Great video games allow players to enjoy unique experiences and adventures, from exploring alien worlds to becoming the star player on a professional sports team. This also extends to more accessible activities, like fishing, cooking, and hunting.
Hunting games have been a staple of the industry for almost as long as video games have been around. With such a wide variety of titles to choose from — and many of them varying in quality — it can be hard to find the perfect hunting game. However, there are some true gems that offer a virtual hunting experience so immersive, players' hearts pound as they close in on their target.
10 Evolve Delivers Pulse-Pounding Team-Based Action
Evolve was, in many ways, the progenitor of games like Dead By Daylight and Friday The 13th. While those games focused largely on survival horror, Evolve leaned more into action. Evolve also let hunters kill the monsters, separating itself from other games where escape was the goal and stealth was the only option for survivors trying to avoid an overpowered killer.
Evolve might just be the best co-op hunting game on the market. Although it's been largely eclipsed by other diverse survival horror multiplayer games, its unique blend of action and horror makes Evolve a great choice for a small group of friends.
9 Experience The American Frontier In Assassin's Creed III
Assassin's Creed is one of the longest-running and most successful open-world adventure games in history. As the series progressed, the world got bigger, and more mechanics were introduced. Assassin's Creed III might be the best example, introducing naval combat, overworking previous development systems in the form of the Davenport Homestead, and implementing a crafting system for equipment upgrades.
Most crafting items were obtained by hunting everything from rabbits to cougars, using with pistols, arrows, or even leaping down from the trees with a hidden blade. The cleaner the kill, the more hides or meat could be obtained, so taking time to prepare was crucial. The acrobatic hunting that sometimes devolved into outright combat became a staple of later Assassin's Creed entries and was unlike any other hunting game.
8 Ark: Survival Evolved Makes Players Prey Long Before They Become Predators
When dinosaurs meet Minecraft, players know they're in for a treat. Letting players hunt, ride, and farm with dinosaurs, it's no surprise that Ark: Survival Evolved became one of the most popular survival games. Add the unlimited creativity of a vast crafting system including everything from laser gates to guns, and one has a solid recipe for a good time.
Before a player can do any of the high-level crafting or building, they need to secure three important needs: food, shelter, and water. While players will start out wading in the shallows to spearfish or hunt small dodo birds, eventually they will find themselves powerful and experienced enough to take down even the largest dinosaurs. It might seem silly to apply the word "realistic" to a game with a rideable T. Rex, but the growth of experience and mechanics present an immersive experience.
7 The Myth Is All Too Real In Bigfoot
Bigfoot is a hunting-horror game that follows a similar formula to Phasmophobia, where up to four players work together to hunt down a paranormal creature, but quickly learn they are the ones being hunted. Bigfoot adds another twist, by allowing a player to take control of Bigfoot himself and kill the hunters to preserve his habitat.
In this game, Bigfoot is no gentle giant. He can smash through windows, tank multiple shots from a rifle, and slam the hunters around like rag dolls. Hunters will soon dread the night when they realize their wide array of cameras, drones, and traps aren't meant to catch proof of Bigfoot, but merely to warn them he is coming.
6 Aliens Vs. Predator Sees Three Apex Killers Collide
Two of the most iconic action-horror franchises combine in Aliens Vs. Predator and no one is safe. Each race has its own specialty, with the Xenomorphs built for speed and melee combat, the Yautja being experts in stealth and maneuverability, and the Humans shooting, burning, or blowing up anything that moves.
No team is invulnerable, and each has abilities that counter their opponents. The Aliens can see cloaked Predators, the Humans have motion trackers, and the Predators have multiple modes of vision for detecting different enemies. In Aliens Vs. Predator, it only takes a moment for a player to go from predator to prey, leaving them constantly on edge.
5 Hunt To Survive The Dangers Of The Forest
The Forest is a 2014 survival-horror game, with an emphasis on survival. As seemingly the sole survivor of a plane crash on a remote peninsula populated by cannibals and mutants, players must search for the main character's missing son and adapt quickly if they want to survive. The game features a robust crafting system, and players can build everything from ziplines to floating homes.
Once the airline food is gone, players will have to hunt for food. Plenty of berries and mushrooms are available, but just like in real life, most are poisonous. Instead, players will slink through the trees with a sharpened stick or handmade bow, attempting to ambush deer, lizards, and rabbits. The Forest rewards a slow and stealthy approach. As players work to lay out traps instead of running around and stabbing anything that moves, they'll experience plenty of tension.
4 Big Buck Hunter Is An Arcade Staple
Since the early 2000s, almost any arcade featured a Big Buck Hunter machine. The game combined serious hunting, such as penalties for killing a doe and bonuses for cleaner kills, with silly minigames and an over-the-top safari feel. It became an instant classic, made only more popular by newer editions that added the ability to compete with friends for a better hunt.
While games like it were nothing new, Big Buck Hunter perfected the simplistic, arcade hunting experience. Its many editions and console ports became a standard fixture in arcades and bars around the world, giving it an elevated status among the rather niche genre of hunting games.
3 Hunting Is No Easy Feat During The Long Dark
The Long Dark takes place on a remote island in northern Canada after a geomagnetic disaster renders all electric technology useless. Players will have to grapple with starvation, infection, hungry wolves, and the bitter cold. Since the Canadian winter isn't famous for harvests, hunting is just about the only sustainable way for players to eat. However, they start off as complete novices.
Once the starting location has been scavenged, players will have no choice but to move on to try and find more food. Even after obtaining a rifle, the player's abilities are just about limited to knowing how to point and shoot. In The Long Dark, the fear of startling away a deer that might be one's only salvation and the satisfaction of finally landing a kill gives the hunting equal emotional and mechanical depth.
2 Duck Hunt Is A True Classic
Duck Hunt may be the game that started it all, and its influence on the hunting genre is profound. Most casual or arcade hunting games follow directly in its footsteps, offering the classic challenge of shooting as many targets as possible with as few shots as possible.
Duck Hunt wasn't just fun and innovative, it also had plenty of personality to it. The companion dog would congratulate or mock the player depending on how they performed, and it has become an icon of the 8-bit era.
1 theHunter: Call Of The Wild Is The Most Immersive Hunting Sim Ever Made
The terms "immersion" and "realism" are thrown around a lot in gaming. Games are lauded for their immersion or derided for lacking realism. theHunter: Call of the Wild is both realistic and immersive, featuring hunting reserves that are breathtaking. Similarly, the animals' behavior mirrors their real-world counterparts.
After a few hours of playing theHunter, players will have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of their prey, and the only reminder that they aren't actually trekking along a mountain ridge is that their fingers, not their feet, will be sore. Featuring the ability to hunt online with friends, and theHunter: Call of the Wild stands as the best hunting game available.