Open Country

I only logged 1.5hrs with the Steam version to see if it was any better than the Playstation version which I originally sank about 15 or so hours into. It wasn't. Which is unfortunate because this game had/has a lot of potential to fill a niche genre/market; survival hunting sims. I am not a huge hunting fan, in fact I find it kind of pointless in the age of grocery stores, although I do partake in the activity virtually when required in a lot of other survival games. I find trying to a vegetarian path rather difficult in most survival games. That being said, I am a huge survival game fan, and that is what interested me in Open Country to begin with. Most survival games follow similar templates for the genre, with a good deal of them even utilizing the same branch and stone (etc) assets. There is often some sort of horror element; zombies, mutants, other players or they just make the act of crafting and survival the crux of the gameplay without anything else on offer outside of mildly interesting exploration, like Among Trees. How many times have we seen a mission log peppered with such exciting tasks as cut tree, make pickaxe, cut stone.. But here was a survival game built around hunting that had missions and activities as well as a solid crafting system and a decent open world. Yes, the shimmering effects of the grass and foliage is enough to make me sick. Yes the voice acting and overall script is also enough to make me sick. Yes, it looks and feels like a budget title. But those are all shortcomings that can be easily overlooked or at the very least one can put up with. I love The Long Dark but there are some design choices in that game that baffle me to this day (having to first pick up and look at an item before being able to add it to my inventory is maddening. Just let me pick everything up with a button press and then let me decide what to do with it later..). But Open Country launched with too many graphical and technical issues, none of which were really addressed. I had hope once the developer patched in the option to break branches down to sticks or simply hatchet a tree to get wood that all hope wasn't lost. I mean, yes this is simple stuff that should have been in the game by default, but it was some semblance of proof that someone on the developer team was at the very least listening as this was certainly one of most requested simple fixes. But then; it just went dark. And you could feel that often used and much maligned word creep up the back of your neck: Abandoned. Which, Open Country is; abandoned. And what a shame and waste of resources to even make it in the first place. And I fear with it goes the attempt to bridge hunting sims with a genre that not only makes perfect sense to merge with, the survival genre, but that could have also opened up new avenues of consumers/players to broaden the hunting genre's appeal beyond guys at your local bar that spend all night one the Cabela's cabinet. I give it a recommended thumbs up despite my less than glowing review simply because if you can get it for next to nothing, or better yet for nothing, and you can stomach a poorly made yet still definitely playable game and enjoy hunting and survival games it can be fun and engaging. The hunting mechanics are by no means a simulation aside from the fact that you do use a weapon to kill animals, so don't go in expecting a deep simulation taking into account wind or bullet drop or scent or really much more beyond point gun; shoot, hit or miss, harvest carcass. If you want something more realistic with more to offer than simply hunting I would say check out Way of the Hunter, Hunter: Call of the Wild/Angler, or even Red Dead Redemption 2.