Almost impossible to like. Even if you're one of those people who skins bunnies for fun.
You play Flint, a grizzly game hunter trying to avenge the death of his hunting partner by bumbling into the wilderness and shooting everything he can. Now I would like to make it known that I am not a vegan, I don't recycle, and I don't avoid using aerosols incase they give some nearby gnats a migraine. Although I like animals, it's largely simply because they look cute and taste nice - I am a long way from an ecomentalist animal-sympathiser who pours buckets of tar over anyone caught wearing fur.
However, you do have to feel slightly immoral when going charging into a family of deer, shooting one in the face and strangling another whilst making the child deer watch, and then having your character smarmily say "Not a problem" or "They thought they could take me??" from his sinewy, punchable face. There's none of the reckless fun of ploughing into civilians in the 'Grand Theft Auto' series, and instead you just become steadily more tempted to let Flint take the occasional extra lion bite or moose stomp to the groin. Maybe it's because I'm not an actual hunter that I feel none of the bloodlust which fuels the game, but then again you don't have to be a maniacal boy-racer to understand 'Burnout', do you?
The hunting gameplay actually operates fairly well. There's a 'Hunting Mode' which highlights predators, tracking signs, etc, and tells you information about the age, gender, weight etc of any animal you focus it on, which if anything makes it even more heart-rendering to kill them. They might as well give it an adorable name and tell you it's also its Birthday whilst they're at it. There are certain carcasses which can be used to bait larger game, and a fiercesome arsenal of weapons at your disposal too. Whilst some animals will slowly meander around repetitive routes and make hitting them incredibly easy, other critters such as poisonous snakes are exasperatingly difficult to shoot, and basically end with you madly shredding up huge patches of turf with gunfire.
Although shooting handles OK, melee attacks in close encounters work.. less so. They revolve around the use of SIXAXIS, and tilting your controller is synonymous with the evasive moves of the character. This is acceptable in intermittent bursts, but when you're surrounded by a pack of a dozen advancing wolves, you do find yourself spazzing around for a good 5 minutes before they're all killed. The only alternative is to try to shoot them all in such a close range, but with a reload time of some decades and a camera turning curve of a lorry, you're better off just dancing around with your controller in the air for as long as it takes.
The graphics aren't too terrible, and provide an impression of a vast, open tundra to explore. However, as you begin to sneak through it, it's never too long before you're channeled into claustrophobically tight paths. At one stage I became maddeningly caught in an inescapable mesh of trees, and every where I turned there was just more tree, tree everywhere, until eventually I resorted to spinning in circles firing desperately at my surroundings in an effort to escape, all whilst Flint said "I should be careful, they might hear this gunfire... but it wouldn't be a problem... because they couldn't take me..."
Whenever you are rewarded with relatively open ground to explore, you can expect to be searching quite a lot of it, as the indicator guiding you to your nearest prey is about as reliable as a Sat-nav with a stutter. Some missions allow you a time limit of up to half an hour, so this isn't a game which keeps much of a rapid pace about it. And although the locations are fairly realistic and atmospheric, they lack interaction, and can become repetitive after a while. The water effects are quite nice, if a little let down by the fact that the sound of Flint walking through it sounds like an intense bout of over-lubed intercourse.
Finally, whilst we're on that subject (Flint's movement that is, not the lube bit), one of the most aggravating elements of the game is that your character will subconsciously shuffle forward when left to his own devices. You can be slowly scoping out a pack of bears, planning the ideal shot from atop a nearby mound, when all by himself Flint will slowly wander over the edge and go tumbling down, and the next thing you see are a bear's jaws advancing at the screen and you're stuck with another few minutes of SIXAXIS gymnastics.
Even if you're an actual hunter, I wouldn't recommend this game, simply because it's not a realistic enough simulation. The levels feel cramped, movement is capricious, your character is about as likeable as a bout of dystentry, and the patchy storyline of avenging your partner's death means gameplay is strictly linear and doesn't allow you much freedom. The only demographic I can see this game doing well with is hunters trying to recover from the death of a fellow gamesman, and in their spare time enjoy waving their arms about and getting bored.