Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2013 lets you take on the role of a big game hunter, tracking deer in forests, tracking lions in savannahs, and more.

You have a rifle-shaped controller that you hold in two hands and point at the screen. The rifle has metal sensors in it so it can feel your pulse. How quickly your heart races affects some shots. You have to remain calm and cool despite wildly charging animals if you want to do well.

I thought the game had great potential. There's a storyline that has you and your competitive brother along with a calm, patient, hunting-minded father. Of course things quickly go awry and soon you're in the thick of things.

It was definitely a game that I loved at first and then things disintegrated quickly. The more hours I played, the more I got into highly improbable scenarios where enormously large packs of hyenas were just deluging me from all sides. This was definitely a time that the heartbeat sensor would have been cool! Could I keep calm while fending off wave after wave of enemy? But unfortunately this is exactly when the game does NOT care what you are feeling. Your heartbeat has no effect at all. That's definitely a shame.

There are the missions where you're simply riding "shotgun" and have to shoot things that attack you without controlling direction of motion at all. There are other missions where you are cautiously tracking game through a variety of environments.

The gun control is OK. You don't actually sight down it which is a shame. You just sort of point and hope the calibration is working properly. Most of the time the gun was fairly responsive but of course it gets really annoying when it lags or mis-directs occasionally.

I think the game has great potential, but I think it'll take another release or two before they get all the qualities just right.

Rating: 4/5

I was sent a review copy of this game and controller from the Amazon Vine program.

Buy Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2013 from Amazon.com