It's Fall in Idaho which means it's hunting season, so what better game for day 88 of Eric Vs. 365 than Hunting Simulator for Xbox One. This is not a good hunting game, and calling it a "simulator" is hilarious, but here it is anyway. No animals were harmed in the making of this video. Seriously. Click to read more and watch.
The most popular article I ever wrote for PSXBoxIndies is a feature comparing Hunting Simulator with theHunter: Call of the Wild back in 2017. It has gotten by itself more views than all the other pages put together. That's weird, right? People appreciate good "redneck" game coverage, I guess. It also doesn't hurt that they are the only two real hunting games of this whole generation, so people are hungry.
Because of that I had originally planned on playing both games for this project, but I don't think I'm going to get around to theHunter. You see, theHunter: Call of the Wild is probably the best hunting simulator ever made, but because it is actually a simulator it is brutally boring and hard to play. The menu system is also incredibly awkward. And, honestly, I don't especially like how nothing goes down in one shot, ever, which is totally unrealistic even with the "under powered" guns you start with. It's a great game, don't get me wrong, but not a very good one to make an entertaining video with.
Hunting Simulator, on the other hand, is a dopey crappy hunting sim that is easy to play, so it was easy to crank out a video. I talk about my family needing to hunt back in the day just to survive. I talk about how the game lets you do illegal stuff. I talk about how a .243 is plenty to kill any deer or elk you come across, even if video games don't think so. I do a good job demonstrating what hunting is actually like for me in real life - lots of looking at bushes and rocks. And I see lots and lots of animals.
And you know what else? I don't shoot anything in the video. How is that for subverting expectations! A hunting video with no shots taken and no kills! Ha ha!
