Field & Stream Trophy Buck

Overview

It's a brisk October morning as you pull up in your 4X4 to your favorite hunting spot. Get out of the truck, assemble all your gear, and head off into the hills for a great day of hunting. Welcome to Field & Stream Trophy Buck, one of the first in the new wave of 3D hunting simulations. I'm pleased to say that this one looks to be a very promising game, once they work out a few bugs. The first thing that video hunters will really appreciate is the amount of hunting areas; you get eight hunting spots from around the United States, with a huge map to explore at each area. One thing that pops out at you when playing is the fact that you are not stuck in one area like the older hunting games. This is 3D, my friend -- creep, run, walk and stalk over every part of the hunting map. I don't know about you, but what kind of fun is it sitting in a deer stand all day while your butt goes numb and your bones get stiff? If I'm going to kill something, I want to stalk the bad boy that I'm going to bring down and put on my wall.

Gameplay, Controls, Interface

The environment in F&S Trophy Buck is awesome because of the 3D environment you interact in. You have the choice of using keyboard commands for walking and shooting, or you can choose the mouse for these controls. I recommend using the keyboard, as the mouse is really jittery and hard to shoot with. The best part of the game is the intelligence of the deer. These are not stupid deer, and if they hear you they will run and be gone in a flash.

Graphics

I just love the fact that you can walk over hills, cross small streams, walk between trees and so forth; it just makes the hunting all the more enjoyable when you can actually participate in the environment. There is one small thing that needs a bit of work and that is the graphics of the actual deer. I know they can do better; just look at the graphics of the deer in Deer Hunter 3D. The deer in F&S Trophy Buck are just a bit too small and the antlers need to look better. Other than that, Sierra has hit a home run.

Audio

What a nice tie-in with the graphics they have done with the audio. When you are hiking up a hill you start to hear yourself breathing harder, or if you are walking through the forest you will hear the crunch of leaves. Crossing streams will bring the sound of splashing; walking over rocks will bring up the sounds of gravel and rocks.

System Requirements

Minimum: Pentium 166, 32 MB RAM, 200 MB hard disk space, 6X CD-ROM drive, SVGA 640x480, 16-bit color, 2MB+ video memory, Windows compatible sound card, mouse, and 28.8kbs modem for online play.

Preferred: Pentium 200, 4MB+ video memory, and Direct3D compatible graphic accelerator card (3Dfx preferred).

Bottom Line

Field & Stream is a nice solid game; with a few tweaks here and there I'm sure that this game will be very popular with the video hunters out there. Sierra has done a kick-butt job in immersing you a very fun and challenging hunting simulation. On that note, my gentle reader, I say hooo yaaaa to Sierra for putting out a great game and encourage you to give it a try. Until next time, may your dreams be filled with Trophy Bucks.