Way of the Hunter Review | On the Right Track

The closest I have ever been to hunting in real life was walking past the rifle section at my local Walmart (a sentence that probably sounds bonkers if you are from anywhere but the United States), and the closest I have ever been to digital hunting is competing in the GW&CO trophy hunt every year. Actually, I did play a hunting game a few months ago for all of twenty minutes before feeling it was too convoluted and not returning to it. Nevertheless, the point is, when Way of the Hunter popped up in our inbox, I welcomed the challenge with open camo-gloved hands.

Way of the Hunter is sort of like the Stardew Valley of hunting games. I mean that mainly from a plot perspective, which follows River Knox, a Hollywood stuntman who drives up to Bear Den Ranch to help his sick grandfather keep the business running. There is a story here about an anti-hunting Dad and the joys of being in nature, but I didn’t find it particularly interesting and, to be honest, the game doesn’t expect you to. At the start of the game a tutorial pop-up lets you know that you can either play the game for the story or simply ignore it entirely. If you decide to do the latter, you can just hunt to make money by completing e-mail requests or for special animals to taxidermy and display back in Bear Den Ranch.

That being said, I have two points to address about the narrative choices made in the game and, while I understand that such analysis may not be the expectation in a review for a hunting game, I’m me and so here we are. The odd thing about the presentation of Way of the Hunter is that it seems to hint at a whole lot while not really saying anything. On one hand, Way of the Hunter is all for ethical hunting. There’s even another one of those pop-up tutorials that tells you to aim for the vitals to give the animal as painless of death as possible. Which is good. On the other hand, the game has weird mentions about a hoax disease that the government is lying about, and considering the current state of the world, this feels a bit untimely if the message was unintentional.

That brings me to the second point; the villain. If I had to guess roughly halfway into this story who the game was painting as the bad guy, I’d say it’s River’s dad. The game really likes to point out that he’s an anti-gun, hunting-hating, evil man. But at the same time, from what they tell us about the events of River’s childhood, I tend to agree with the dad. Yes, he’s a grumpy nature-loathing man, but he explicitly tells River’s grandparents to not let his 10-year-old child use a gun under their supervision and when he found out that rule was broken, he forbade his son from visiting the grandparents again. Now, that is an extreme punishment, but it also doesn’t change the fact that I’m still on the dad’s side despite the game’s constant effort to make me feel otherwise.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s talk about gameplay. There are straightforward mechanics at play here but understanding them all and knowing when to do what is crucial to a successful hunt. The game is a pretty standard first-person shooter and you can switch between your primary and secondary weapons by clicking up on the d-pad. Clicking right will get your binoculars, which are great for getting sight of an animal first. And finally, left on the d-pad will give you access to currently equipped callers, which are good for luring certain types of animals closer to you. Pressing triangle on PlayStation will activate Hunter Sense a feature that lets you locate animals easier and one that veteran hunters can disable in the settings.

As a new virtual hunter, it took me a few hours to really grasp the process of hunting, but considering I have successfully recovered every animal I shot, I am pretty happy with my progression. The credit for that really goes to the game for laying out most of the pertinent information at the start of the game so once you finish the tutorial missions you can head into the wild equipped with the knowledge you need. Though, knowledge isn’t all you need. Way of the Hunter has an in-game shop full of licensed weapons and equipment to buy. It takes some work to get the money needed to get upgrades but they do help in more effectively getting the kill.

There is a great sense of immersion in Way of the Hunter which might be one of its best aspects simply because all its mechanics have to work as one to make that happen. Animals in the wild are animated realistically and the addition of zones ensures that they are cycling around the map dynamically. To add to that, what and how the player hunts impacts the animals found in the wild. Yes, if you stomp around while approaching the pack they will get spooked and run away, but there are other factors too. For example, constantly shooting in a zone may drive the animals out of that zone. Or shooting a particular type/gender animal will cause the population of that species to tilt the other way.

I often found myself getting so in the zone while playing that I’d inch a bit closer to the screen before taking a shot, which only then made the POP of the gunshot even more startling. And once you find the animal’s body to claim it, there is a very detailed shot breakdown that tells you bullet trajectory, animal weight, and other valuable stats about the kill. If you are a hunting game fan and everything I described gets you all hot and bothered, you will be happy to know that the game also has two massive maps to hunt on. Nez Perce Valley and Transylvania are both 55 square miles in size and you can really feel that scale when you travel on foot. The impressive thing is that depending on your vantage point, the game’s long draw distance allows you take see animals at what I like to call “not-even-worth-taking-the-shot” distances.

Before I talk about some of my rather random assortment of points about the game, I want to discuss how the game looks and feels. I played Way of the Hunter on the PlayStation 5 and while there are moments where the game can look stunning, with wide vistas ready to be painted, there are certainly some visual hiccups that are hard to ignore. The game has two visual modes: performance and visual quality. Both of which have their own drawbacks. Performance can feel smooth, but shadows and textures load in front of you as you drive around the map, meaning you can see the shadows clearing up from vague blobs to more defined leave-like patterns as you get closer. Visual quality has great lighting but the choppy frame rate can muddy that experience. And regardless of which mode you’re in, the game also suffers from pop-in as trees and bushes jump into existence ahead of you.

Luckily, there aren’t as many audio hiccups to report. I didn’t find the voice acting particularly effective, owing partially to the aforementioned writing which has the main character start two back-to-back sentences with “oh god” in the opening cut scene, and also due to a delivery that feels more like text being read aloud than a character speaking. I am a fan of the menu music and was hoping that more would play as I explored the wilderness but despite the car radio saying it was playing tracks from the OST, I didn’t hear any of it. Unsure if that was a bug (because I have my music volume turned up to 100%) I just resorted to listening to my own playlists while I played.

If you don’t want to take shots with a rifle, you can also take shots with a camera. Two of the images so far in this article are ones I took in Way of the Hunter‘s Photo Mode and as someone who loves taking virtual photos, I really enjoyed switching my hunting cap to a wildlife photographer hat as I played. Along with a few preset filters, the game has plenty of settings to tune and unlike games where you can only move the camera a few feet away from the character, the camera here has a rather large area to play with, letting you experiment with angles to get your perfect shot. I sort of even wish that they took it a step further and had a mission where you need to take a photo of an animal before taking the shot. If such a mission exists, I haven’t gotten to it after nearly ten hours with the game.

With all that said, let’s get to my scattershot of the remaining points. Starting with bugs and crashes. It doesn’t take much digging to find people complaining about technical hiccups in the game. For me, the worst was a fast travel bug that crashed the game after I teleport to a cabin or lodge and another that erases or lifts the water animation in certain chunks, resulting in an awkward combination of rushing water sounds with nothing but rocks visible. A restart fixed the latter issue but the fast travel crashing is really bothersome. For specific examples of both bugs, go to 36:20 and 46:55 in the video above. I’ve also seen people report that there’s a bug that causes blood trails to disappear and Karak with ACG reported an audio bug where the wind sound effects won’t go away.

I do want to mention that Nine Rock Games recently tweeted the above image, promising that bug fixes and updates are on the way and even in the first few days, I have seen updates come through, which is promising. And while we’re on the topic of updates, I think the game would benefit from better adaptive trigger integration on the PlayStation 5. Especially when pulling the trigger. Coming to the final point, and this is something I know I am not alone in echoing, this game needed more time. The map is expansive but there isn’t a whole lot of content in the game other than just going out and hunting at random. It’s great to see new animals and gear on the horizon, but more of that should have been in the game at launch. Not to mention that additional polish to get out any of the numerous problematic bugs would have been valuable. Nevertheless, while the developers are working on these changes, please make sure you understand that they are a small team doing their best to make a good game.

That all being said, I still think if you are a hunter or a fan of hunting games, this is a title you should keep your sights on. If you’re new to the genre, like me, and are curious to try it out, I would recommend waiting until the game has seen a few patches. As the game is now, while it is certainly an immersive hunting experience, there are just too many odd bugs and crashes that can ruin that immersion very easily. And you don’t need to look further than my two-hour live stream from last week to find proof. The good thing is, the core mechanics in the game are solid and they are a good base for the future content and updates that Nine Rock Games has planned. Way of the Hunter is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. A review code was provided by the publisher. For more on Way of the Hunter, check out my Beginner’s Guide to hunting.