Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2011 Hands-On

If you're not familiar with Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2011, then you might read the name and instantly assume it's a hunting simulation of some kind. You know the type: Pick your gun, choose your camouflage, and spend a solid hour trying to discern the difference between animal droppings and a clump of dirt. But somewhere between shooting a cougar in the heart in dramatic slow motion and fending off wolves with glowing red demon eyes, you'll realize that assumption doesn't quite apply to this game.

Dangerous Hunts 2011 is better described as a survival game first and a hunting game second. The story puts you in the shoes of a hunter named Cole whose quest sends him through a variety of locales across North America and Africa to deal with animals who have been taken over by some vaguely supernatural forces (hence, the glowing red eyes). One level we were shown depicted Cole emerging from an avalanche in the dead of night, moving through the snowy woods and fending off animals attempting to stalk him while dealing with environmental hazards, such as hidden bear traps and a river of cracked ice.

Like with previous games in the series, you'll play Dangerous Hunts 2011 using a special gun peripheral with an adjustable scope and stock, as well as analog sticks to control your movement so that you don't have to play on rails. Aside from giving you a little more precision control over how you fire your shots, the gun controller comes with a neat feature called Hunter Vision. This feature exposes hidden objects in the world by temporarily rendering the screen a fairly garbled mishmash of reddish colors that you can decipher by looking through the scope of the gun as though it were infrared.

Aside from the aforementioned Story mode, Dangerous Hunts 2011 will come with a number of other modes, including multiplayer options, such as the Shooting Gallery. This mode taught us the valuable lesson that killing a bear doesn't count as a trophy kill if you shoot it in the face. You can expect to see the game released on October 26.