26 out of 26 people found this review helpful.
Yay, they saved the series!
Date of Review: Aug 1, 2006
The Bottom Line: Fans of hunting will have a blast and people who don't hunt are likely to have fun too.
Cabela's Dangerous Hunts is as the title suggests, a hunting video game in which you have to go through different areas trying to find different animals to hunt. The previous games haven't really been very good at all and could have really only appealed to those who are big fans of hunting. The previous games were pretty dry and repetetive, but this game has more taste to it with the addition of a story mode that has an actual story where people talk to you.
Gameplay
The game starts out with you being in the middle of the forest in a little house when a man comes and knocks on your door and tells you that some people are in danger and he wants to go hunting with you. You then try to go to find your friend Bullseye Bill who has gone missing.eah, you can't really do much with a story that revolves around hunting. The story may not be very good at all, it really makes the gameplay feel a lot better.
The main gameplay is always pretty much the same, you just go through the levels trying to kill the animal that you are assigned to. The trail feels a lot more clear than the older games in the series and instead of just aimless wandering you pretty much know where you are going due to a compass that has objectives on it and not as many bends and forks in the trails.
There are a lot of different settings for the controls and configurations with game speed and scroll speed making the game probably having some type of control scheme that will work for you. Like a lot of the games on the PSP, this game has auto aim, but you can turn it off.
The gameplay is quite intense because they have really fixed the problems with the older games in the series. There is a great deal of stealth with this game because when you find your animal you can crouch and then get behind them and hit them with the back of your gun or just shoot them. On the same token animals will do the same thing to you and sneak up on you and attack you from behind. In this game they added a slow motion camera to it which reall helps when you are in a sticky situation and it works great.
There are twenty-seven different animals that you are required to hunt in this game which is actually quite a pretty big variety and you will be surprised to see some of the cool animals such as mountain lions and giant bears.
There are 12 missions in the story mode of the game and a lot of the missions are pretty short making this game quite short, but added fun can be had in the quick action mode which basically is the feel of the other games where you are just thrown into a random map and you have to shoot a certain animal.
So all in all, this series isn't just for fans of hunting anymore. Me, a person who has never held a real gun in his life, has had a lot of fun with this game and it feels just like a normal first person shooter with a story only there are animals instead of other things to shoot.
Graphics
The graphics in the game are really good in the cutscenes but when the game switches to the main gameplay the graphics get a lot more bland. The animals look really good and so do the people, but some of the landscapes look pretty choppy and pixelated, but you don't really notice them being all that bad during the game.
The framerate is always smooth and I haven't noticed any slowdown whatsoever.
Sound
The voiceovers are done quite well but sometimes the actors can sound a little bit overzealous but they sound great through the psp speakers. You will hear many bird noises and different sounds of animals and they generally always sound good. Every move you make will make a noise, which can get a little irritating, but they usually don't get unbearably annoying. Overall the sound is great.
