A brand-new hunting simulator. Welcome to Way of the Hunter Review.
You can hunt for various different animals while traversing through great-looking forests, fields, and mountains.
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Without further ado, let’s dive into the Way of the Hunter review!
Way of the Hunter – What Is It All About?
The Thrill of the Hunt
Way of the Hunter takes place in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.
The summer in Transylvania can be seen all around. Wild animals are roaming the forests, fields, and hills. Some are hiding in the bushes others flying above your head.
The core of the entire game is hunting so how does it perform?
Well, it is one of the best aspects of the game. You can literally feel the thrill of the hunt.
You can see the map and choose a destination. Select an animal you want to hunt for.
Then you get your favorite gun and equipment like scope, collimator, binoculars, and more. Select a vehicle and drive to your destination.
What comes next is the tracking part. You need to be careful and move slowly, tracking animals. You can use your binoculars to track animals from afar.
Setup your scope to the right distance and take your shot. Sometimes you will not kill the prey on your first shot, but if it bleeds you can track it down.
How Does Way of the Hunter Play?
The game delivers on the hunting experience. It is not overly complicated and the tutorial does a great job of making you familiar with the mechanics of the game.
You get to pick up your rifle or a shotgun, place a scope on it and pick out your equipment.
There are several callers for various different animals. You can set up traps or lure prey into your proximity with the aforementioned whistle.
You also have a Hunting Sense at your disposal. It makes spotting animals and places of interest much easier.
Then aiming down sight Hunting Sense can also be very important. There is additional information shown on the screen like the distance, or see the correct ballistic curve.
The game also offers some character progression. There are various perks that help out with the gameplay.
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Character Progression and Perks
Way of the Hunter has a small character progression system that relies mostly on perks. You can also purchase new rifles, shotguns, and other pieces of gear.
Progression is done by completing various activities. For example, you have to shoot an animal in the heart or travel a certain distance to progress a specific perk.
Perks List
They are divided into three categories: Rifles, Shotgun and Hunting.
- Rifles – better rifle control, breath holding, aiming, reloading, and more for Rifles
- Shotgun –Rifles – better rifle control, breath holding, aiming, reloading, and more for Shotguns
- Hunting – improves movement, calling animals, stealth, exploration, and more
Presentation of Way of the Hunter
Way of the Hunter Visuals
The game looks pleasing. Colorful sights are all around the map.
Way of the Hunter runs very smoothly on the performance mode. The FPS does not drop at all, at least for us. The textures look a little bit pixelated from a very close distance.
Anything further looks great, especially the animals and the trees.
Weapons also have very polished models. Every piece of equipment, whistle, and scope has high-quality original textures.
The visual quality mode has some issues. Even though it looks better than in performance mode it stutters at times and is not nearly as smooth.
While hunting for animals it is important that the game does not have any frame drops. If you miss your shot it might scare the animal away.
Audio and Sound Design
Ambient sound and animals sound awesome. You can hear the forest, wilderness, and birds in the air.
Reload and weapon sounds are also very good. It has the feeling of a rifle, and a shotgun has that kick to it.
There are some issues with sounds. It can occasionally bug out, and once I even had to restart the save, because there was an audio issue preventing the fun further on.
Other than that it is very pleasing to listen to all of the environment, especially while using headphones.
Technical Aspects of the Game
The game runs smoothly in the performance mode but has some small issues with frame drops in the visual quality mode.
Overall there are some minor issues like textures clipping, and some animations not working properly.
However, the most pressing issue was the audio bug I mentioned above. There might be a way to fix it without starting a new game but we did not find a way to do so.
Our Way of the Hunter Review Summary
Summing up our Way of the Hunter review, the game plays great, and if you are looking to relax while tracking and hunting for animals this is a great game.
It still has some minor issues with graphics, audio design, and bugs. It has a great potential to be one of the best hunting games out there.
If Way of the Hunter gets the care it deserves with updates, fixes, and later down-the-line paid expansions it can easily be on the top of the hunting games food chain.
Way of the Hunter is out now, available on PC via Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
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