During last week’s preview event held by 505 Games, Red Solstice 2: Survivors wasn’t the only game being shown off. Fun Labs’ latest venture into the wild encapsulates just about everything that they’re known for. It takes the animal hunting from their Cabela’s games and mixes it with flourishes of their Rapala fishing games and even some base building and crafting knowledge that they took from Stranded Deep. The final product is one with promise even if it can sometimes be rough around the edges.

Gameplay

As far as the gameplay goes, the core mechanics of Open Country are very nice. Movement isn’t stiff, hunting is smooth, and crafting is very user-friendly. The areas located within the game are sprawling with various crafting materials to find, animals to hunt, and adventures that you’ll organically find yourself on. Even though these are environments that you’re the sole person in, they still manage to feel like they have life in them.

While I like the gunplay in hunting, I would’ve enjoyed seeing more technique in it. Aiming and firing is nice but the areas in which you should hit an animal feel left by the weigh-side. You can shoot an animal almost anywhere and they seem to die instantly. I would’ve liked to see a more realistic approach as opposed to the arcade-like style presented. Another side note about the animals themselves; there are a bunch of different bugs that I encountered throughout my playthrough.

Animals would get stuck on foliage and rocks a bunch of the time but the weirdest thing I noticed was animals multiplying on-screen as I’d shoot at them. Nothing game-breaking but worth noting. I laughed at it more than anything. The worst things I encountered within the game came from its mission structuring and its vehicles, so this was nothing.

One thing that I wasn’t sure what to think of with Open Country was the fact that it had missions at all. I was also surprised to find a loose story that our created character finds themself in. I thought this would just be another survival/hunting game where they toss you out into the wild, teach you some things, and send you on your way. I actually like these little missions thrown in as they really don’t get in the way all that much. It’s a great change in pace to have some objectives once in a while.

My problem with the missions though comes from the way the game actually explains what it wants from you. For example; I spent 15 minutes walking from one objective to what I thought was supposed to be my next one. Instead, once I got there, nothing happened and I wasn’t given any indication that I wasn’t supposed to be there yet. Apparently, I was supposed to go to my RV (It lets you quick-travel) and then there. The weirdest part is that my on-screen compass directed me to the location and not the RV in the first place.

Besides that, another lackluster experience I had was my ATV ride. The game allows players to traverse the terrain with vehicles such as ATVs and Snowmobiles but at least in the case of the ATV, the driving is horrible. It felt like I was driving around with butter tires. It’s an interesting thing to see that in 2021 devs are still having a hard time nailing driving mechanics. Hopefully, it gets tightened up before release.

Expectations

From what I’ve played so far of Open Country, I’m super excited to see what the game has in store as I progress through its story and venture further into its environments. I’m hoping to see many patches coming as I play that’ll fix the issues I’ve already stated above. Visuals look great but I’m curious to see if Fun Labs is going to be adding visual options as there aren’t any that allow you to change much besides display size. Nevertheless, it’s clear to me that this game has had a lot of passion put into it with its mixing of genres and I’m sure the devs want this to look and play at peak performance when it launches next month.

Verdict

I’m hopeful that Open Country will deliver on its ambitious idea of fusing multiple genres in a singular game. At a time where most of us are still stuck in the house, it’s a joy to go into the great outdoors even if in a digital medium. Unfortunately, right now at least, there are some things that can break immersion at times. Regardless of that, I’m excited to continue playing Open Country as the month goes by. I’m sure this title will continue to surprise me as I continue to pull the layers back.

Open Country launches on June 3rd for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.