Octopus Overlords

I picked this up in the steam sale. I have had my eye on it for quite a while and I can't even say for sure why. I am not a hunter. I went rabbit hunting with my dad once 30 years ago and never even spotted anything, much less took a shot. I've shot many weapons as a kid growing up in the country and as an Army Reservist. I don't really care about hunting, but for some reason this game has my attention. I bought this game on 12/28, so 5 days ago? Steam says I have played it for 49.4 hours. yes, I have been on vacation and my wife has been at work much of that time, but that's a buttload of play time for a game that consists of walking around shooting at things.

The game feels a lot like PUBG did for me initially. Tracking down enemies and well.. OK, not a lot like PUBG. The "enemies" rarely return fire, though I have been trampled by more than a few moose and blacktail deer. The game comes with two VERY large maps and gthere is DLC for three more maps with different species to hunt. That nearly 50 hours has all been spent on the very first map. There are a LOT of quests to complete which start out just showing you the ropes and later encouraging you to try different tactics and weapons. You start with a small rifle that's really only good for deer, but you unlock more options as you go. You have two bars to cross to unlock a weapon. They each have a money cost, but most of them also have a minimum skill as well. When you get a kill that kill is rating in 4 categories, trophy rating (size), Quick Kill (how fast did it go down), integrity (did you use the right gun) and consecutive harvests (have you left any previous kills to rot).

About that last point, tracking doesn't end when you find the animal. After you shoot them, if they don't drop instantly, you have to track the body down or it was all for nothing. If you hit them with a vital hit (heart, double lung, spine, brain), they will either drop there or fairly close by. Then there is the non-vital or flesh wound. They may not even die... but if they do die and you don't harvest them, then you've lost your consecutive harvest bonus, lowering the value of your next 5 kills. That value, along with the other 3 things mentioned above, determines how much money and xp you get as well as the trophy (nothing, bronze, silver, gold and diamond). I think the trophies are just for achievements, though I think the last DLC has a trophy lodge where you can put your diamonds on display.

The animals in the first map are blacktail and whitetail deer, roosevelt elk, black bear, moose, coyote, whitetail rabbit and one or two species of waterfowl. Maybe just Mallards, but I am not sure. They all behave differently and males and females of each species also behave differently. Cross that with the rifles, shotguns, handguns and bows and you have a lot of ways to hunt a lot of different things.

There is also an Ubisoft The Game factor, with watch towers and hunting lodges, which are your fast travel points. You also find POIs that give you XP and a little history or whatever as well as hunting stands and ground blinds that you can build at fixed locations for a small amount of money.

The graphics are pretty nice by my standards and the game is pretty zen. You spend a lot of time creeping around the world looking for you next target.... and I don't know if the quests are endless, but there sure are a lot on that first map. I have done at least 30 of them and still have a bunch left on my mission log. I have one quest that will take a while as I need to use a scoped .44 magnum and I am not really using handguns for much so getting the score to buy either a handgun scope or the .44 will take a while. I shoot the occasional duck or rabbit with it when the opportunity presents itself but with 0% integrity on those kills (apparently a .357 is not the weapon to use for small game - there's no .22 pistol, or at least I don't think so) the skills points are small.

There is also multiplayer. I don't know how it works, but I guess like the real world you can probably hunt together and maybe one player can flush game for the other. It's $13 in the steam sale though I went for the 2019 edition with is $37 and includes several of the DLC. If you buy it,m I would strongly suggest at least getting the ATV DLC (which is $3.19 in the sale). The world is big and exploring it completely on foot will be a LONG haul.

Anyway, back to the game!

One thing I forgot to note. There are multiple skill trees to put skill and perk points into. Skill points increase the hunter skills for various things and are split between Stalker and Ambusher. There is a Perk point tree for every weapon type (rifle, shotgun, handgun, bow) though many of the skills you can pick up affect all weapon types.

I checked out the other map that is included int he base game. It is set in Germany. I haven't explored the whole thing, but it is pretty similar, though some of the areas are more developed. There is a wind farm and corn fields and there are even some paved paths. Obviously the animals are different though it still starts you out with two different kinds of deer (Roe and Fallow).

I appreciate your impressions but the comments on STEAM suggest it's a bit buggy. I don't see that in your AAR, have you had any issues? I'm a little intrigued.

I haven't seen much in the way of bugs, or at least nothing too frustrating. There are missions where you need to take photos, sometimes of pretty hard creatures to get close to, and sometimes it doesn't give you credit for the photo leading to some repetition on those missions. I had issues with two photo missions. (btw, I was off in my mission estimate in my original post, I have completed over 80 missions now)

Other than the photo thing, every once in a while tracks don't show up in a timely manner leading to frustration tracking down a kill. It's just annoying for a couple minutes.

The last one and for some people the worst one, sometimes a spot on spine shot doesn't actually hit, like the hit box just wasn't there. I generally don't go for spine shots anyway. I'd like to say it's because they aren't really ethical, but in reality, you have to be pretty damn accurate there. I generally go for the heart shot if possible, but take lungs if I can't get the head on shot.

I kind of like the idea of the game, not so much as a hunting simulator but as a walking around and exploring simulator. I've never been hunting; I don't think I could actually do it unless it was truly life or death for me (or someone else) to survive. This seems like it could be quasi relaxing to just tool around in a giant nature sandbox thingy, spotting, tracking and stalking animals.

I played this ALL weekend. It's "free" on gamepass so I figured why not? The maps are ridiculously detailed and while I would never hunt in real life it's super fun virtually. The sound effects and the graphics are really way more that what I would have expected. It's been out for a few years so it looks like the bugs are ironed out. (Or I don't know enough to notice them.) I spent hours just trying to do one mission to kill a fox with a bow. I did start getting frustrated a bit until I looked up tips, but I've been rolling ever since.

The only bad thing is that there is an asston of DLC and some of it you really need. The ATV in particular. The maps are crazy big so just walking takes forever and a day. Most are like 4 bucks , but it adds up quickly. If you need something zen I'd highly recommend at least trying it. Note that it is like a 60 gig DL with all the maps that they have. There's something crazy like 10-11 maps all gigantic..

Just wanted to bump this as they continue to expand it and I got back into it recently as my sone loaded it up on gamepass and was doing ti all wrong and I had to show him what's up. It's still a fun game. I have no interest in real hunting at all, but this is basically a stealth game where your target also has a keen sense of smell.... and basically everything is your target... and some targets will trample you if you scare them. OK it's really not like other stealth games.