Introducing the first Kinect game that comes with an accessory! Cabela’s Big Game Hunter: Hunting Party brings all the experience of a modern arcade shooting game to your home. Plus, it comes with a really cool gun peripheral!

Hunting Party reminded me most of those modern arcade gun games like Police 911 where you can move around as well as shoot, and I think there is a Big Game Hunter title in arcades that is almost like this one as well. In this game, you must shoot at animals on screen for points. But since it’s a Kinect game, you really can put your whole body into it. As you walk through the wilderness, you may need to jump over a bear trap, lean left and right to dodge obstacles and predators, kick open a crate for power-ups and ammo, or duck down to get cover for a better shot.

Those looking for a more deep hunting adventure experience like in other Big Game Hunter installments might be slightly disappointed with the more arcade style approach of Hunting Party. But personally, I liked it better. You have a selection of different obstacle-filled hunting areas to choose from, or you can pick Quick Play to have the game choose a random stage location. In order to move onto the next area, you’ll need to earn enough points by shooting game without missing.

The graphics are sharp and colorful and they make it easy to see what you can and can’t shoot by outlining it with a white or red line when you aim. You’ll want to try and avoid shooting does, and when a flock of ducks flies overhead, double pump your reloader on your gun to switch to your shotgun and back to rifle again.

But probably the coolest thing about Hunting Party is the Top Shot Sport gun accessory that comes with it. You even put the batteries in where bullets are loaded! It has two green lights and a blue light on the barrel that changes to red when you hit the trigger. These lights help the Kinect read where you are, and there is a rather extensive calibration process in set-up. But it’s not so bad once you get used to it. The only problem I had with the game was that when you pause it and come back to it after putting the gun away, sometimes it doesn’t read the gun as well as it did before you paused it. But that’s only a minor quibble. The gun aims surprisingly well, and can even tell if you performed a head shot (no bonus for that in a hunting game), or elsewhere. At any rate, hunting game fans who own a Kinect will definitely want to get this.

Kid Factor:

Big Game Hunter: Hunting Party is rated T for Teen with an ESRB descriptor of Violence. Some parents may have problems with their kids using a gun to shoot animals with wanton abandon, but shot animals just fall down and disappear in the game. I’d be OK with most any kid playing this, personally, but your mileage may vary. Reading skill is helpful for the instructions, and adult supervision is recommended for setting up the gun, Kinect, and calibration.

Tags: Game Reviews