Dangerous Hunts '09, as the name might imply, has you stepping up your hunting game to a certain degree, with your character traversing the world in search of prey with a serious set of claws and teeth, often times getting into scrapes with various wild kingdom members like Lions, Bears, Hyena, Wolves, and so on. These aren't your cute little bunnies, or innocent looking deer, instead, these guys will go after you if you get close enough or flub a shot, and often times the game is scripted to have you surprised by a random animal jumping out from some brush or wood and getting the drop on you.

It's not all about shooting these beasts and taking them down for good though, as Cabela's features a variety of missions that will require you to perform different tasks besides just killing beasties, like tranquilizing wild life for the locals so they can track behavior patterns, or simply setting up traps and locating particular prey without actually killing them. It's not the most varied selection of missions in the world, but it's an attempt at doing something different with the license, and I can definitely appreciate that.

So, since you can be attacked by the wild life in this game, it's safe to assume that they've provided some type of defense as well. Dangerous Hunts will every so often provide a defensive encounter with whatever creature is attacking you, which basically boils down to a series of motions you'll need to perform with the PS3 controller (and I'm assuming button presses on the 360) to either escape or retaliate. However, the game never really gives you a clear understanding of what triggers these events, as there are plenty of instances where you'll be charged at by an animal and this option won't pop up at all, requiring you to try and get out of the way or take the beast down with a shot. I'm not sure if the encounters where it does occur are supposed to be scripted, but overall it feels really random.

Also, the game doesn't offer up a great challenge, and in fact it gets pretty dull as you advance. The only difficulty comes from figuring out the vague mission requirements on occasion, but most of your encounters will place you on a field of some type looking for a specific animal. It's really easy to just do a bit of wandering and run into whatever you're trying to locate, but even if you have difficulty with that, the game provides a unique ability to view the world in black and white, and will even highlight points of interest for you, really taking out the challenge aspect. It would have been nice to have some type of tracking ability (or a need to actually track), or the use of calls and scents to pull in your prey. Instead, everything is pretty straightforward, and it seldom feels like an actual "hunt". As far as content goes, Dangerous Hunts allows you to gain new weapons over time, and there is a decent variety to pick from. Some are obviously more useful on particular prey than others, so you will want to switch them out on occasion. There's also a bullet time like ability that pretty much brings everything to halt, allowing you to pick off incoming prey with even more ease than usual. It really feels a bit cheap to have this, since you're not really worrying about any type of ranged attack here. Imagine having this in a Call of Duty game but with everyone rushing you with knives instead of shooting with guns, and you'll get the idea of why this feels like overkill here.

Basically, if you've never played a Cabela's title before, then Dangerous Hunts '09 isn't going to be the game that finally draws you into the series. The mission selection is definitely a bit different from previous games, and having the various encounters with potentially dangerous prey is a great idea, but the actual execution feels pretty lackluster here. Also, the fact that I never really feel like I'm hunting anything is one of the biggest drawbacks, instead it feels like a poor version of a generic FPS that has swapped out Nazi's for Bears, and in the end, that doesn't work out all too well for me.