The short version of a long debate is that, I don’t have a moral problem with other people hunting, but I’ve never felt the desire to do it myself in real life or in a game. Conversely, I do have a moral problem with people running around cities slaughtering innocent people, but I’m quite happy to do that in game.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking for a while that I should try a hunting game, so when I saw Hunting Unlimited 2010 would let me hunt in Idaho and had a launch price of 59p, I took the plunge.

The first thing that struck me was that the drag-to-aim control method was backwards. I was trying to drag the sights, not the screen, or vice versa, and kept dragging the wrong way. I soon adapted, though. Just took a bit of adjustment.

The second thing that struck me was that this is one ugly game. Rubbish sprites and terrible animation.

Anyway, I started shooting at things with my rifle and soon had a gold trophy for killing a deer with a heart shot.


And then I got one for killing a deer with a lung shot.

That made me feel very strange – and not in a good way. Slaughtering people I can do without a thought, but getting bonus points for sending a bullet through an animal’s lungs? I felt – and there’s no other word that quite captures it – icky.

I put the game down for a while. And when I came back I was over all that. I got my crossbow licence and went to Texas (you can hunt in all fifty states, with trophies kept separately for all of them) to try and shoot some boar. Tricky little blighters, especially with the crossbow. I got a few, but none of my kills were good enough for a gold trophy.

I’ll probably keep trying. I’m honestly not sure how good the game is, but when I was lying in bed last night, it was this game that kept me from turning the light out and going to sleep. Not because I was stricken with guilt, but just because I couldn’t put my crossbow down.