A welcome deviation from battling Covenant forces on distant planets...
This is just one of the many interesting hunts I had while playing "Big Game Hunter," for in this game you can be both predator and prey depending on which type of animal you happen to be hunting. Not only is there a wide variety of animals, but different types of the same one. You may hunt whitetail and blacktail deer, caribou, various types of big cats like bobcats and cougars (but not lions and tigers), grizzly bears, black bears, brown bears, kodiak bears, and oh, yes, even the polar bear. There are also bighorn sheep, moose, wolves, the elusive wolverine, and others. You also have a large array of weapons and gear at your disposal, such as scent cover, tree stands, handguns, bows, rifles, animal decoys, salt licks, predator calls, et cetera. You'll need them, too, because some of the beasts you hunt simply don't play that. You can be attacked and injured even by an angry deer, but instead of dying if you run out of health, you are found lying unconscious by rescue workers and must either restart or abort the current hunt. However, you cannot wantonly kill anything you come across; before you can take down an animal and claim it for a trophy, you must have a tag for that species or permission from the landowner if you're on someone's property. If you poach an animal illegally, you may endure warnings and fines from the game's omnipresent game warden who immediately knows when you've done something wrong. You also can't hunt past certain hours; if 6 p.m. rolls around, you'll have to camp for the night in the wilderness or rest in the nearest hunting lodge. Fortunately, when you camp, the time rolls around very quickly until 8 a.m. when it's legal to go hunting again.
Sometimes, though, it's fun to break the rules. If you're hunting creatures such as bears or wolverines that will likely attack you if you draw too close, you can defend yourself without incurring any penalties. I like to go bear baiting sometimes even when all my tags are used up, and entice one of them to come after me. I might not be able to keep the trophy but it was worth the trouble just to bring the big boy down. It's also possible to run over animals with your vehicle, but watch the terrain when you're driving because it's very easy to tip over your ATV, which ironically stands for "All-Terrain Vehicle." Unless the area you're traversing is relatively flat, it's better to just hoof it. Besides, though the areas are big enough to make for interesting hunts, they can be traversed in just a few minutes.
Speaking of the hunting areas, in addition to a large variety of animals to hunt, there are also a number of habitats to explore. There are forested areas, tundra, grasslands, marshes, deserts and mountains. One of the impressive aspects of this game is the uniqueness of each area; no two areas look alike even though they belong to the same class. Even a more mainstream game, "Jaws Unleashed," fails in that aspect because the enitre free-roam area appears the same no matter where you are. Also, the landforms in "Big Game Hunter" are varied enough within each area that you're never bored looking at the scenery. It all looks great, and some scenes you come across are just downright gorgeous.
The only visual faux-pas I found with this game was the animal tracks. In the forest especially, many times they were invisible and difficult to follow. Fortunately your hunter has such a gifted eye for tracking that he can hone in on the nearest track with a simple push of the Y button, and his range increases as he gains more tracking experience. Still, being able to visually see the tracks instead of having to stop to analyze each one would make the experience more fluid and genuine. This isn't such a problem with other areas such as the tundra, though. Another problem with the game is that some of the secondary objectives you are tasked with are repeated in later areas. One example of this is hunting a deer that another hunter had already wounded. This might not seem like a difficult task, but looking for one specific animal is tougher than hunting for any one of a species, and you have to do this twice. The second time is in an area also inhabited by moose, who have an annoying tendency to trample over the deer tracks and make the tracking issue stand out much more prominently. The area is also covered by dense foliage, increasing the likelihood that the deer will spot you before you see it and run away so that you have to go through the tedious process of following its questionable trail right back from square one. Another such repeated objective involves exterminating three wolves from a private owner's land, then doing the exact same thing in a wilderness area populated by roving grizzly bears. The increased difficulty of the second instance of each situation merely amplifies its tedium rather than presenting a new, welcome challenge to the hunter and displays an unfortunate lack of creativity on the part of the developers.
As far as the normal hunting aspect of the game is concerned, however, following different animals around the outdoors might seem like it would become boring, and for some gamers, it might. For me, though, I found I had to vary my strategy of hunting depending on which species I was after. Deer, for example, must be approached stealthity or they will quickly dart out of range, whereas bears can be pursued more aggressively as they move more slowly and might oblige you by coming after you instead. With swifter predators like wolves you must find a happy medium between moving quickly and moving quietly, because it's more difficult to predict how the local fauna will react to your presence. Will they run, or will they attack? It's questions like these that keep the gameplay interesting, and the long tracking process that makes it more exciting when you finally have your quarry in your gunsight. If "Big Game Hunter: 2005 Adventures" can appeal to an avid indoorsman like me, then it's definitely worth a trek through the wilderness.