theHunter: Call of the Wild™ - Peru Hunting Reserve DLC

PROS -very beautiful nature environments, colors are vibrant and the jungle feels alive -high animal population, you can hear sounds and calls everywhere, I got 3 jaguars in 1 hour of game time -a lot of new and interesting animals, unlike past reserves that mostly contain 1 totally new animal. CONS -very dense vegetation, hunting can be difficult especially if the animal is spooked -missions are boring and silly as ever, as with all new maps, we will never see missions like we had back on quatro, yukon, layton etc, those will never come back. All in all the map is decent and good even if it's not Africa 2.0, however, the game still has a lot of bugs, the dev team and current people in charge of the game are still the same people, so on this note I am not sure if I should recommend the game or not. As someone melancolic about this game since It's been part of my life for the last 9 years, and as someone who got to play a very alpha version back in 2016, I'm biased and I always get a sense of joy seeing new content still getting released even to this day, but this might not be something everyone can relate to.

After spending a few hours in this map I have to say that it's a bit meh. It's also had quite a bump in price....I can remember when new maps were about 6 quid, now they are over a tenner. There's just not enough variation and nothing out of the ordinary to justify the cost. The new crossbow is just about ok and is nowhere near as good as the crossbow in the dlc pack. The best I can do is give it 5 out of 10....and that's being generous. Overall, it's a no from me....

Not updating the maximum render distance for this game after all these years is atrocious. You can really feel it when you look out across open spaces and can't see anything because any animals turn invisible. They could easily do it since there have been mods in the past on Nexus Mods that would fix this issue but the devs keep putting out DLC to keep the lights on. I would be excited for DLC but the game is starting to feel jank after a decade and the graphics are finally becoming dated (they were top of the line when COTW first released). Game needs a big glow up, new graphics, new UI that isn't so finicky on PC, new render distance, etc. Also, I am still banned from the Steam Forums for mentioning a topic that was against the rules. Being banned for 4+ years is just annoying when PicSoul could have just did a temporary suspension or a warning even. I've been told I can hope in the Discord to send a message and get unbanned but I just keep forgetting. Maybe when I get that sorted I will give this game and its DLC a positive review finally. I always go to make a comment on a new post for this game or update and then get that big red banner "you have been banned from theHunter Call of the Wild Steam Forums" I'm like yeah, one mod banned me years ago. Out of 3,100+ games owned on Steam, this is the only game I have ever been banned from the Steam Forums. A bit ridiculous.

The Peru Hunting Reserve contains 14 animal species, 10 of which are unique to this map,also comes with a new cross bow,This map looks amazing so far its clear the devs put in alot of effort with the animal species and the map itself.Also there are 60 new missions with this map. i give it a strong 9 out 10. ---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☑ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☐ Workable ☑ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☑ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☑ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10

Another nice reserve to while away the hours. So far having a lot of fun with it nut there are two minor gripes. The first is the age old issue of floating rocks/stones. Some areas seem more badly affected than others, One viewing station I found even had them on the wooden viewing platform. The main issue though is the extremely poor vegetation effects when you look through the rangefinder or scope. 60% look fine but the rest look like something from a bad 1995 console game. They look a blurred pixelated blob of green and it absolutely ruins the immersion of playing. To have sharp clear trees standing amongst that mess looks very odd. Quite a surprise really considering I thought Expansive Worlds had upped their game with the previous reserve releases. I hope it can be fixed but time will tell I guess. I'll still give it a thumbs up despite that.

Honestly, it's a good map, but I can't give it a thumbs up until they fix the terrible plant rendering distance for some of the bushes. I don't know how something so blatant could make it past QA.

A solid 3 out of 5, but just too annoying to give a +ve to. Nice vegetation except that they still have the 8 bit distant foliage which doesn't upres when you look at it through binoculars or a scope, a bug in the game as long as I've been playing and which they now say is a low priority to fix, if ever. Given the intro makes great play about how the reserve has so much foliage, that's a choice all right. Did they not know? The map also has some very brushy sections, so if you love crawling around with nil visibility and relying on your super hero eyes, yeah you. How dense? You can get an 'animal fleeing' and still not see it. At least the hills are easier to climb. In a lot of ways this really feels like Sundarpatan v2, especially with the cut-and-paste of tigers as jaguars (not the only animal with shared animations). Does this mean we are back to their previous habit of one good map and one low effort map per year? Recycle foliage, animations, etc.? Takes me back to New England... Elsewhere, the missions are the usual tedious mix of 'gold of everything' and 'take photos' along with some 'outpost missions' that feel like daily challenges. Remember the old maps with a weapon you had to *earn* by working through...nah, not here. Kill one of *anything* in every region, doesn't matter if you mess it up, doesn't matter if it's the same animal you killed in a different region, just as long as it's dead and you get the new crossbow. Why are they even bothering with missions at this point? Every map it's the same 'here is *our* conservation reserve* and, if you're unlocky, a 'comedy' duo to switch voice narration off for. Music, I can't speak to, I never play with it on and genuinely forget it's a thing other than annoying to keep getting a fanfare as you skip over a region boundary. TLDR: it looks nice, the sound design is good, but if you didn't like Sundarpatan and don't enjoy wading through a lot of bush, I can't see you enjoying this, either. The wide open mountains are nice, but that 400m render distance kills that utility, too. Oh yeah. Whitetail are on this map, too. Regardless of whether or not it fits with the ecology of the region, they are on enough maps already that EW could have done better and added something new. Or maybe they were just adding out the roster.

There I was walking through the jungle, Fortunate son playing in the back ground, M16 in hand, as I was walking, my dog ladybird, started growling. That's when I knew Charlie was close, we pushed forward into what could only be described as a lush, mosquito infested hellscape and boom, there was Charlie, sitting not 10 feet from me, aimed down my sites as to extinguish the light from their eyes, only to be eaten by a Jaguar that decided I was todays MRE. 10/10 Nam simulator.

the black caiman launched itself at me like the ARK kaprosuchus. 10/10.

The animals are good, they are for the most part re-used rigs. But I am not going to complain when I get to hunt Jaguars. The real issue I have with this one if the map is sloppy, there are a LOT of graphical, and enviromental issues: Misplaced textured, floating trees, hovering rocks, colission issues etc. A lot of the time animals will get stuck when fleeing because of this. The wetstern andes section of the map is extremely open which personally I love, but the lack of render distance is noticable. Further in the east the foliage is very thick, however only up to like 100m after that when not ADS with binos or a scope, all foliage vanishes. You can spot animals quite easily like this but can't shoot them because as soon as you ADS everything pops back in. Overall great animals, VERY sloppy execution! This one feels rushed out the door and because of that I can not recommend it compared to maps like Sundapatan.