Hello! My name is Dominic Graham; I have a smug smile, a pointy chin and hair made out of plastic. I enjoy long walks on the beach, writing haikus and most of all; shooting powerless animals with a highly powered, bolt action rifle. This is my hunting diary!
Locked and loaded, I’m ready to hunt some deer. My mum packed me some sandwiches, but I don’t like tuna, so I’ve left them at home. Don’t tell her!
Yawn, six o’clock in the morning and I’m out on Evergreen Hunting Reserve. I’ve got a rugged PDA and… wait a minute…
Sweet Mother Mary! A Deer! Already! I’m like a Bambi magnet; they’re just standing around waiting for a gunpowder headache, prescription handled by Doctor Graham.
I don’t remember Deer being this thin. Or made of metal. Or bolted to the floor.
Well, off into the forest I go… and it’s already started raining and my wellies are filling up with water and I lost my flask of Ovaltine. I wish I was at home watching Doctor Who right now. I bet that dreamy David Tennant is up to some right wacky antics.
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I spot a wigwam on my PDA map. Seems like a good place to head for; do deer live in wigwams? That’s a rhetorical question of course, for I am a deer expert.
One thousand, seven hundred and thirty eight metres later… where are all the deer? More to the point, where is their wigwam? There aren’t even any Indians or peace pipes or Jackie Chan in Shanghai Noon. These are benches. This is the worst wigwam ever.
Sweet Ursula’s Ghost! I heard something! A Mule Deer, roaming at 0.9 miles per hour. Thanks magic PDA, I won’t even begin to understand how you know that.
Woah! Tracks! Still moving at 0.9 mph I see; at least this deer isn’t riding a motorised scooter, or I’d be at a severe disadvantage. You know, aside from the fact I have a gun.
Half an hour later, the trail has run colder than Vanilla Ice. I thought this pot I had in my pocket was a tin of baked beans, but it’s actually a jar of trapped deer souls, and they call out for help whenever it’s tipped. Creepy.
Waheey! Crap, poop, dookie, dung, turd! Never before have I been so excited to get deer excrement wedged in the sole of my favourite wellies. The trail has officially heated back up.
Its 9:35, a whole three and a half hours since I started my trek. Everybody Loves Raymond must be on about now. Here’s me, milling about in the woods looking for a deer with irritable bowel syndrome. I mean, look how many piles of poop I’ve marked on my PDA; this animal must be feeding on a kilo of exlax, daily.
Lonely hunter walks miles
Can only find poop of hidden deer
Stay home tomorrow
Oh! My! God! Two hours, twenty minutes of non-stop rain, 120 kilos of deer poop and several bouts of pneumonia later, and my prey is in sight. Now to crouch down, take out my rifle, train it on the deer, account for wind and sudden movement, pull the trigger.
Oh arse. That tiny bundle of pixels you see is an escaping deer. I should have bought a machine gun… or a rocket launcher.
You know, despite five poop sniffing, PDA watching, deer tracking hours, I never shot a single deer. I guess talking about The Hunter without bagging a deer is like a reviewer assigning a score to Bioshock without seeing the twist or to Gears of War without trying multiplayer; it’s almost sacrilegious.
The Hunter is the perfect example of how technology isn’t just for pretty graphics and to render more cod-pieces on bald space marines, but to create a more believable and immersive experience for the player. I’m all about immersion and as long as you have a good rig you can crank up the game’s visuals for thick forests, heavy downpours, tall grass and beautiful lapping shores.
I’d never shoot a deer; I like to exist in that hypocritically nebulous zone where I’m against killing animals but I love me some chicken nuggets. But with The Hunter, it brings home the more romantic aspect of inhumane animal murder, with the lush forests and cathartic solitude; the thrill of the chase and the satisfaction of the hunt (or so I’d assume).
The Hunter is a free PC game from Emote, with a social networking website that tracks your kills (or not, if you’re useless) and looks incredible thanks to the Avalanche Engine (as seen in Just Cause). And if you pay a subscription, you can shoot turkeys! Gobble Gobble!
So five hours of traipsing around a forest, sniffing deer excrement and not even nailing a single kill. Did I enjoy it though? Well, do deer poop in the woods?
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April 28th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
” thought this pot I had in my pocket was a tin of baked beans, but it’s actually a jar of trapped deer souls, and they call out for help whenever it’s tipped. Creepy.”
Genius! I laughed out loud. At work!
April 28th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Yep, that made me laugh too. I now really want to play this game…..
April 29th, 2009 at 10:38 am
I downloaded the game yesterday but haven’t played it yet. It does sound very interesting though and I might even be persuaded to pay for it when it starts getting more animals added.
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