Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2013 Demo

Hunting is pretty dangerous on its own, regardless of whether you are after a deer, a lion, or a grizzly bear. However, hunting predators is always risky, since you can find yourself being the stalked one instead and you may end up the prey's meal in the end. Guns can be pretty powerful, but they are only as useful as you are fast and precise.

In case you were on the lookout for a good hunting game to keep you company while you are unable to go yourself, you should know that Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2013 is no such thing, despite the pompous title. Instead, this appears to be a generic first-person shooter with scripted events sprinkled every other twenty feet and a downright painful linearity when it comes to level design.

To begin with, the game provides you with a so-called ‘story mode’, in which you play through some missions while some kind of plot goes on in the background. It is very difficult to pinpoint the actual plot or purpose of the campaign mode, but everything about it is rushed and severely unpolished. Even the voice acting is terrible, despite the fact that there are only a handful of spoken lines.

This is not to say that the game would be fun without the scripts, just that it is unbearable with them. For example, you might stumble into a section in which a pack of lions jumps of a cliff and attacks you as you go down the road and reach a certain point. Such a small script would not be too disturbing, even if it certainly hurts the experience, but in Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2013, the same script repeats itself ad infinitum if you go back 10 feet and pass through the same spot again. Hence, when the lions attack, you’d better sprint forward, or you will spend quite a while in the same spot, wasting ammunition.

The linearity is truly disturbing, especially when you think about all the other hunting sims out there that offer an open map and plenty of freedom. Even if the game’s purpose was to be a rail-shooter, it could have at least been a good one, since the mechanics are rubbish and there is no fun in aimlessly shooting at badly animated animals all day long.

All things considered, there are very few reasons to give Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2013 a try, even if you are a big hunting fan. You don’t get to stalk your prey, there is no open map, the animations are sloppy and the gameplay is too arcade and full of quick-time events. Moreover, the scripts make the entire thing unplayable most of the time, whether because they are incredibly boring and predictable, or because they actually break the game.