2022 had the potential to be a landmark year for hunting sims, with the recently released Way of the Hunter initially looking like it had the potential to connect the genre with a wider swath of gamers. We here at Half-Glass Gaming are by no means hunting sim fanatics, yet we were pretty excited for that release after the letdown that was 2021’s Open Country. Unfortunately, Half-Glass Gaming’s owner Josh had to admit that Way of the Hunter is probably not for everyone, despite the fact that is was a gorgeous and mostly well-made game.
So with the theHunter: Call of the Wild follow-up/spinoff Call of the Wild: The Angler, I was curious to if developer and publisher Expansive Worlds could avoid the already seemingly high amount of boredom that can be inherent to fishing. Unfortunately, at least based on the day-one Steam reviews for The Angler, boredom seems far from the worst offenses plaguing the game.
An overwhelming number of the negative reviews seem to point to the same issues, the biggest of which seems to be the apparent ugliness of the water graphics. This is not good for a game that requires the player to spend an majority of their time interacting with and looking at the water. It also sounds like there are some issues with the overall performance, with at least one reviewing commenting on a number of crashes.
There are some positive reviews, to be sure, although the majority of them merely commenting on what they found fun specifically. But even some of the positive reviews also mention a few gripes that tend to mirror the gripes of the negative reviews. So at least some of the users that did enjoy their time thus far –and who took the time to review The Angler — also saw its apparent flaws to some degree.
Now, it is worth noting that The Angler just released earlier today (August 31, 2022). So it’s early going and the developer could easily release a couple updates to smooth out the rough patches. This certainly could turn things around.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that negative reviewers are often the most vocal. These are folks who waste little time airing their grievances and enlisting hyperbole when extolling the transgressions of video-game performance these days.
Even more telling, though, is that when you look at the amount of time logged for all of these reviews, none of them appear to have played The Angler longer than roughly two and half hours. In fact, the only reviewer that logged more than three hours, with 5.1 hours on record, was a pre-release reviewer who was pretty positive in their assessment.
I was kind of looking forward to checking out Call of the Wild: The Angler, but considering the current mostly negative review average (and also the $29.99 price point), I think I’m going to wait to see how some of my more trusted review sites and content creators weigh in before I cast off.
