NRA Varmint Hunter
The only good varmint poontang is dead varmint poontang, I think.
Tags: NRA Varmint Hunter Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Apr 18th, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| NRA Varmint Hunter (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| First Person Shooter | Yes | ||
It was simple, really. DEN Site-Master 2005, Dan, came up to me and said, “Craig, I want you to kill all the gophers in this here reviewable.” But I wasn’t going to fall for that old trick. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Dan,” I said, “but if I kill all the golfers, they’ll lock me up and throw away the key.” Dan gave me an exasperated, somewhat perplexed look. “Not golfers, you 38-year-old psycho,” he replied. “Gophers. Varmints. Little brown furry rodents.” I was relieved. “I can do that,” I told Dan, flashing him a steely grin. “I don’t even need a reason.”
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So there I was. Licensed to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit – ever. They’re like the Viet Cong – Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that’s all she wrote. I said to myself, “I got to get into this dude’s pelt and crawl around for a few days. Who’s the gopher’s ally? His friends. The harmless squirrel and the friendly rabbit.”
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Then, I woke up in a cold sweat. It had all been a dream. A sweaty, Caddyshack-induced dream. Then I walked out to my PC. To my horror, there was the box for NRA Varmint Hunter by Speedco. The realization washed over me like a sick, warm flood: It hadn’t been a dream after all! It was all too real. I was assigned to review possibly one of the most inept hunting games of all time. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. But not by far. That’s because NRA Varmint Hunter, the first of a projected 15 or so NRA-licensed bargain hunting titles scheduled for release between now and about 2008 or thereabouts, plays like a game that is a first-of-its-kind title, except it’s not.
What do I mean? I mean the graphics are about six to eight years out of date, rendered in 800×600 resolution at a time when even standard, nothing-special hunting titles are in at least 1024×768, and employing textures so rough, you’d think they were invented on a Macintosh Performa 460, not a modern graphics-rendering machine. The fields and ranges where you shoot at “varmints” – namely, gophers and ground hogs – look like something out of Madden NFL… 1989. It’s just not a very competent job. Sorry, Speedco.
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Beyond the look of the title, the game play is also decidedly behind the times. You get two maps – Western and Eastern – to choose from and each has about 10 or 12 “positions” from which to begin your hunt. Sounds okay so far, right? Until you realize that you can’t move. At all. Ever. Well, not entirely true … you can pivot. In one spot. And shoot everything from there. But that’s it for movement. Then there’s your initial equipment, which features a rifle that needs to be dumped almost immediately for an upgraded one that can, well… aim straight. And then there’s the scope problem; the initial one is so weak, gophers only 200 feet away are hard to make out. And some of your hunts feature gophers over 600 feet away. So be prepared to basically dump 90 percent of your initial, default equipment and start buying virtually from scratch. I mean, when you have four types of bullets and only two of them work in guns you own, something’s messed up.
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There are, at least, quite a number of items in the game to buy up to, including a ton of name-brand rifles and other hunting equipment. The physics engine actually isn’t too bad, either, as you need to make adjustments for wind and distance as your prey gets further and further away. And there are a nice handful of modes, including Quick Hunt, Hunters (otherwise known as season mode), and Multiplay (the online mode), as well as a tutorial to go through, practice ranges to shoot on, and the like. Yet the average Activision Cabela Hunting title has way more depth in terms of location, season activities, items and prey to stalk that does NRA Varmint Hunter.
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Yes, it’s a piece of bargain software. So are most of the Activision hunting titles, and they still do a far superior job. You would think that a top-notching licensee like the NRA could afford to job out a series of hunting titles for PC to a company with a bit more experience and skill, but unfortunately, at least in this first title of the projected series, there’s not a lot of experience or skill on display. If NRA Varmint Hunter had come out about eight years ago, before the first deer hunting title hit the stands, it might have stood a decent shot to impress; unfortunately, for at least the last five years, hunting titles have been built off impressive 3D engines, such as the Unreal Engine, and have featured far better animal behavior replication, “roamable” hunting environments and far greater freedom and superior eye candy than this title can even begin to think about offering.
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NRA Varmint Hunter does deliver the chance to shoot at gophers and groundhogs, a dubious choice for a series that promises deer, bear and elk hunting titles in the near future. Given Wisconsin’s recent vote to declare feral cats (as in, housecats gone wild) an unprotected species, maybe there’ll even be room for an NRA Feral Cat Hunter before the series is over, “Look mom! I shot a 10-pound Calico!” That’s about the level this series seems to be entrenched in, unfortunately. Too bad, since with a license like the NRA’s, one would expect far more expertise when it comes to portraying the hunting experience. While the door is open for this series to take a dramatic upswing in future installments – which would make it a lot more fun – for the moment, this title is simply too out-of-date to be worth even the bargain price being asked for it. While the software isn’t so harmful it’ll damage your computer, if you play it you may begin double-checking to make sure you didn’t install it on that old Intel 486 with Windows 3.1 that you have collecting dust in your garage.
If you like hunting titles, this isn’t the one you want: stick with Activision and Cabela’s until this series undergoes a dramatic transformation.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
| + Yup. You can shoot varmints. | 2.1 |
| What Doesn't | |
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— Nearly everything else. — You’re stationary. Can’t move. Just pivot … awkwardly. How silly is that? — Even with powerful scopes, the “varmints” are, like… REALLY tiny onscreen! — At 800x600 with low-res textures, this is “huntin’ ugly.” |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Who’s the varmint’s ally? No one, when a game is this poorly pulled off. Even among first-generation PC hunting games, NRA Varmint Hunter would have been the toe-headed stepchild. Steer clear and look for a hunting game with “Cabela’s” or “Activision” in the title. Really. | |
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Tags: NRA Varmint Hunter
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Apr 18th, 2005 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
