izigame.me

After 40 hours, I’ve completely stopped playing. Unfortunately, I “learned” a few things that completely killed the fun for me.
Negatives:
- Herds, and needs zones, are always the same. I know the animals within a herd will change(as I shot them), and that I also can influence their composition by choosing which animals I hunt – Herd Management. However, I'm always going to know where those herds are and at which times of the day. This kills the replayability of the game; and I’m not even talking about starting a new game. In COTW you might argue, it is nearly the same, however, the keyword is “nearly”. There is a lot more randomness and it is really down to how you decide to do Herd Management, that you might choose to not do at all. Both games have an element of predictability, however, it is way worse in WOTH. So much so that there is a web “tool” that tells you where are all the need zones and their corresponding active times.
- Hunting pressure is meaningless, all because of the static herds/need zones. In COTW you can completely erase need zones if you wanted to by “applying” hunting pressure. Also, you can play for very long in a single map, and you always seem to be able to find new need zones, in COTW. As clarified by a moderator, you can cause animals to disappear from a need zone by hunting too much. However, the animals will always return, and meanwhile, there is only one other alternative they could use – each heard has only a fixed pair of need zones of each type.
- Difficulty. When you start with WOTH, it appears to be harder, more “realistic”. Here the biggest complain seems to be centered around the noise system, which, we have been told, it is “accumulative”. So the sound is added, somehow, as long as you continue to move without pause. This causes the sound or alertness of animals to reach a certain threshold and spook, even at relatively far distances. Once one masters the ability to approach a herd, using cover and “dosing” your movement so the noise threshold is avoided, it really doesn’t matter if you are approaching a two stars animal or a five stars. In COTW: the higher the trophy rating the harder the animals are. So it is not that WOTH is more realistic/harder, it is simply a different mechanic. In WOTH you have a fixed difficulty, that you can select, for all animals. While, in COTW, the difficulty is according to the animal level. If I had to choose, I prefer COTW. And I know in COTW they basically nerfed this by adding maps with big lakes where you can shoot the harder/bigger animals from a safe non-spooking distance. However, that is always going to be the advantage of finding long range shooting positions, and long range shooting has its own risks.
- Tracking. You only track blood. How hard is to do that or not, it is irrelevant, it is a matter of balancing, for blood tracking. However, the main point is that there is no tracking, tracks, that is. The tracks are there only to show you the paths between need zones. In COTW: you can find any set of tracks and you can follow those tracks and you know those tracks will lead you to a single animal. Even if, as someone pointed out, tracking is not a big thing in real life and most hunting is done via visual discovery and sound clues, tracking has been one of the most satisfying ways to play COTW for me. It was extremely disappointing to find out that I simply couldn’t do the same in WOTH.
The above elements are key. As they are, as long as I understand them, take me to the conclusion that this game, in its simulation aspect, is extremely basic. It is like a team park where animals move on rails and your prize for shooting the right ones are simple bigger animals moving on the same rails. And no, I’m not implying that the animals actually run in rails, but the end result is nearly the same from a simulation standpoint.

Small yet annoying elements:
- Walking. There is no normal walking speed in game. The devs have made all sort of excuses. I don’t buy them. It was a no-brainer, something that the competition doesn’t do perfect, however, here the issue goes a step back instead of improving.
- Binos. You cannot zoom out with binos. Someone also pointed that zooming with binos in real life wasn’t also a thing. I couldn’t care less, this is a game and the competition already has it.
- Save system. A single save file system??? Seriously??? With how criticized was COTW with such system. It WAS a no-brainer too. 1980s software had a “save/save as” option. Many simulation games have “profiles”, or “careers”. Seriously, there is no way to do worst than what the devs decided here. Unsurprisingly, we have started to see the same complain about saves, and therefore progress, completely lost.
- Small game pays very low. Leaving out some of the most obvious examples, like ducks and rabbits. Why the only element considered for credits is the amount of meat?

Positives:
- The map and exploring elements are a strong point.
- In relation to exploring, some areas of the map need to be unlocked, either by doing some missions or by paying ingame money. This is interesting, COTW is known for its slow/unrewarding progression; if it had something like this, it would help a lot to have more fun while leveling up.
- Map environments, in general, feel a tad more realistic.

Neutral:
- Ballistics. I know nothing about the topic. Just from a point of view of a gamer. In WOTH is a little harder to aim. It has the nice animated bullet going thru the animal, but in general I don’t see any major difference with COTW. I’ve seen some comment about COTW not having bullet drop. I went and tested it, again. In COTW when not using the zeroing perk, arms seem to be zeroed to 150 meters. At 200 meter you see a very low drop, like say you aim for the center(10 zone) and bullets drops consistently on the 9 zone and so on as distance increases. It is harder to test in WOTH, as the shooting range is very limited and somehow the scopes are really bad; we might say the scopes are not as “arcadish” as in COTW. Then I went for the most extreme case, I zeroed for 50 meter and aimed at the 200 meters target. Oh surprise, no bullet drop, at all. Maybe the distance is really too small in both games, at least where comparisons are worth, with COTW limited to just over 400 meters, and with the zeroing option more granular in WOTH, I’m coming to the same conclusion, not a real difference between the two, in this area.
- Herd management. I think the idea was good, however, it has been implemented too rigidly with the fixed herds and zones. It requires a lot of patience and work with not such a big reward at the end. COTW is more rewarding if you do herd management. You end up with golds, diamonds, and great ones. In WOTH you end with 5 stars vs 3 stars that might pay you more money, but aren’t much harder to hunt.
- Missions. I simply finished the tutorial and decidedly ignored the rest; besides, the very first one was about hunting birds, and I hate hunting birds. What makes me return to this kind of game is the open world and the ability to do whatever I want; it is why I have over a thousand hours in COTW. But for that the core mechanics have to make sense.
Now, why this game continues to see less and less players? It has nothing to do with the mechanics I discussed at the beginning. I don’t believe those have been discussed or are known enough. I think it is actually the perceived difficulty, along the herd management system, that takes too long to get results, frustrating players at different stages.
TLDR: if you read this huge wall of text, thank you for your patience!! Otherwise, core mechanics are weird, not a real simulation, difficulty is not so difficult, but it requires a lot of work with little reward. I wish the devs would to something because I’d love to have an alternative to COTW.