Open Season is an animated film based around the story of a domesticated bear named Boog and his one-horned deer companion named Elliot. Boog has lived most of his life in the garage of Park Ranger Beth, and acts as the star of the town’s nature show. Things change for Boog when he meets Elliot, a fast-talking deer who is intent on showing Boog that there is much more to life than living in captivity. Shortly after, the two are relocated into the wild where, to their distress, hunting season is about to begin. The two unlikely companions team-up together to hopefully find their way back to the safety of Boog’s former home, and to avoid the dangers that face them within the forest.
The story is fun and entertaining, and offers a lot of flexibility in what gamers can expect to see throughout their adventure in the wilderness. From what we saw, the majority of the game takes place within a very stereotypical American forest – tall mountains, clear skies, raging rivers, and lush green grass that stretches as far as the eye can see.
Boog and Elliot realise Mark is about to take over the controls.
One level we had a look at was a typical forest scenario where gamers had to scare off hunters. The first thing that stood out is that gamers only control Boog, with Elliot sitting on his shoulder much like the Jak series. This offers quite a few different aspects of gameplay too. In this level the goal was to travel from point A to point B without being detected by the hunters who had set-up camp across the level, and to do this we had to frightening them off. Boog can sneak up behind hunters and roar, which is quite effective in itself, however, if there’s a pack of hunters things can become a bit tricky – although, with the assistance of Elliot, things became much easier. You see, the fast-talking Elliot can recruit other animals to help you in certain situations. There are different occasions where gamers can expect to recruit squirrels that can stun hunters by running up trees and throwing acorns at them, as well as a skunk that acts as a gas bomb and a rabbit that Boog can fling at an enemy’s head.
The game seems to rely on the element of surprise, since gamers must try to escape from the forest undetected. There are different abilities that aid gamers to do so too. Gamers can sneak around, and if a hunter is nearby, they can quickly make Boog and Elliot camouflage themselves with twigs and bushes to remain unseen.
The version we saw running was the Xbox 360 version, which, while not perfect by any means, did seem to fulfill expectations. There seems to be a lot of activity in terms of voice acting. The two main characters speak throughout the levels, with Elliot offering a number of witty remarks, as well as enemies and other native animals expressing themselves too.
Open Season appears to be your typical children’s adventure game. Gamers can expect to scale through twenty levels, where gamers must fulfill certain goals, defeat enemies and collect items.
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