Fun Online Deer Hunting
Deer Hunting games are easy to come by. Deer Hunting games that go online are not. That's pretty much the reason I even checked this game out. To my surprise, there's a ton of gamers still playing this game online, thanks to GameSpy and their endless list of PC servers.
The graphics in this game aren't that terrible, however, they use nothing more than basic textures, lighting, and physics. The animations are pretty funny, but I can't really tell if that's intentional. The character models are hilarious, one of them looks like a complete redneck, complete with a lack of chin. The way the characters move will often make you laugh. The animals are pretty decently detailed. You can at least tell where you shot a deer or turkey. The one really neat feature is the bullet-time (ie: Matrix) effect when you get a good kill shot on an animal. Cracking open a skull of a deer with a single rifle bullet is worthy of sitting back to pop you open a cold one. One of the best things is laying deer food, which is textured to look like a human just pooped on the green textures. I think the game would have been a little better if they'd put some grass to hid in or put some more trees. If anything, the worst thing about the graphics is the lack of line of sight. Think Turok with contacts. There's still a nice surrounding of fog.
The sounds are horrible, at least in the menu. The looped country guitars get very old fast, but do make you crack a smile the first time you hear it. The gun sounds are decent, mainly the shotgun. Nothing says hunting like a double barrel blasting in the air, and hearing birds scatter. The mixture of some of the sounds don't match well with the animations. Most recognized is the antlers. Knocking them together sounds alright, but it never matches with what the player sees.
Probably the worst part of the game is the mechanics. Deer are everywhere so it's not like you really need to wait around. Just spawn somewhere, run around like crazy, and you'll run into something. Does, usually, but still, they make for great target practice. It really ruins the fill. The game has a lot of hunting features such as pee spray and other hunting things, but they're useless since there's just deer spawning like rabbits in this game. One cool thing is the RPG elements in the game. You don't get stats every rank, but you do get to spec your guy with his own gear and his own skills such as tracking or strength.
However, with some of the goofyness of the game, the game really holds it's own just because it features multiplayer. There's a lot better hunting games out there, and a lot of games that features better graphics, better animations, better sounds, and tons more animals and realism. Nothing will last as long as Deer Hunter 2005 though since this is the game that at least features multiplayer so you can hunt with friends or see how many servers ban you from shooting your fellow hunters.