Cabela's Survival: Shadows of Katmai

This game is seriously bad. So bad, I'm not even going to do it justice with a proper review.

It's an action-platformer with shooting bits from time-to-time. It's sometimes difficult to understand where you're suppose to be going, but that's a minor issue.  The game is geared mostly for motion control, so it's relatively boring to play without, which I did. I think IndridCold bought it under the impression that it'd be similar to Cabela's other hunting games, but with a survival twist (which was the assumption I made as well), but it's just arcadey and stupid, with a stupid ham-fisted story as well. You're some guy helping someone transport a vaccine for a virus that's broken out in Alaska (probably too cold for viruses to survive up there) and your plane crashes in a snow storm. The rest of the game is a fight to retrieve the lost vaccine and reach civilization.


In your struggle through the Alaskan mountains, you're required to hunt animals, either for food or warmth. The virus you're racing to cure is causing aggression in the local predators, namely crows, bears, cougars, and wolves (but not the sled dogs you acquire later on), so you have to hunt for more docile animals such as goats and moose. Strangely, half the time you don't even retrieve the pelt or the carcass; the game just automatically assumes you've collected it and the story continues on its own.

Despite being a game about being lost and forced to survive, it's very linear, and the story is level-based. Having eventually come to terms with this and that you have to fight dozens of vicious predators (including a bear that tears down a tree and swings it at you like a club), I was willing to play a game that was more "gamey" and like a classic NES-style experience. However, I was almost done the single player campaign at this point as it's only like seven levels long. The game literally takes like two hours to play through, which confused the hell out of me, as there aren't even credits at the end; you just get the usual end-level status screen, then it asks you if you want to go back to the main menu. So between being nothing like other Cabela games and not offering a fulfilling single player campaign, there isn't really any reason to play this game.


Very shameful; very 2/10.