Open Season is questionable at best.
As the game begins, Boog, who lives in the garage of a human and essentially just enjoys the easy life, meets up with Elliot. Elliot is a weak little deer who’s been captured by a cruel local hunter, which serves as the main villain, although he rarely is in the picture. Through an unfortunate series of events, Boog and Elliot end up in the wild during a newly opened hunting season. Naturally, Boog wants to find his way home, and quick. The game essentially takes the events of the film and expands the time lapse to squeeze in lots of tasks for Boog and Elliot to tackle.
Unfortunately, none of those events are particularly exciting, whether in the mechanics of the gameplay or in the way they’re presented. You’ll usually play as Boog, whose arsenal of moves more or less consists of picking up and throwing items or using a roar technique to scare away the hunters peppered around in the environments. Since many of the early environments are almost completely devoid of enemies, you’ll mostly be picking up items and ferrying them elsewhere. Fun.
Even when the hunters do factor more prominently into the picture, you dispose of them via a laughably easy system of throwing up camouflage until you get close, then roaring to scare them off. You’ll need to exhibit some timing as you sneak up on them, but pronounced musical cues and overly forgiving compensation really suck out the fun. When you occasionally play as Elliot, you’ll switch from sneaking up behind hunters to luring them into traps, which is even easier. Evidently the hunters can’t see the fireplaces and bear traps not two feet in front of them.
The sole interesting aspect of Open Season the film is the camaraderie between all the different species of woodland creatures who band together against the human hunters. This is exhibited somewhat in this game, insofar as you’ll need to do the same menial tasks you always do, but under the pretense of a favor. For example, the skunks will ask you to pick up their wandering children and bring them back to them early on. After completing these favors, you’ll befriend that species, which essentially means that you’ll be able to use them to make slipping past enemies easier. Skunks can spray hunters to make them easier to scare, rabbits can be shot like projectiles, and so on. However, since you’re mostly just going to be picking up and throwing the animals in the same, manner this doesn’t add much. To worsen matters, the racial stereotyping of the animals (the skunks with their snooty French accents, squirrels with an inexplicably Irish accent) provides a lowbrow feel to a lot of their supposedly humorous interactions.
The only thing that saves Open Season from total damnation is the occasional minigame you stumble across in the adventure. Every so often, Boog and Elliot will be confronted with a unique challenge that breaks up the monotony of the core gameplay. These challenges run the gamut from things like races to first-person sniping sequences where you’ll need to use improvised woodland weaponry to take down hunters. None of these games are particularly deep or exciting; most just require the left analog stick and a button press or two. These deviations from the core sneaking and item-ferrying are much appreciated, though, and make Open Season a better game overall.
Unfortunately, there’s not much in the way of presentation that’s going to make you forget the faults in the gameplay. On the Xbox 360, Open Season supports wide screen, high-definition displays which make it look cleaner but not necessarily that much better than the other versions. The characters and environments look more or less as they should (based on the film), but they lack polish. Environmental details like tall grass come off looking rather ugly. The sound is slightly better than the visuals, but have their share of counterpoints. For the most part, the sounds of nature ring throughout the environments, but it can often come across sounding canned. The music captures the goofy nature of children’s entertainment admirably, but repeats too much. Overall, it’s acceptable yet unremarkable, especially in regards to the voice acting, which uses dry, unamused soundalikes that stumble over the script.
When it’s all said and done, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking more than four or five hours to finish this one, since the levels are very linear and lack optional activities. The Xbox 360 version’s achievement points come mostly from collecting the badge trinkets throughout the levels. Since these are always “hidden” in conspicuous places like on top of rocks, it’s likely you’ll finish this game with most (if not all) 1000 points in hand. Even if you’re completely hooked on achievements or are a fanatical fan of the film, Open Season is a questionable rent at best.