NobleGamer theHunter: Call of the Wild Review

I can recommend theHunter on sale for anyone with a mentality who can appreciate simulated & patience aspects while being accessible enough that gameplay is fun and not tedious. What I mean by hunter mentality is that the player must be willing to be patient in movement and take steps necessary to not attract attention, but I'm not talking hours of patience - More like be willing to take 10-20 minutes finding or tracking animals before shooting them, sometimes it's shorter and sometimes longer. Do not expect to run or shoot something every 5 minutes and spend 1 minute getting their body. Here is what you need to know: -If you play the game for more than a few hours total: Add the game to your Defender or antivirus software, backup save files occasionally, and disable cloud saves if you have issues with save data. I moved which drive the game was on, and then I started having save game issues and the cloud save for this game had an error for updating. +Grand scale open worlds from the studio that brought us the Just Cause franchise. Detailed where it counts, and dynamic distance rendering is great with hardly any pop-in. My first ~10 hours were with a part explore and part hunting focus, and game stats say I had seen only 10% of the first/default region. +Game is polished as I have encountered very few bugs, and only one impacted gameplay where I could not access game inventory until I restarted the game. 2 times in 10 hours my character has slided horizontally several meters even though I was not on an incline. +Tracking animals is not really difficult, though requires patience, but gets easier when unlocking more skills and finding animal needs areas (rest/feeding). Mobile or big map will show tracking spots for your current animal too. +Shooting is realistic, breath can be held to steady shots, and faster heart rate from running or golding breath too long causes unsteady aim. Reloading/resetting between shots is a thing. Don't expect quick follow up shots with most weapons. ?Plenty of ways to try to attract animals with calls or scents, but using the scent hiding spray may be more important. I just wish the names of the animals for each equipment item were highlighted different colors based on whether the animal existed in the current quarry/region. Region descriptions tend to list all animals. ?There's player XP, gear type points (rifles, shotguns, scents, etc) earned by using gear well and is needed to unlock other gear. Most seem to require a ton of gear points. On top of that, many unlocks also require significant money. However, what is free is decent for low and mid level folk. ?General XP progression system is decent. Each level up alternates between granting one skill or perk point. Skills focus on character abilities while perks focus on weapon usage. +The most significant DLC is focused on new locations, while only some are specific to new animal types or equipment. So far all things seem balanced with each other. +Trophy system is decent, but would be nice to know how trophy scores correlate to XP/money/gear points. +Crouch plus "run" button is a nice partially concealed fast crawl that is a personal favorite of mine when I know I'm near an unstartled walking animal, but doing fast crawl through thickest brush or really rocky terrain can yield 1 red noise level which is as noisy as running. +Night hunting takes getting used to but its satisfyingly done well. You are less visible to animals, as evidenced by me getting close enough to kill a moose with a shotgun (may not have been hunting etiquette) and two deer. +Headlamp light cannot be seen by animals and has no effect on them, which is important because track highlights can only be clearly seen using headlamp or night vision. Physical tracks & such can still be seen and still be selected without lamp or nightvision - Its just way harder. -No confirmation popup for building a hunting blind, so be careful when approaching them to check cost, as I accidentally bought 1-2. +Graphical performance is decent for my hardware: 1440p Ultra averages 100+ FPS on 5600X with RTX 3080. That likely makes 4K/60 viable. -(DLC) animal class symbols do not clearly include birds/ducks, though hunters may just know they're the same class (#1) as rabbits.