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CABELA'S ALASKAN ADVENTURES (X360)
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Publisher: Activision.
Developer: FUN labs. Released: September 2006. Genre: FPS. Other versions: PC; GC; PS2; PSP. Posted 21st June 2019. By Shane Battams © 2019 |
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No matter what your stance is on big-game hunting, we can perhaps all agree on one thing: Cabela’s Alaskan Adventure is bad gaming. A cheaply made, poorly optimised mess that looks dated even for an early Xbox 360 title, it fails in a host of areas. It struggles to nail shooting (you know, the entire point of the experience) and is also brimming with filler mini-games and tedious brick walls. It’s a game which is hard to recommend to anyone.
In essence, Alaskan Adventures tries to capture the experience of being a big-game hunter. After an initial tutorial teaching you how to track and hunt your first animal, you are sent to four locations in Alaska, each with their own sub areas. An outpost allows you to gear-up, purchase tags in order to choose which hunts you will partake in, and sign up for both fishing and competitions, which differ depending on the locale. It’s basic, and while you can have a look around the vistas you visit, hunting anything without a tag is illegal and earns you fines and a “game over” screen. You’ll find yourself on the narrow path in a 10-or-so hour long game.
No matter what your stance is on big-game hunting, we can perhaps all agree on one thing: Cabela’s Alaskan Adventure is bad gaming. A cheaply made, poorly optimised mess that looks dated even for an early Xbox 360 title, it fails in a host of areas. It struggles to nail shooting (you know, the entire point of the experience) and is also brimming with filler mini-games and tedious brick walls. It’s a game which is hard to recommend to anyone.
In essence, Alaskan Adventures tries to capture the experience of being a big-game hunter. After an initial tutorial teaching you how to track and hunt your first animal, you are sent to four locations in Alaska, each with their own sub areas. An outpost allows you to gear-up, purchase tags in order to choose which hunts you will partake in, and sign up for both fishing and competitions, which differ depending on the locale. It’s basic, and while you can have a look around the vistas you visit, hunting anything without a tag is illegal and earns you fines and a “game over” screen. You’ll find yourself on the narrow path in a 10-or-so hour long game.
Nothing says "no fair!" like shooting an animal from 98 yards with a telescopic lens
The problem is that none of the game’s disparate elements work. The hunts often enforce strict guidelines – even down to the gender of the animal – and yet animals will frequently attack you, if they are predatory. The penalty system is inconsistent, as defending yourself will earn equal measures of approval or scorn depending on how the game feels. But the crucial error lies in the shooting; it just feels awkward to fire a gun. It tries to encourage (and sometimes force) the player to apply stealth and fire at a distance, yet your bullet trajectory can seem so scattershot that even firing point-blank range will often miss. The primary component of Alaskan Adventures doesn’t work, and that’s a big problem.
The side stuff isn’t much better. Special Hunts just add even stricter restrictions, such as using a specific gun or hunting for “Legendary” animals which have a unique appearance, but they suffer from the shooting being crap. Fishing can be even more frustrating, changing between nearly every area and suffering from unwelcome quirks of its own. Your mini-map should guide you to each fish you’re supposed to catch (competitions require certain species), but the map is so broken that you’ll wind up looking in an area entirely devoid of the fish you need. The fishing mechanics never feel smooth either, requiring cack-handed button-presses and lengthy amounts of waiting as you search desperately for a catch. Fishing is about as fun as watching paint dry.
The side stuff isn’t much better. Special Hunts just add even stricter restrictions, such as using a specific gun or hunting for “Legendary” animals which have a unique appearance, but they suffer from the shooting being crap. Fishing can be even more frustrating, changing between nearly every area and suffering from unwelcome quirks of its own. Your mini-map should guide you to each fish you’re supposed to catch (competitions require certain species), but the map is so broken that you’ll wind up looking in an area entirely devoid of the fish you need. The fishing mechanics never feel smooth either, requiring cack-handed button-presses and lengthy amounts of waiting as you search desperately for a catch. Fishing is about as fun as watching paint dry.
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The last component of this rusty rig is its Competitions. These vary from region to region. You start with racing dogs, which are so lacking in thrills you feel like you’re riding backwards. Duck hunting also plays a part, as you sail between checkpoints while shooting birds to earn points. It’s a bit more fun, but the shooting remains sloppy at best. The third contest proffers a slight variation on the previous ones, removing the travelling, but still relying on rickety shooting, and the final competition is infuriating. Animals pop out during checkpoints, as you’re forced to play for tens of minutes at a time without health and relying on clunky shooting. It’s lacklustre.
It doesn’t help that the audiovisual presentation is about as appealing as applying cheap paint to sandpaper. The graphics, even for a game released in late 2006, look astonishingly outdated. Levels are bland and smeary-looking, with stretched textures. Animals look plain and animate so stiffly, you’ll think they’re already dead. The frame rate bounces between smoothness and slideshow-quality, and everything just feels a generation behind. The sound is sparse, but not in a good way. The music is minimally used yet tedious, while animal noises often glitch-out and the guns sound like a car exhaust packing up. Just turn off your eyes and ears, this game looks and sounds bad.
It doesn’t help that the audiovisual presentation is about as appealing as applying cheap paint to sandpaper. The graphics, even for a game released in late 2006, look astonishingly outdated. Levels are bland and smeary-looking, with stretched textures. Animals look plain and animate so stiffly, you’ll think they’re already dead. The frame rate bounces between smoothness and slideshow-quality, and everything just feels a generation behind. The sound is sparse, but not in a good way. The music is minimally used yet tedious, while animal noises often glitch-out and the guns sound like a car exhaust packing up. Just turn off your eyes and ears, this game looks and sounds bad.
Alaskan Adventures features a few half-hearted mini-games and competitions, but they're not much cop either
So despite offering a respectable amount of content (feasibly 20 hours when you factor in the side content and Open Season, which lets you tweak what you can hunt in each of the game’s maps), the replay value is diminished when the game is this bad. Cabela’s Alaskan Adventure already loses points for its awful filler content, but when you sell a game on its hunting and yet can’t provide a smooth shooting engine to back that up, it’s just doomed. It might be cheaper, but even if you’re dying to experience Alaska, do not do it through this mess of a game.
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VERDICT
"A hunting game that fails to provide a smooth shooting engine is doomed. It might be cheaper, but even if you’re dying to experience Alaska, do not do it through this mess of a game." OVERALL: 3/10 |