Buying Consideration Questions

[Tigre feroz 2012]

Hello. I’m seriously considering buying The Hunter Call of the Wild (COTW) & had some questions. TIA for your help. I’m primarily interested in the game as a nature walking simulator, where I can be in nature & observe wildlife. The hunting is only a secondary interest that I likely won’t get into until much later & perhaps not much at all.

Does COTW work well as an observe wildlife, nature walking simulator? What do you like the most & least about the game? Does the game have a good frame rate? Does the game have good, smooth gameplay? Does the game have intuitive controls? Can you rebind controls?

What’s the state of multiplayer? Is the game hard? Does the game have a FOV slider? Autorun? Fast travel? Does the game have basic features like being able to save, pause, & take pictures? Can you change the view to third-person? Can you adjust the settings such as the difficulty, graphics, or audio?

Is the game fun & interesting or does the game quickly become repetitive? Would you still buy COTW today considering your experiences thus far with the game? What DLC would you recommend if I’m mainly interested in a nature walking simulator? What DLC is good if I decide to get into hunting? All relevant & respectful answers are appreciated, thanks.

[Geronimo]

For the most part, you're still going to run into issues where as you hike you're going to spook more animals than you will see. So your approach will have to be considered.

It is regularly possible to happen upon unexpecting animals, especially around drinking and feeding areas. And if you remain undetected you can really appreciate the opportunity.

Remember though, that once you begin hunting in an area, it will become increasingly difficult to happen upon unwary animals.

The scenery is beyond amazing, and you will be able to use outposts for fast travel across the map.

For scenery, the main reserves that come with the base game are really all you need.

And for hunting it depends on what animals you want to hunt. But if you do any bird hunting than you want Revontuli, without question. Don't buy either of the waterfowl DLCs, you won't need them.

[Mooncatt]

hello, well thats quite a lot of questions!!
ill try and answer each one as best i can.
in COTW you can literally walk for miles on end! so yes if u like walking through forests, cornfields and other niceties then its great.
as for observing wildlife then yes, you can also do that if your that way inclined. however thats where your gonna come undone, to get to within a reasonable range of anything that could be considered a high ranking animal you need perks and skills which you only really get via hunting and levelling up. so to answer your question, yes you can take pics.

your next question i can answer is "smooth gameplay" i need you define what that means exactly. are we talking FPS? Then that entirely depends on your PC specs. perhaps if u list them i can help more.

your next question is about multiplayer, im prolly not the best person to answer that, the last time i played with a mate the game worked well!!

is the game hard? its as hard as you wish to make it!! you can turn off animal track highlights and that does indeed make it hard, personally ive found that having track highlights turned on is too easy and having them off is near impossible. the devs did a good job with the foliage etc to make tracks very hard to see.
you also cant expect to charge around the forest at full sprint and not expect animals to hear you coming from a long way away. my game is thus.....walk casual and youll eventually hear a call or even a warning call from an animal, thats the time to stealth up and take it slow. this game is meant to be a hunting simulator, it requires patience!

graphics and audio. both can be adjusted to suit your needs. and no, its first person only, there is no 3rd person view as its a simulator.

for your last paragraph......
if you are new to hunting id say the game will be patience testing, but once you get the hang of it it is fun. you cant shoot a deer in any old place on its body, you have to go for the vital organs, I,E lung shots ETC. would i buy COTW again knowing what i know now? absolutely!! there are people on this forum with thousands of hours logged. me? well i have a lot of responsibilities so im not at a thousand hrs yet. but been playing since it came out.

As for DLC then thats something i cant really advise on. what i will say (just my personal opinion) is that all the DLC new hunting reserves are just reskinned animals, IMO theres no difference in behavior, well not that i can tell anyway. maybe someone will tell me different.

conclussion....
can this game be used as a walking sim.....i guess so, you have the options to use binos and a camera

can this game be used as a waling sim from the outset....no, theres a few things u gotta do before the reserve is yours to roam. i,e you have to gain a certain amount of XP to unlock callers to attract different species.

graphics...... depends on your setup, does it look good? yes it looks nice but this has been out for a number of years and imo its beginning to show its age.

hope all this helps. feel free to PM me if u need further help

[James]

- Does COTW work well as an observe wildlife, nature walking simulator? YES
- What do you like the most & least about the game? MOST: The environment, LEAST: the icons popping up in your face telling you to interact via keypress and the flashing save game icon in the lower left corner.
- Does the game have a good frame rate? YES
- Does the game have good, smooth gameplay? YES (It's the Avalanche Engine!)
- Does the game have intuitive controls? YES
- Can you rebind controls? YES

- What’s the state of multiplayer? Works fine
- Is the game hard? YES and NO, depends on how you play the game. Can be hard to hunt foxes at night with a bow using no visual clues.
- Does the game have a FOV slider? YES, you can set it by number.
- Autorun? YES
- Fast travel? YES, once you unlock locations or use tents
- Does the game have basic features like being able to save, pause, & take pictures? YES, NO, YES. The game is saved continuously. There is no pause, except when you actually quit the game. There is a camera to use for those marvelous scenerys.
- Can you change the view to third-person? NO
- Can you adjust the settings such as the difficulty, graphics, or audio? NO, YES, YES. There is no difficulty slider, instead you choose difficulty by using more or less visual clues (HUD). Many graphics options and some audio volume options.

- Is the game fun & interesting or does the game quickly become repetitive? YES, its fun. Does not get repetitive for me. Every trip you make turns into a story.
- Would you still buy COTW today considering your experiences thus far with the game? YES
- What DLC would you recommend if I’m mainly interested in a nature walking simulator? All maps and a tent.
- What DLC is good if I decide to get into hunting? Bows, but it depends on your preferred choice of weapons (shotguns or rifles?)

A large part of the maps missions does not involve hunting. Could be "photograph" missions, finding "this" or "that" missions, discover landmarks etc. So, that might suit you.

If you compare COTW with WOTH (which many will do), consider:
- COTW has 12 large regions (2 in basegame, 10 as DLCs), WOTH has 2 (large) maps
- COTW has 80+ animal species, WOTH has 13.
- COTW runs in Avalanche graphics engine, WOTH runs in generic UE4.
- COTW has advanced skybox /dynamic weather), WOTH runs a simplified skybox
- COTW has tents, WOTH does not.
- COTW has dogs (companion), WOTH has not...
- COTW has shorter rendering distance than WOTH

[LordBamburgh]

Buy The Way of the Hunter instead. By orders of magnitude a far better and more beautiful game.

I loved COTW played it for years. And proud of my 185 diamonds. But it's been dumbed down into a game which is little more than 'run and gun' now, although I appreciate you can play it more authentically. It's just you don't have to.

Place tents & tripods and hop from place to place diluted the sense of hunting. I have sense back now, on a newer, fresher game - not without flaws but so, so immersive.

The latest COTW map sealed the game's fate - a bird and money farm awash with diamonds to the extent their value is diminished.

The day COTW dumped the 'quick kill' was the day it became more arcade than sim and it took a new game to show me this despite that change being years ago.

Loved COTW but the hunting genre has moved on...

[Woodyplank]

As for scenery, it's really good. In the base game, while you are moving along the trails or country side, you'll see not only a variety of tree types but also a variety in how those trees are shaped. Same with secondary growth like bushes and shrubs. Meadows and wetlands aplenty exist. The base games two reserves have a combined total of 16 species of wildlife, each with their respecitve species' sensory and behavioral abilities and attributes. Younger animals tend to be more approachable than older, mature beasts. The base game reserves do not have truely dangerous animals (although the wild hogs, bears or bison might take exception to your presence should you crowd them), It's a challenge to sneak up within 40 meters of most animals but wise use of the wind, a caller and blind can sometimes get them to come in up close and personal (within a few meters).

[Benchwarmer]

My review for the game back in 2017 when there wasn't even atv's.

"Beautiful walking simulator with some guns and animals."

I always enjoyed just exploring new areas by walking and running but I also liked the hunting part.

[astreamuser]

Just hiking works well for the most part, but hiking & observing is a mixed bag.

The only wildlife you'll find is the hunted animals. Taking a glimpse at them without spooking is often impossible if there's lots of low vegetation. For example Mississippi is flat and probably not suitable at all, not even for just hiking. So in some reserves observing is a lot harder.

LOD distance is an issue. In some reserves observing with binoculars is often very unappetizing. I usually don't do it unless i'm hunting.

Animals despawn after a certain distance, i believe this depends on the species.

Ambient sounds are also an issue. They are not very well balanced. You'll definitely notice this if you are using speakers. On the other hand, guns and your footsteps are usually louder than anything else. You cannot adjust those sounds individually. There's only one slider for everything. Music and dialog have their own sliders.

Some reserves are more suited for hiking. The first reserve of the game, Hirschfelden, is a piece of art. That's the reserve shown in the trailer video on the store page. Layton lakes, Revontuli, Medved, Silver Ridge Peaks, Te Awaroa, Yukon are also good. The rest of the reserves are more "dry" meaning you'll may need to do some hunting too if you want to keep your interest.

That said, exploring all 12 reserves on foot takes a very long time, easily 100s of hours. When you are done you'll most likely want to explore them again. Keep in mind that you are going to enjoy it a lot more if you combine hiking and hunting.

You can check out every reserve in multiplayer even if you don't own it. But is only safe to play with friends and without mods. Why? If you play with someone who is using mods you risk injecting all sorts of bugs in your profile. Avoid such situations like the plague.

[James]

If you want, I can host a closed MP so you can check out the starting point of all of the maps...