Sometimes when reviewing any game, you can fall into this pit of anger or displeasure, and sometimes it is best to put space between you and the review before it goes out. The trouble there is forgetting about it. Later this week on the Epic Games Store, you’ll be able to pick up theHunter: Call of the Wild, a hunting game that sparked my mind back to Open Country. Open Country is a story-driven take on the hunting and survivalist genre from Fun Labs and 505 Games, and I think I hate every second of it with every last fiber of my being.

I loved the PS2 era, filled with every form of brilliance and utter nonsense. However, early on you are asked to do two things that are diametric opposites of each other: Craft yourself a little camping spot as you’d expect with a survivalist game, and ride an ATV through a maze to do a simple task. One of those things is gamified up to its eyeballs in “Oh, this will be fun,” and the other is crafting. What’s your point? One part of the game is trying to take itself seriously while the other set up race tracks in the world’s clumsiest way.

If you thought CJ moved like a tank back in San Andreas, well, fans of Panzermadels will be in luck because I’ve not seen a human’s legs control like a tank since I was supposed to get a man on a train. Performance is laughable, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that those working on optimization for Open Country were found in the bathrooms soaking paper towels and throwing them at the ceiling. Textures don’t know whether they are coming or going, every bit of grassland is given a bland green for the floor and then about two feet worth of whatever the massive blades of grass would be called. Assets, I’d assume, and something taking up resources for the Xbox One to load the game.

It looks great in the short view, everything is so lush and blowing about in the morning wind. Does it add anything? Performance issues in every regard. There are issues with pop-ins, stuttering, and everything you’ll have seen in the GTA: Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. That’s the closest you are getting to triple-A releases, one that was so broken the publisher had to apologize for it. The UI looks basic, and UX is horrid when using an Xbox controller. Meanwhile, the cast is voiced, but I won’t say they were acted. I think Plank from Ed, Edd n Eddy had more range than the entire cast of Open Country, and that was a literal cartoon plank with a face drawn on it.

What I am failing to understand through all of this, is where the fun comes into the equation. Gunplay is clunky, with performance hampering a majority of shots in densely packed areas full of grass. Crafting is done at the press of a button within a basic menu after doing a find-and-collect puzzle of figuring out which rocks you can pick up. Overall, there is nothing that Open Country excels at, other than being infuriating when you are being moaned at to drink water, eat food, sleep, or deal with the change in temperatures.

Overall, Open Country is a game that doesn’t know whether it wants to be a survival or story-driven game with weak acting and contrived set-ups. It seems like almost every decision made by the studio about design was done to contravene commonsense, such as controlling the map in the menu and how tooltips overlap placing markers.

How about the fact I turned the sensitivity of both the camera and the aiming to zero and it was still reasonably quick. The question I always have is, who is this for? I don’t even believe the survivalist fanatics would enjoy Open Country, even the boring ones that like to lick bark for sustenance.

An Xbox One copy of the Open Country was provided by 505 Games for the purposes of this review.

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Open Country

$14.99

3

Score

3.0/10

Pros

• At least the lush grass looks nice.
• A very nice world to sit in.

Cons

• Optimization is non-existent.
• No mechanics excel.
• The camera and aiming is very sensitive.
• Clunky menus and not the best UX.