Combined with eerie atmospheres and intense battles, Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2011 served up an experience that is one of a kind on the Xbox 360. Sadly, marred by finicky controls, overly difficult boss battles, and lack of longevity, Dangerous Hunts 2011 is a title that could’ve been greater than the pieces it took to assemble it.
The tired and tedious storyline has players in the role of a character who doesn’t receive much love from his father. On an expedition to hunt down big game for his brother’s 18th birthday, things go awry. Along the way, a mountain lion attacks, the father ridicules the main character for saving his life and then the players are thrust into a hunt to find the wounded critter. This side adventure propels the player into discovering that the creatures of the woods are becoming possessed and after an uncomfortable boss battle, the players advance 10 years in the storyline. After the tragic event from the first chapter, players meet up with demeaning father again for an African adventure that has similar cues of animals behaving in strange ways.
What plagues Cabela’s from ever escalating from a light affair to an exciting rollercoaster ride is the lack of powerful weapons. Armed with a shotgun that offers two shots before reloading, a rifle with only three shots, a hand pistol with six but lacks any sort of firepower and a few others, the assortment of weapons is lackluster. Progressing through the story, the difficulty continues to rise as waves of wolves, mountain lions, African lions, etc are sent hurdling towards the player. Having said that, the team behind Cabela’s should’ve known better than to equip the player with such weak weapons.
The difficulties playing through the storyline due to the abysmal weapon selection, along with the control issues that ranged from the sensor not picking up gun movement or having to walk around the environment with the thumbstick on the side of the Top Shot Elite Gun controller, it’s safe to say that I was glad to be done with the single-player campaign when it came to its conclusion. The writing, plot devices and character growth are all shallow, but that was to be expected.
Thankfully, for the sake of the gamer, there’s another game mode included to attract attention in the form of Shooting Galleries. The galleries come in three forms: Survival, Classic and Trek. Each of them employs power-ups, multipliers and countless enemies to blast through on-rails. Compared to the single-player, the galleries were much more satisfactory since there was no concentration on the actual movement of the player; instead, it let players focus on shooting the wild beasts. Competing for high scores with a friend, galleries are the only multiplayer option for Dangerous Hunts 2011 and if you happen to have two Top Shot Elite Gun controllers, it works rather well.
Achievement hunters will want to look elsewhere for their bumping up their scores. Dangerous Hunts 2011 is a powerhouse when it comes to requiring players to accomplish difficult tasks to earn their points. Frustrating requirements include: never dying throughout all the boss battle, surviving seven minutes in a Survival Gallery mode, shooting seven birds with one shotgun shot, and the like. Taking into consideration the high difficulty through the storyline, Dangerous Hunts 2011 is a pain in the ass more often than not and that’s not even mulling over the fights I had with the game in regards to not recognizing my shots.
Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2011 is by no means a terrible game. It’s an average one that stands out for its use of a gun peripheral that, by large, is the best aspect of buying the $70 bundle.
[Reviewed on Xbox 360]
