Yesterday I had a look at two outdoorsy games coming out from Bass Shop Pro, The Strike: Tournament Edition and The Hunt: Trophy Showdown. Here’s what I learned:
Strike is a fishing game revolving around tournament fishing, something I didn’t even know existed. The guy who showed me the games, Chip (which is totally the name of someone who would work on hunting and fishing games), pointed with pride at the many different realistic lures you could buy with your tournament winnings. You can also buy fishing lines and reels and whatnot. After casting you can jerk the lure with a flick of the Wii remote, which causes it to move as though alive. The game uses onscreen indicators to let you know how you’re doing, with a sort of sonic wave effect telling you how much energy the fish has left and a red tint to the screen telling you how taut (and thus likely to snap) your line is. You can choose to either watch the fish as it struggles underwater or, if you want a more realistic experience, keep the camera atop the water and just watch your line shift around with the occasional site of the fish jumping out of the water.
Hunt is a hunting game. I’ve never actually played a hunting game – I prefer games where I’m killing in self defense or to save the world rather than just for kicks – but this one looks kind of interesting. It’s essentially a stealth game in which you wander the woods with a sniper rifle and use various tools to lure animals to where you can shoot them. As with Strike there is tournament play in which you are trying to bag specific animals.
The two games are quite similar in approach and style. Both aim for a fairly realistic open world experience in which you are free to wander where you will (Chip says other hunting games will keep you on a set path). Both have that fascination for minutia that differentiates arcade-style games from simulators. Both games can be bought by themselves for $20 or bundled with a controller (fishing rod or rifle) for $50.
Both games are also kind of ugly. It’s hard to say if this is because Bass Pro is attempting to create a realistic environment on a console whose graphical power prevents that or if it’s an issue of not having the time and resources to polish the look, but both games look rather drab and murky.
But that will be fine if they are entertaining to play, and both games look like they should at least appeal to fishers and hunters, although I will have to sit down and play them myself to see if they can appeal to indoorsmen like me. The games both ship October 24.
