Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2006

Hunting is supposed to be a big sport. I say “supposed to be” because any gamer, no matter how much we like running around with guns virtually (and not), knows very little to nothing about hunting. This is primarily because it would be dangerous for us to take an interest in this (I would never go hunting with some of those idiots on Counter Strike who team kill). This is also because we have a very bad view on guns and tend to want things that make excessive amounts of boom.

The Cabela's Big Game Hunter series has been around for quite a long time. And by “Quite a long time”, I mean longer than you would humanly think possible. Due to the fact that technology has finally reached the same place where they shot “Deliverance”, it seems as if Cabela's (A big time camping/hunting/fishing outfitter) decided that people with an IQ lower than the amount of change in my pocket should have their shooter games too. I have nothing against hunting. But, as I live in the area where people paint their Honda Civics in “Spray paint Camo”, you can understand that I'm really somewhat frustrated with this concept.

And, not surprisingly, playing this game just managed to make me feel like I should break my computer and live like a hermit. Very few games are truly this bad, and Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2006 Season manages to do this- and, as a record on this site, in only 30 minutes or so of playing. So, in this review, I am going to take you through about 30 minutes of my life- that is, the time in which I turned on Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2006 Season and promptly lost my sanity.




First off, when you play this game, it is all built around profiles- and, taking a note from bigger game giants like EA, it gives you the ability to customize your own person. Of course, not being EA, this is nowhere near as detailed, and pretty much boils down to “What face do you want” and “What camo hat do you want (Huntin' hat or Cowboy hat)”. In an attempt to be excruciatingly hilarious, the game even features an Afro as one of four available hairstyles, all of them looking like they came right out of any show on “Country Music Television”. Disappointed that there was no mullet to pick, I then opted to pick a 18 year old girl, the best of which looks like Elly May Clampett from “The Beverly Hillbillies”, except without any semblance of realism sans little bumps on her chest I presume to be breasts or twin tumors.

Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2006 Season goes so far as to break the whole game into three parts- well, really, what weapon you use. You have a standard rifle, a .50 Desert Eagle, or a bow and arrow. Needless to say, I grabbed the .50 and ran out there full speed, ignoring things such as camo (Though it won't let you strip her. I tried.), Deer pee (I'm not rubbing that on me, even virtually), or even binoculars. I just go out there with my wits, ready to take down some animals and give PETA a reason to exist.

Built on what appears to be something like the Unreal engine (Though it is not the Unreal engine, as it appears to be something ultimately more evil), Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2006 Season is a first person shooter that utilizes stealth to find and kill animals, then grab them and get a trophy for killing them. This sounds stupidly simple, and it is- all you need to do is see something that moves and keep shooting at it (while it runs) until you clip it's leg and it falls, then shoot it in the face (Complete with “Bullet Cam”) to make sure it's dead. While this sounds violent, it's actually not- not only does the game conspicuously lack blood, it also lacks basically any kind of bullet realism. I say this because I know- the first thing I did in “Career Mode” was attempt to kill the warden. Apparently, the Warden is bulletproof.

But, that's about all I did. Run around with a .50 AE and shoot things until they died. Of course, there is something ultimately fun about massacring a big group of animals, but I also felt somewhat bad for the fact that they had absolutely no way to live. After all, I imagine it's hard to fight back when a hunter in a game not only has a gun that seems to perfectly hit the mark every time (No spread), but who seems to be able to magically leap up cliffs and see long distances without any kind of assistance. It sucks even more because they have nowhere to run, though they will try this repeatedly.

One irritating issue I found with Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2006 season is the fact that it seems to not want to let you “do” anything. Sure, you can shoot at the animals, but as a general rule, once you kill and grab the carcass of one, the game is over, back to the screen/lodge. Needless to say, this is annoying- I want to go out and shoot a bunch of things and just rack up trophies, but Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2006 purposely makes you walk/drive around just to extend the short life of this budget title. Budget titles are short, but... so short they purposely force you to walk longer than any given MMORPG just to kill one stupid deer?




There is one thing, though, that takes the cake about this game: The Licensing System. Just to be “Educational” and instill the values of unfair government licensing, Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2006 Season restricts what animals you can kill based on whatever “Tag” you have. So, if you don't have the specific license, for say, a Polar Bear, then you are expected not to kill it. However, because the game can be so laggy (Not graphically, but in recognizing what you are actually doing), this can result in hilarious results, such as when I ambushed and killed 10 Polar Bears in a den for no reason other than to make a lot of bodies. About a minute later, the game FINALLY figures out that I did this, and the resulting messages from the game warden appear in about a one minute period:

“Don't shoot that bear.”
“Don't shoot that bear.”
“This is a warning: You do not have a tag.”
“This is a warning.”
“Do not shoot that bear.”
“This is a warning.”
“YOU WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO SHOOT THAT BEAR.”
“THATS IT YOU'RE COMING IN”.

By the time I got that first message, my character was knee deep in bear blood. I was actually RESTING when I got those messages. Not only is this a great example of bad coding, but it actually shows you in general how unfair this game is.

Let me close by saying this- this game only gets a half of a star because I laughed at the Bear Blood thing, and other than that, this is a horrible game not worthy of the CD it was printed on. Playing as a hunter is extremely boring and makes even work look entertaining, and the aspect of it being a blatant advertisement for key things Cabela's sells (Such as, as I mentioned above, deer pee) just adds to how bad this game is. This is the kind of game I would only give to someone I absolutely hated with a passion, because it only manages to be a crappy budget title that is the perfect example of why you need to have a “Game License” to make Video Games (See, kids, this is called topical humor). Sorry, Cabelas, but I'm going to use this CD as a Frisbee.

0.5 star(s) out of 5

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