Nine Rocks Games are a new studio located in Bratislava Slovakia, specifically set up by THQ Nordic to develop shooter/survival games. The first cab off the rank is the hunting simulator ‘Way Of The Hunter”, hunting simulation games aren’t exactly a dime a dozen, probably because of the subject matter not being everyone’s cup of tea, and the only other quality simulation available is ‘The Hunter : Call Of The Wild’ which seems have an overall positive rating on Steam and some critical acclaim amongst reviewers. So while the market isn’t overly saturated, Way Of The Hunter has some stiff competition to face off against, will it hit its target or will it’s shot stray far off the mark?

Way Of The Hunter features two large maps, encompassing a total area of 144 square kilometres, the first area features the Nez Perce Valley which is a part of the Pacific Northwest in the USA and Transylvania which is part of Romania. The Nez Perce Valley is where you will find yourself starting the game (Transylvania will unlock after you have completed some of the objectives in the valley) and acts as a tutorial of sorts which is also story driven. When you jump into the game you are greeted to a cut scene, this delivers the backstory to the game, you are a young man named River and you are heading out into the Nez Perce Valley to help your grandfather, who has taken ill, with the Bear Den Ranch. Your grandfather has run the ranch for years and is committed to ethical and sustainable hunting practices and providing the best meat for the local restaurants in the area. As you arrive at the ranch the game guides you through a tour of the house, there is a taxidermy area where you can choose to display some of the animals from your successful hunts and also an office equipped with a PC which is where you will receive emails that drive the story forward as well as take orders from local restaurants to hunt particular animals for meat and also where you can purchase new guns, attachments and new equipment.

Once you have acquainted yourself with the Bear Den Ranch you will be tasked with exploring your larger surroundings and have to jump into your trusty jeep to go and find an ‘echo location’, there are many of these locations strewn across the map and each one you find will add important information to your map, I found this served as a great way to ease you into the game and get you used to the games controls and mechanics. Once you have successfully uncovered your first echo location, then it’s time for the fun stuff, shooting! It’s off to the shooting range we go and this is where the game helps you become acquainted with basic shooting mechanics such as bullet drop and zeroing in your rifles scope to be able to hit targets at different distances, once you have hit a few targets and become an expert marksman then it’s time to go out and hunt some real animals, the terrifying and ferocious beast known as the badger! Here the game introduces you to more mechanics, the most important of these being ‘hunters sense’ this allows you to analyse animals from a distance to sense their current state and devise whether they are spooked and know you are there or whether they are blissfully unaware of your presence, it will also help you track things such as animal droppings and blood trails from animals, analysing these will also add handy markers to your map that show you animal feeding patterns and other useful information. Hunting the badgers is a fun exercise that gets you used to the patience that is required to track down an animal and successfully execute it, however, it is here that one of the main issues with the game rears its ugly head.

Upon a successful shot, your target will of course run as far as it can away from you before it bleeds out, it is up to you to track the animal via the trail of blood it leaves behind to its final resting place, your hunter sense is meant to help you easily identify and follow these blood trails but I found it extremely difficult to be able to find these trails beyond the one left at the initial point of impact, I know hunting is a slow, methodical sport that is an exercise in patience but the issue with the blood trails proved to be a very frustrating experience and I sometimes spent more than half an hour walking around in circles trying to zero in on where my precious prey had laid down to die. Once you do find your prey you can analyse the animal and are greeted with a rather cool display that shows your bullets point of impact and exactly which organs of the animal it hit, it is at this point where you can choose to sell the animal for money or choose to go down the taxidermy route and display the animal back at your lodge, you will probably want to reserve that space for more impressive creatures than a badger though.

The basic gameplay loop sees you going to the lodge to access your computer, taking on orders from restaurants and other people to go out and hunt certain animals and then receiving money for successfully completing your task. Gaining money will allow you to upgrade your guns and attachments and also give you access to other hunting equipment such as animal callers. This is not the only progression system in the game though as you will also hone your skills as your perform certain actions in the game which give you bonuses, for instance if you hit animals in the correct location to kill them more quickly you will gain access to a skill that allows you to hold your breath for longer when taking a shot or if you walk around for more than 15km you will be able to successfully walk upright whilst making less noise making it less of a risk to scare off animals, there are a myriad of perks and skills to unlock in the game that help you to make your future hunts a more successful affair.

Graphically the game is absolutely stunning, both the Nez Perce Valley and Transylvania are meticulously designed and include mountainous and lush forest areas as well as sweeping plains. The animals too are very well animated and I often found myself picking up my binoculars and just watching animals and the behaviour they displayed whilst they wandered about the plains or gathered in packs drinking from one of the games many water sources. As you would expect the gun models in the game are also extremely detailed in an effort to make them come as close as possible to their real life counterparts. Audio in the game is sparse but features the kind of sounds you would expect to hear out in the wilderness, animals grunting, birds chirping and frogs croaking, I did however experience some issues with the audio where it seemed to get stuck on a short never-ending loop of the same animal sounds repeating over and over, hopefully a future patch can fix this.

Hunting in real life is a lesson in patience, hunters make slow meticulous movements to track prey and also have to take the wind direction into account to ensure they don’t spook animals by letting them catch a whiff of their scent, all of this and much more is replicated in Way Of The Hunter. If you expect to go into this game and run crashing through the underbrush firing wildly like a madman and be successful then this is probably not the game for you. Patience does pay off and sometimes a successful hunt can take over an hour to pull off but the satisfaction you do get from successfully tracking and firing a successful shot on to your target drives you to seek out even more difficult beasts to hunt.

Way Of The Hunter is not a game for everyone but that is not to say it will only be enjoyed by hunting enthusiasts, I for one have certainly never wanted to hunt an animal in real life but I did have fun tracking down virtual targets. Way Of The Hunter is not a revolutionary game by any means but it does a good job of simulating the tactics and patience needed to pull off a successful hunt, if you are mildly interested in hunting then you will most likely have a great time in the games representation of the New Perce Valley and Transylvania, however, if you are known for not having a large amount of patience it is probably best you steer clear.