Keepalive: Phantom Dust, theHunter

written on Wednesday, May 6, 2009

I didn't play any Phantom Dust today. I burned through three chapters yesterday and wanted a break. In some cosmetic ways, it reminds me of Crimson Sea 2. They both feature a hub area I visit between missions which is full of characters I don't know and who don't seem to develop. They both focus on a few people with sci-fi magic powers. I wonder if they are based on Japanese comics and / or cartoons I've never seen, or if it was easier to get them made when the possibility that they could spawn comics and / or cartoons was built in. There's a lot that's different about them, but I just got a weird sense of déjà vu every time I ran around the hub world, buying and organizing new abilities.

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And now, pretty pictures.


Oh yeah.


And I've discovered the main key to getting close to deer. Crawl everywhere. It seems ridiculous. In real life, crawling through tall grass is super noisy, and deer don't hang out around rustling grass. But in theHunter, it got me this close.

That's as close as it got before it saw me and bolted. I don't think I've ever gotten that close to a wild deer in real life, and I've spent a lot of days taking long walks in areas they frequent.

Here's another shot from the same session.

Yep. Crawling gets you close. I only got close to female deer in this session, so I still haven't shot anything. And I'm still not sure how I feel about the idea that the goal of the game is to kill animals. Full Disclosure: I've been a vegetarian since I saw that cow lowered into the raptor cage back in 1993.

In most games, you kill people and monsters because they're trying to kill you. It's as simple as that. A few games add non-combatants that can be harmed. theHunter's giving me defenseless innocents to kill. That's the point of the game. I'm not down with that.

I'm curious to explore that discomfort in the safety of a virtual environment. But I suspect that virtual or not, there's no going back from pulling that trigger. I don't think there's really any gore in the game. But I believe you can track via blood trail. I remember one player writing that he injured a deer and when it finally bled enough or just got tired enough, it couldn't do anything but sit there, watching him walk up and shoot it in the face.

I am so not down with that.