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Cabela's African Safari: PETA's worst nightmare

Should you be a hunter to enjoy playing this type of video game?I'll leave you to answer that question on your own. I myself have donehunting in the past and enjoy the sport. Cabela's African Safarisaves you from spending the night in some cold un-insulated tentslaying on the ground, the mosquito bites, and even the expense ofbuying a tag.

I remember the days of playing Deer Hunter on the PC. A lotof things have changed since the time of wandering around aimlessly inopen fields waiting and hoping to find a buck to take down. I rememberit taking sometimes hours in order to find that one prized set ofantlers. No such frustrations anymore, especially with the advent ofhigh-end consoles such as the Xbox 360.

Cabela's African Safari, which is published by ActivisionValue, has made many great leaps and bounds since its predecessors thatI mentioned. I know what you're thinking, Activision Value. How goodcan a game from Activision Value be? Pretty damn good, honestly.

Cabela's African Safari is surprisingly easy to jump rightin and get going with almost no read of the instruction manual. Afterentering in your save location information, you'll be greeted with themain menu. The main menu itself looks daunting, but several of thoseitems are not currently unlocked. You'll have to unlock those bycompleting other missions.

Whereyou will most likely start off -- and everyone should -- is the Safarimode. Upon starting up the Safari, you'll have the opportunity to meetwith three individuals: the Porter, the Guide, and the Tracker. ThePorter will advise you on what type of weaponry you should carry foryour Safari. The Tracker will help you with what his title indicates,tracking. The Guide will be the main person who you interact with; hewill give you your daily schedule.

In this daily schedule, you can select different safari adventures.The first safaris contain small games and are relatively easy tocomplete. For example, I had to do some wing shooting. The wingshooting entails me taking a shotgun into some brush and taking out afive fowl. It didn't take me long to complete this. Maybe all of threeminutes tops. Although these fowl moved in different directions, theywere pretty cumbersome. While airborne, they made for easy targets.Being typical, it will progressively get harder as you move on andcomplete safaris.

While engaged in your hunt, the left stick controls the player’smovement, while the right stick controls your view. The left triggerwill activate your scoped view, and the right trigger is your firebutton. You have the ability to have two different weapons on yourperson. Most of the time, one being a rifle and the other a handgun. Asalmost any hunter would know, it is always best to have a backup weaponwith you while hunting. Using the D-pad allows you to switch betweenweapons. The back button shows your current goals and allows you toinstantly change your loadout.

For those of you who haven't done any hunting in real life, I'llexplain in a little more detail why you need to have a backup weapon.While out on a safari I was walking around hunting some antelope typegame. A red dot on my radar, which indicates a hostile animal,appeared. The radar significantly helps finding predators and again youare seeking. A white ring encompasses each dot. The light ringindicates the animal's awareness of your presence. If you crouch downto minimize the noise you make, the white ring will shrink, indicatingthe animal is not as aware of your presence. Almost like in real life.Just like in real life, sometimes other animals hear you and in thiscase, what hurt me was an African dog. The African dog heard the noiseI was making and decided that I look like a tasty treat. Here's whereone of the cool features comes into play. The dog began chasing me andas he got close to me I pressed the left bumper button. This activatedthe adrenaline mode. The adrenaline mode is similar to a bullet-timemode. Everything slows down and you can aim more accurately. This timedoes run out rather quickly so you had best make good use of it. As Ihad mentioned having in need of a backup weapon, this is the exactscenario where you want to have a backup weapon accessible.

Theother cool feature is the hunter sense mode. This is another variationof bullet-time. As you bring up your crosshairs preparing to take fire,you can press the right bumper button, which will activate the huntersense time. Everything again will slow down, helping you take a betteraim as you prepare to fire.

To bring things all together, let me walk you through a typical hunting scenario in this game.

You start out with your goal in mind; let's say today will behunting black rhinoceros. We’ll have the one rifle and one handgun atour disposal. We'll get some helpful directions from our Tracker andweapon suggestions from the Porter. As we walk around, we note a dot onour radar. As we move towards the dot, we can see in the distance thatit is in fact a rhinoceros. We hit “B” to crouch down. Left triggerbrings up our scope and we get a closer view of our prey. Theinformation in the right-hand corner confirms that it is a male blackrhinoceros, exactly what we're after. Right bumper activates our huntersense mode and a gentle pull of the right trigger sends a rounddownrange. BAM! The rhino is hit. The information in the right-handcorner changes and lets us know that our rhino is now injured. However,the rhino isn't simply going to sit there and wait for us to reload andtake another shot. Depending on how bad he is injured, he is going tomove away or, if you are unfortunate enough to be close enough, he willcharge you. Time is of the essence here and you want to get anothershot off quickly and as accurately as possible. If it takes a secondshot to bring the rhino down, try to pay attention to the color of yourcrosshairs. The crosshairs will turn red when you're in a prime killzone area. If you manage to get a shot off while in this kill zonearea, a cut scene will take place showing the bullet travelingdownrange and striking your prey. The prey, almost in a ragdollfashion, will fall to its side and roll over. That's it. You've justbagged your first kill.

Thesafaris themselves are timed, which puts enough pressure on you to getthe job done and not dilly-dally all day long. Your guide will kindlyremind you as time runs out that you need to hurry up as well. If youdon't manage to complete the goals that were set forth in the safari,you will fail the mission. You will have to complete a certain amountof the safaris before you are eligible to go after the dangerous seven.The dangerous seven includes games such as the rhino, the elephant, thelion, and more. More and more of the seven dangerous games will beunlocked as you progress through the safaris.

The visuals are pretty decent for an Activision Value game.Although there is a minor amount of blood that’s displayed when yourprey is struck by the bullet, it’s definitely not overkill by anymeans. The background scenery is pretty enough to keep you interestedin the game. The scenery itself will change as you move throughout thedifferent areas of Africa.

You can't and shouldn't expect much in the audio department.There's a little background music while you're playing as well as thesound of the undergrowth crushing beneath your feet.

The main point of this game, after all, is hunting. There is plentyof that to do as well. You'll find yourself hunting from a Jeep, andeven a boat at times.

I've saved my complaints for last. The complaint I have is one thathelps you during a game that takes away from some of the realism andchallenges. During mid-game you're allowed to select different types ofweapons. Now as anyone with or without hunting experience can imagine-- how on earth, while in the middle of the African safari, can yourequest to change the rifle you are carrying and have it happen? Ithink it would've been much better to have it so that you were stuckwith what you decided to choose in the beginning of the Safari. Not abig deal, as I said it does give you an advantage to be able to switchto a bigger caliber rifle mid-game.

I checked online for prices for this game and found that it wasonly $29.99. Not bad at all considering the prices of some of today'sgames. In this review, I didn't even get into the other modes such asthe instant hunt, wing shooting and others. There is quite a bit ofreplay value in Cabela's African Safari.

So, whether you're an experienced hunter or someone who might beinterested in the sport itself, take a look at this game. For theprice, it’s definitely worth adding to your library.