Cabela's African Safari

"At least Duck Hunt had a cool controller."

Cabela's hunting 'simulation' returns to the PSP with Cabela's African Safari, a sequel to Dangerous Hunts: Ultimate Challenge, which was released a mere six months prior. Unlike its console brethren, African Safari follows the path cut by Dangerous Hunts, producing a simplified game focused on instant gratification over patience and precision. But not unlike the classic hunting title Duck Hunt, monotony sets in as the experience bleeds into repetitive boredom.

The cover of African Safari is quite fun though, I have to admit - it shows a hunter on the wrong end of a charging rhino's horn, as a hunter looks on, shotgun in hand. Problems abound here though, so where to start? The hunter getting mowed down looks to be fainting overdramatically instead of taking a horn to the gut or is avoiding it with a Matrix-like move - either way, he's not using a gun and looking like a sissy. The other hunter, the one with a gun in hand, seems to agree with my feelings on the other man, as the barrel of his gun is not pointed at the rhino but at his knee cap. The Cabela games have always been on the wrong end of bad covers, but this one is just plain ridiculous. Come on Activision, at least make your game appear competent from the outside!

Though not as off as the cover, the actual game doesn't prove the cover as wrong as it should have done. After a lengthy loading screen (you're a PSP owner, you've become accustomed to it by now, right?), you're prompted to select one of four Caucasian hunting superstars, none of which have distinguishing features, to serve as your in-game avatar. Now that you've reached the main screen, you can select one of African Safari's many gaming options, which range from the Safari Hunt story mode to the pick up and play Instant Hunt mode, as well as four not so interesting bird and animal hunting mini-games.

The meat of the game comes in the form of Safari mode, which has you hunting across five seemingly identical African countries, differing only in name. As you kill animals in this mode, you unlock new weapons to use and animals to hunt in the other modes. This game opens with an introduction to the first country of your hunting tour, Namibia, with a terrible piece of FMV that is not only horribly blurry, but as lively as a travel brochure, spending most of the time showing empty landscapes. From there you are teleported to that country's lodge, a small area that allows you to talk to the three nameless African NPCs that help you throughout the game - the Porter, the Tracker and the Guide. One of the funniest moments happens here, as there is a cut scene welcoming you to the lodge that has a prompt saying you can skip the cut scene by hitting X, but before you can even hit X the super short scene ends!

After spending some time chatting up your nameless guides, who provide very little in the way of interesting information, you can select what you want to hunt from a day planner and then head out into the vast wilderness for the sole reason you are playing this game in the first place - to shoot animals! Don't expect to gear up beforehand though, as in the console games - here you have access to every unlocked weapon, each with unlimited ammo, at any time during hunts. Strategy? We don't need no stinkin' strategy!

After another lengthy loading screen you finally come face to face with the actual game! Waiting for you, after some tweaking of the options of course, is probably the best FPS controls the PSP can muster, using the analog stick to look around, the four shape buttons to move around, the shoulder buttons to aim and shoot and the D-Pad for miscellaneous actions. To further help you control the game, there is also the Hunter Sense, which slows time for those important shots.

The gameplay breaks into two different styles, essentially - hunts on foot and hunts in or on a vehicle. Hunts on foot make up the majority of the gameplay, sending your hunter out to track and kill your intended prey. Hunts on a vehicle have you in control of only your gun as you attempt to kill a set amount of animals before time runs out. Don't expect much of a challenge though, regardless of the selected difficulty, because as long you keep quiet there is very little to keep you from scoring a kill with ease; the only difference between difficulty levels is the days allowed to finish hunts and if you have the use of the radar or not. If you do happen to scare something, it will almost always run in straight line patterns before stopping without reason, even right in front of you! Despite that, it is still fun, for a while at least, to sneak up on unsuspecting animals and snipe them from afar, a visceral experience, much like lighting a firecracker or smashing a glass bottle. But wanton destruction on helpless victims is only fun for so long.

One of Cabela's biggest problems over the years has been the decent use of sound but a poor use of graphics and don't expect that trend to change here. Animals and guns are represented with realistic sounds, while music fits snugly in the background, the audio serving its purpose but ultimately being forgettable. The graphics in the field are acceptable, generally holding up the frame rate, limiting draw-in to a minimum and producing landscapes that resemble an early PS2 game's take on real life. The Level design doesn't help the graphics by being tight and of few variations though. Character models fare better, with strong details and skins, especially on animals on the ground - but only when hunting on foot. When hunting herds of animals from a vehicle you will laugh at the pathetic 16-bit quality of your prey. Unrealistic, robotic animation further brings down the overall level of the graphics, leaving me to add to the complaint pile that grows larger with each Cabela game: please put more time, money and effort into the graphics engine - at least pretend you care!

For $30, you could probably squeak out enough value to warrant a purchase of Cabela's African Safari, but the problem stems from who that person would be. Fans of Cabela's console titles will find a game quite unlike their home version, in my opinion a change for the worse. Real hunting fans will find the shooting gallery in 3D gameplay lacking in all the traits they enjoy in the real sport. That leaves only the visceral gamer who can do much better than this mediocrity hunt fest. Just say no.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/07