Re: What Have You Been Playing... In December 2024?

On Sat, 4 Jan 2025 10:58:40 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
wrote:

On 1/1/2025 8:23 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

* The Hunter - Call of the Wild: Salzwiesen Park DLC

I've never been interested in hunting games, fishing on the other hand.
Not sure why that is.  Perhaps as I went fishing with my beloved Grandpa
a few times when I was a kid.  I feel bad I never brought my kids
fishing, but it's been a long time, and frankly the real thing is boring
as hell.

I almost never play hunting games for the hunting aspects. I'll
happily (virtually-) murder goons all day, but I'm not a fan of
shooting the cute fuzzy animals. Rather, I like hunting games for
their wide open maps and their natural splendor. It's Virtual Hiking:
The Game! For a while, "The Hunter: Call of the Wild" was quite
satisfying in this regard; on release (almost eight years ago!) it was
a truly spectacular looking game. However, despite all the numerous
expansions, very little has been done to improve the underlying
technology and the fairly static maps haven't aged that well. It's
really hard for me not to see the artifice of the levels now.

    [The hunting games were a sanity saver during covid-times.
     Even once lockdowns were lifted, the local parks were packed
     --I guess since nobody wanted to go to stores or museums,
     nature reserves were seen as the safest option-- and hiking
     just wasn't a fun experience when shared with hundreds of
     other yokels. So I mostly stuck to doing it virtually. But
     now that things are more or less back to normal (at least
     with regards to the Great Outdoors) I find less need to
     use a computer to engage with nature]

Because I knew I was going to be writing this mini-review, I did do
some shooting this time, though. Many racoons and ducks died to my
shotgun. It wasn't very satisfying hunting.