izigame.me

This game is frustrating

Not because it's difficult. But because it has some great game mechanics that the developers sabotage at every turn.
The good
Animal herds are persistent. Know the general route that a herd of Mule deer take? Come back tomorrow and you can find them there again. Kill all of the does/bucks in that herd? That herd will eventually die out in a few in-game days (A new herd will generate later).
Individual animals have their own "Trophy" ratings, if you cull the lower rated animals, you'll promote the growth of higher rated animals in that herd and visa-versa.
The game focuses on "Ethical" kills, meaning you need to use the right ammo for the right animal and place your shot as well as you can. This is what you should get taught when you're growing up hunting IRL (it's what I was taught). You don't want the animal to suffer. It makes sense.
There are other property owners that you can "meet" (through letters left in their cabins) and do jobs for them so you can hunt their property. Or you can buy the rights to hunt that property without having to do the jobs for the owner (it's a lot of in-game money though).
The bad
Know all those great mechanics? Do you think the game focuses on those and builds around them?
NOPE
Instead of building a game around these mechanics, the objectives that are given to the player are things like:

Go over to a rock so the character can awkwardly yell into a canyon.
Go to an area and pick three flowers.
Harvest 10 kg of duck meat (not quality duck meat, just get as much as you can, kill kill kill)

These are real quests from this game.
Know how you can do jobs for other property owners so you can get the rights to hunt their land. It's a nice way to allow players to get access to other properties without having to shell out a lot of in-game currency.
BUT
What happens when the job you're doing for a property owner requires you to hunt a property that you don't own? You better go spend more time walking around doing more ridiculous quests so that you can hunt where you want. OR you can pay the in-game currency so you can continue their quest-line for no reward now.
It's just plagued with poor quest-design.
You could argue that all the quests that have you traveling around the map are meant for you to see where animals are so you can come back later and hunt them. That's all well and good, but I didn't shell out $40+ dollars to come back and hunt later after I've done an annoying fetch quest. The point of the game is to HUNT.
Minor Gripes
The game's quality of life is abysmal. You have 9 gear slots, it takes your character ~5 seconds to switch between things. To access your gear you have to hit the 1-9 keys or you can scroll on the mouse wheel. Hit the wrong key? Well that sucks, you still have to wait the 5 seconds before the game will let you switch. Can you use the scroll wheel to get through multiple slots faster? Nope, when you switch with the scroll wheel you HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE ANIMATION TO FINISH FOR THE NEXT GEAR SLOT BEFORE YOU CAN SCROLL AGAIN. This could be easily remedied with a selection wheel, like you have in theHunter: Call of the Wild or Grand Theft Auto.
How many arms are there? ~20 even with the DLC. In a hunting game. A game about using firearms/bows to hunt. There's only ~20 firearms/bows to choose from. They even have deals with Remington and Steyr, and there's only ~20...
Are there firearms you can unlock through quests? There's a handful and the developers have hinted that they want to add more in a future DLC. So, kinda.
And there are no decoys in the game. In a hunting game. There are no decoys. Can you hunt geese? Yes, but there are no decoys so just try to sky shot 'em I guess.
It just feels like the developers have never actually been waterfowl hunting before and/or they just don't care.
Playing to your strengths
Instead of leaving this review with nothing but moans and complaints, I want to end this with how I feel this game could have been made better.
If you've spent years refining core gameplay mechanics, your game should revolve around them. No uninspired quests given by faceless people you don't care about.
First off, put more gear in the game.
Now, we have mechanics centered around improving animal ratings, right? And we "own" the property that we're hunting on, right? What if the game centered around you improving your property. Picture this; you own a run-down hunting resort. To promote your resort you need high rated animals. As a player, to improve your resort you need to HUNT the lower rated animals so your resort value goes up. The higher your resort score the more money you're given, the more money you're given, the better gear you can get, and then the cycle continues. Period. The gameplay loop now promotes the hunting mechanics. No fetch quests, no weird storyline BS. Just hunting.