I’m what you might call a mixed breed. My passions are hunting, trapping and tracking. Some folks would see me as a rough neck good ol’ boy, but I prefer to call myself an old fashioned woodsman. Now the other side of me is a clean-cut business man born in the digital age.

So what do you think happens when you hand me a “survival hunting” game by Cabela’s and a Wii controller? Well, I can tell you that I’m not only critical of the storyline and the realism of the hunting scenarios but also the quality of the gaming experience.

Cabela’s Survival: Shadows of Katmai is a game that has a pretty cool storyline about a bush pilot that goes down in the remote wilderness of Alaska. Now I’m lucky because I picked up the game via a kit that included the Wii Top Shot Elite gun. This makes playing the game a lot fun because it’s way more realistic.

The following information is my Trusted Review of Cabela’s Survival: Shadows of Katmai after playing the game this fall.

Quality

The product’s package was very well done. Just picking up the box and looking at the pictures made me want to dive into the game right away. I was really excited to get going and play the game just knowing that the quality of the experience was going to equal what I saw on the box. Right away the game starts off with quality graphics and the home navigation page was easy to understand. After setting up my Top Shot Elite gun and creating a profile I was diving into the story line of the game.

Being that I have done survival hunts in Canada as well as survival backpacking trips I was skeptical about the nature of the story. Turns out I was won over right away as I was sucked into the story. In the first scene I was battling wolves and even though my wolf hunting experience tells me that they wouldn’t actually bother a fresh plane crash my heart, fingers and adrenalin told me otherwise. Okay, so after the first level I took a second to think about what could be next and if it was going to still have the same quality in realism. Sure enough I had to find shelter for the night or else I would die and the only way out was to climb a rock face. Here is where I knew the quality was spot on. I say that because from my experience in survival situations you never have it easy when all you want is the simplest things, such as water or shelter.

Reliability

The game always seemed to show me that the next level was more believable than the last. The story continued to have depth and I became more connected with the character. The only thing that I sometimes had trouble with was navigating the levels using a Wii controller. I would have liked to see more options for viewing the game because there is something to be said about a game where you can view a complete 360 degrees from any angle. I’m sure this is available for the other systems but for Wii it’s a draw back on realism.

Price/Value

If you visit Cabelas.com to buy the Cabela’s Survival Shadows of Katmai bundle with the Top Shot Elite controller for the Wii, you're looking at spending around 60 dollars if it’s not on sale. In my opinion I would like to see this game package around 40 to 45 dollars however the game and the controller are absolutely worth 60 bucks. After you play the game all the way through ask yourself if you think it was worth the 60 dollars of entertainment. I think you will find that it’s a way better deal than spending 60 dollars on some other useless entertainment plus with the game you can always play again on a more difficult level to see how good you are.

Referability

Would I refer this to a friend or gift it to a loved one? Absolutely. This product is a ton of fun to play and it actually has a storyline that is exciting to follow. The quality and attention to detail are great. Sure it’s a little over-the-top when compared to a real life event but so are movies. The few things that I would tell someone when referring this product is that you have to run from the wolves in the first scene while firing the flare gun, don’t stay in the fight. I did this for 20 minutes until I realized that I just had to survive. Also I would tell them that with the Wii you have to understand that the game is limited in the number of views a player can control. Other than that I would refer this cool game to anyone who loves adventure and gaming.