different experience than usual as it takes you to natural places far away from cities and noisy life. Usually we see various simulation games for flying, car racing and even simulating car mechanics and fixing their errors like in the game Car Mechanic Simulator, but this is the first time in a long time that a game focused on the Simulation of shooting and hunting has specialized time. We played Way of The Hunter on the PC platform and found that the game works well despite some technical issues that we will talk about later.

The Beginning and Introduction

The beginning and introduction of the game is beautiful because it starts with the picturesque nature in which you will live and it is clear that it contains a beautiful story phase that tells about the life of the character you are playing with. The scene begins with a person having a conversation with their grandfather about hunting and using his headquarters. This is a large house containing various things related to the game mode, including receiving hunting missions, placing stuffed animals for post-hunt decoration, and purchasing hunting-related equipment , sleeping during the time change and others.

At the beginning, the game teaches you the basics of the play style and explains the equipment you need. Everything mentioned during the game in these basics can be found in an encyclopedia divided into several sections, including information that will help you with your play style and provide information about the animals you will hunt later. The problem with this is that in the world of hunting you are given terms that you may not have known before and this is what I experienced while playing which led me to search Google for the meaning of the terms because the game doesn’t include an explanation for this. For example, the game mentions the term “Taxidermy” or “Dermi Taxi”, which means the mummification of animals after hunting, for someone who has no experience in the world of hunting or is not familiar with mummification in any form he will have to look for an explanation.

The Shooting Range and First Hunt

The game later takes you to the shooting range to teach you how to use the hunting rifle, which allows you to adjust the zoom lens to the distance of the target. This process is called “zeroing” because this process affects the target, so if you set the lens at 100 meters and the target is closer, you will hit a higher position than in reality and vice versa. After that, you will have a real badger hunting experience for the first time and you have to be aware that the animals can run away from you if you approach them in a annoying way and you have to walk carefully to approach them without them notice you, and you also have to take into account that the car you are driving to get to the desired location is a vehicle. When it moves in the game, it makes a loud noise, causing most animals to run away from you.

We assume you were careful, but they still escaped. Why?! Of course because of the wind direction. When the wind blows towards the prey, your scent will carry it to them and they will know there is danger to them and they will run away from you. During the Bei Wild you will find medium height watchtowers that are useful for monitoring and hunting animals from a distance. They also have another benefit: they help hide the scent of your body carried by the wind, making it harder for prey to sense your presence. After successfully hunting the prey, you have the option to sell its meat or mummify it. You will see a rating of how well you hunted the prey and which part of the animal was hit by the bullet. This will help you get better. Fishing next time.

Distance Determination and Tracking

The question arises: How do you determine the distance to the prey in order to adjust the telephoto lens when shooting? You start the game with digital binoculars that display the distance between the player and the target they are aiming at. Therefore, binoculars will always be your best friend before any hunting attempt. You have another loyal friend that you will rely on the most. This is the hunter’s sixth sense, because when you turn it on you will see a red dot. When aiming, it indicates the likely direction of the bullet before it fires. Later in the game, you’ll also rely on him to examine the prey he’s hunting, such as his favorite places to eat or drink, his hoof prints to track his movements, and so on. If you analyze all these tracks, you will see an update of the information about the loot in the encyclopedia.

Technical Issues and Design Problems

If you cause most animals to flee their usual areas and you want to return them to their natural living conditions, you can return to your home to sleep and change the time from night to day and vice versa. After enough time has passed, you can return outside to try hunting again. Although catching the prey the first time gives a good feeling of success, there is a problem with injuring the prey without killing it, as I have found that the injury does not affect the prey’s behavior in any way and she doesn’t slow down and fell to the ground while trying to escape because of the injury. The game has a quick movement feature, but its usefulness is very limited since the car doesn’t move with you.

As you move from one location to another, you will notice that there is a compass at the top of the screen and it only has a marker indicating the location of the main mission. If you place a minor point on the map, it will not show up on the compass and you won’t be able to see other important locations, which is a bit annoying. From our point of view, there is a design problem… If you want to start the game again for one reason or another, there is no “New Game” option in any of the game menus, and here I had to look for the save files for this game and delete them them to start the game again. It is not possible to clear your storage. Also in the game via the menus. In addition, I tried changing the settings of movements or functions on the keyboard to other keys so that I can play them more comfortably. For example, I wanted to change opening the map from the TAB key to the letter M, which is usually the key. In most games I can use the map key, but the game never allows me to do that. This is unacceptable.

Graphics and Sound Quality

The graphics quality of the game was better than I expected, and the quality of the sound effects is also excellent, so you can quickly immerse yourself in the game atmosphere, especially in rainy weather and thunderstorms. On sunny days, you will notice that when you walk or run, your character’s arms will stand still, as if the character’s arms are dead because they do not swing while moving like any normal person. What’s going on here? Additionally, you will notice that your field of view is disturbingly close and there is no adjustment for this in the game settings.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, Way of the Hunter almost became one of the best hunting simulation games of all time, but unfortunately due to the many technical issues and lack of fundamentals found in most games today, in addition to the difficulty involved is to adapt to the game mechanics. This status is not achieved. Well, with updates the experience may get even better in the future, but for now it’s not as complete as we’d hoped.

Way of The Hunter was reviewed on PC after we received it from the publisher