Cabela's Deer Hunt 2005 Season

Personally, I’m not much of one for deer hunting. It’s not that I find it cruel or have a problem with it, it’s just that the only time I have ever gone out and done it I sat in a tree stand for six hours, didn’t even see so much as a squirrel, and got a bad case of the cold. Anyways, that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy a good hunting video game now and then, like Dangerous Hunts or Deer Hunter, so I was happy to give the new Deer Hunt 2005 Season a run for the Xbox.

The 2005 season opens up with the opportunity for the player to do a few different things, depending on what you feel like doing at the time that you flip the game on. You can choose to play a single hunt, you can do a career hunt too, which takes you through multiple different seasons and areas, or you can do a challenge … which has you doing a variety of tasks like killing a deer in one shot or getting one from a tree stand within 50 yards to unlock new hunting equipment or weapons to use in any of the above three named gameplay options. Once you have started going through the game, you will also open up contests, which are shooting matches to earn some extra cash to help you buy bigger and better hunting equipment. 

Now, even the inexperienced real life hunter (like myself) knows that when you head out for a long day out in the woods, it’s important to make sure that you have everything you need to be successful. Prior to heading out, you can pick from a number of things like doe urine or scent cover, decoys, calls, clothing, weapons (bow, shotgun, pistol, or rifle), and you can even purchase things like rations, water, and scopes to help your targeting. The game has three different difficulties, or you can customize your difficulty rating too, by making animals a little less wary of where you are or having the advantage of “trophy beacons”, red spots on the screen to let you know exactly where a deer is to help you hunt them down.

The game itself takes a lot of real life things into consideration to try and make this as realistic as possible. You will be able to see which direction the wind is blowing to help stay downwind so you won’t be smelled. There is also a meter at the top of the screen to let you know how much noise you are making which is obviously helpful so you don’t startle anything while trying to sneak up on it. In addition, you also have three bars at the bottom of the screen to help you gauge where you are in the areas of hydration, nutrition, and condition to help you know when it’s time to grab a drink or use a first aid kit, so all of these put together obviously give you a little more to be conscience of than just aiming and shooting when you see something with antlers.

One thing that I thought was particularly neat about this game is the fact that you can use a bullet camera to track and see where your shots wound up. I know that’s nothing new for hunting games, but for someone like me who doesn’t play them much it is a nice thing to have in there so you can see whether or not you are aiming right. On top of that, it also helps you to see how everything is lined up as far as sighting, which can be handy if you need to make a trip to the shooting range to sight your rifle or what not to try and receive top accuracy.

One thing that I found to be not so good though, but honestly keeping with the whole realism thing, is the fact that you can only carry five items out into the field with you at one time. While this may not seem or sound too bad, the thing is that you will often find yourself leaving something behind that you may need later on. For example, in order for me to bring a deer call, urine, scent cover, a tree stand, and a spotter tool out into the field, I had to leave all rations, my map, and my first aid stuff behind. Fortunately I didn’t run into any major problems along the way, but it did put a little bit of a hindrance on the game for me personally.

Secondly, having a good tutorial or something on how to actually hunt would have been a nice thing. While you can track deer and such, not being the professional hunter that I make myself out to be in the game kept me from really getting into where the real fun of the game is, which is in the higher difficulty versus just following trophy beacons around. When you bump up the difficulty, you actually have to track animals, use tools and equipment, and of course wait. I obviously am not doing it right still though, since I sat in a tree stand for an hour and a half using antlers, dumping enough doe urine out to possibly make a new stream, and putting out enough food to feed every deer in North America … still to see no deer anywhere. Well, back to the beacons again.

Overall, Deer Hunt 2005 Season is a fun game if you enjoy hunting or hunting titles, but it probably won’t have enough to bring the casual player into it and keep them hooked for the long run … like myself. If you enjoy hunting or previous Deer Hunt titles, then you should be pretty safe picking up the 2005 season. Anyone else may want to rent it first if you are considering picking it up.

Gameplay: 8.0
There are a lot of different options to choose from when you play Deer Hunt, so there is plenty to do from single games to career hunts to challenges to unlock new items. They also did a good job in giving players a selectable difficulty, but playing at a higher level may get frustrating for people that don’t know everything there is to know about hunting.  

Graphics: 8.1 
The areas and environments were put together nicely, and they were detailed from grass and shrubbery gently blowing in the wind to footsteps left in the snow by your character as he moves around the forest. There were also some nice lighting effects done, like shadows on the ground or coming through the trees, and the animals and wildlife were animated well.

Sound: 7.5
The environments sounded really good overall, with birds and other forest creatures, but the music was super generic sounding and didn’t do much more than just give some background noise during option screens. There is a voice in the game too, which is a southern style guy who will praise you when you do something god and scold you for doing something bad (like shooting a deer that you don’t have a tag for).

Difficulty: Medium
Overall I would have to go with medium since you can adjust things to make it a little easier or more challenging. If you plan to play on a higher level of difficulty though, you may want to study up on techniques prior to trying it out.  

Concept: 7.9 
I thought that they did a good job in bringing real life hunting onto the Xbox, but I also think it would have been nice to include some additional optional lesson kinds of stages too to help people new to hunting learn techniques and such that experts use to help them progress a little smoother. 

Multiplayer: N/A
There is no multiplayer, but you can post your high scores on the internet for all of the other Deer Hunters out there to see and compete with.  

Overall: 7.8
Overall, Deer Hunt 2005 is a fun game that provides a cool looking alternative to going out and doing the real thing. For you experienced hunters or folks who do enjoy getting out there and doing it for real, this should be a good buy for you. If you haven’t hunted or don’t really get into it but do enjoy playing it now and then in game format, I would suggest renting it prior to spending the cash on it for a purchase.