A Fantastic VR Hunting Game - Virtual Hunter Review

Doing actual, real life hunting, sounds pretty hard.

I mean think about it, you have to get all the gear, which must be expensive, and get a license.

Then you have to wait for the right time of year, drive out to your nearest hunting ground, and then avoid being shot by somebody else while you wait for hours, maybe all day, for an animal to appear.

Then you have to shoot another living creature, which doesn't sound easy either, and even in the best case scenario, you have a whole carcass you have to haul off and eat or whatever.

I've never actually been hunting, so any real hunters out there feel free to correct me in the comments, but all of that sounds pretty hard and time consuming.

Hunting gear varies a lot, and there is a lot of different equipment you can use in Virtual Hunter

So as a VR gamer, and if you're seeing this you can probably relate, I'd much rather get all of the highs and lows of the hunting experience by strapping my Meta Quest 3 to my face and doing a little virtual hunting in VR. At least that was my thought process when trying out Virtual Hunter for the first time.

There are hunting flatscreen games out there, plenty over the years, but a VR hunting game was something I hadn't experienced before running across Virtual Hunter, so I was intrigued. Needless to say, since I've written this article about it, Virtual Hunter kept being intriguing and is a really unique VR experience.

Sure, there are other VR games where you do some hunting, but that's not the core of those games and the hunting mechanics are pretty straightforward. In this VR Hunting Game, hunting is all of the game, and that focus made it very fun. So to explain the feeling of playing Virtual Hunter it would be easiest to just tell you the story of my first successful hunt.

Tracking your prey is a huge part of Virtual Hunter

Virtual Reality Hunting In Virtual Hunter

For the record, this wasn't my first Virtual Reality hunt in this game, just my first successful hunt. At this point, I'd spent an hour at least just running through the woods chasing animal calls and not even spotting a single critter or firing a shot.

My successful hunt started off with a little luck, and after finding some fox tracks and hearing a fox noise in the distance, I was on the trail. Sure this wasn't big game or anything, but we all have to start somewhere. I was very cautious trailing this fox. I didn't want to go too quickly and possibly scare it off. So I took my time, and followed.

Though when tracking this fox in Virtual Hunter I never felt bored, despite doing mostly nothing but walking in a straight line and looking through my scope from time to time. I actually felt pretty excited. There was a constant sense of anticipation. I felt that at any moment I might actually spot my elusive pray. I followed the tracks, found some droppings, and the fox calls kept coming from closer and closer.

Following the fox’s trail

After following it for a while, I didn't even know how long, I spotted it. The excitement at not shooting, but just seeing the animal I was following was incredible. I'd actually done it, tracked an animal successfully, and it was in plain sight in a large field. A more experienced hunter might have gone prone, crawled a little closer, and really lined up their shot to hit something vital.

I, being a very inexperienced hunter, immediately lined up and fired. Something in the back of my brain panicked and thought that just by the act of my seeing it the fox would realize I was behind it and run away. I thought that I should just take the shot and risk it, which was a bad idea. I did hit the fox at least, but not in any vital organs. So it ran away. I saw it run and immediately chased after it.

The chase after a shot is another exhilarating part of VR hunting. My prey left a trail of blood and poop, they always seem to poop a lot after you shoot them in this game.

I was right on the fox’s tail and sprinted across the field. The blood trail was even easier to follow. I tracked with more urgency, maybe too quickly, but after a short chase, I spotted it once again across a field, about to enter some trees. It was a long shot for me, but I lined it up and took it anyway.

Just spotting an animal was incredibly hard in Virtual Hunter, but also incredibly rewarding

I looked through my scope after rechambering another round and saw the fox just lying there. I ran over, not really believing that I'd done it. Succeeding just once had taken me a couple of hours, but the feeling of success after having to try so hard to get it was so worth the effort.

Virtual Hunter shows you where and what you hit with your shots, and it wasn't surprising that I'd missed all vital organs with both hits, but on a fox two bullets alone were enough.

Since a fox is a small animal it wasn't worth much in ingame currency, but that didn't really matter to me. What mattered were the highs and lows of the tracking and the chase. Since then I've repeated this process quite a few times on quite a few animals.

Two hits, but that was enough

Not all animals are the same, and there are enough differences in them and the terrain you hunt them in that it keeps things interesting, but even though most of the game is just walking through the woods, it's not boring. The sense of anticipation is constant when you're on an animal's trail.

The feeling that at any moment you might spot one and take your shot, and then the aftermath of that shot, is what keeps this game from being more than a walking simulator. It doesn’t get old, it honestly just gets better as you find more types of animals and unlock more options in the store.

That's why Virtual Hunter is the Best VR Hunting Game around. It's also really the only VR hunting game around, and it's still in development with regular updates.

The only part of Virtual Hunter that I’d say is boring in this review could be when you wander around and aren’t actively tracking an animal. This period of the game is usually short, but you’re really waiting for something to happen, which isn’t terribly interesting. Though the waiting does make hearing an animal call or finding some tracks feel all the more exciting.

There is also some jankiness due to the unfinished nature of the game, and you might have noticed that it doesn't look the best graphically, though some of that can be blamed on me streaming the game to a Meta Quest 3, which doesn't work the best with unoptimized games.

So Virtual Hunter still needs some work to be all that it can be, I won't deny that, but the jankiness that it has I've happily ignored to experience the thrill of the hunt while standing in my living room. It's a unique VR experience that I never thought I would enjoy so much.