Man Vs. Wild With Bear Grylls

Imagine yourself parachuting out of an airplane in the Sahara Desert with minimal supplies and tools. Your goal? Survive and make it it the extraction point so you can be rescued. Honestly, that sounds like a great concept for a video game. I’m sure that’s what Floor 84 Studio with Scientifically Proven believed as well when they developed Man Vs. Wild With Bear Grylls the game. Sadly, the idea was far more impressive than the execution.

TV vs. Video Game

You might be thinking to yourself, can a TV show successfully be converted into a video game? You could argue game shows such as Family Feud or Jeopardy can, but how about a Discovery Channel show based around surviving in the wilderness? In Man vs Wild the game, you’ll be playing as Bear Grylls as he traverses five unique environments. Some of these include the Rocky Mountains, Sahara Desert, and the Everglades.

There’s no overall story to follow when you’re asked to tackle these environments. Your goal is to simply survive and hopefully by the end of the game, you will have learned a thing or too. You’ll definitely be in for a few laughs, as well as a few head scratching moments. After it’s all said and done, you should have played around four hours or so.

Bear with Me

When you start a level, you’ll parachute out of a plane and be asked to press button combos to perform tricks as you land. This adds to your score but doesn’t really have any other benefit. I mean, who doesn’t perform tricks on their way down into the middle of a dangerous environment?

Once you land, your goals in each level are to simply make your way to the extraction point so you can be rescued. However just as it is in the show, you’ll need to make sure you survive until then. This means making sure you’re fed, hydrated, and well rested. You’ll scavenge and hunt for food, locate weather sources, build shelter, and traverse the difficult environment.

All of that sounds like what you’d expect from a survival game, but Man vs. Wild simply doesn’t execute any of this well. Most activities such as hunting requires you to perform button combos quickly. These are repetitive and while the animal changes, the button actions do not.

You’ll come across some sections of the game where you’ll participate in a mini-game of sorts that’s specific to the environment you’re in. For instance, you’ll need to wade down a river in the Rocky Mountains or through quicksand in the Sahara Desert. These usually aren’t too difficult and sadly, they are about the only variation in gameplay there is.

One part of the game that was clearly a missed opportunity is the crafting system. As you journey onwards, you’ll find items that can be combined to create useful items, such as a spear. The downside is that these items can only be crafted during specific parts of the game. If you aren’t prompted to create the item, you won’t be able to until it asks you to. If they could have expanded on the crafting system and allowed for more exploration, this could have been a much more believable survival game.

Demon or Boar?

To say the graphics are poor in Man vs Wild would be an understatement. The environments, while varied, are poorly designed. The animals might be the worst part of the game as they look low-poly, even plastic looking. The boar I came across has no eyes and looked straight out of Diablo game. The alligator I fought in the Everglades looked more like an inflatable pool toy rather than a reptile hell bent on eating me.

The music got so repetitive at one point, I tried to head to the settings to turn it off. However low and behold, there was no option to do so. You’ll have to tread through the game having to deal with this unimaginative music on loop.

The sound is as you’d expect — sub-par. The audio is flat and non-engaging. Bear will sometimes repeat himself, making you wonder if they even quality checked the game. That being said, Bear often shares helpful tips and cool info about your situation. I found these tips to be the best part of the game. It’s the closest thing I had to feeling like I was actually in the show itself.

Pros:

• Bear Grylls voices himself and provides educational tips as you play

Cons:

• Poor graphics and animations
• Sound and music are repetitive
• Gameplay is simple with little variation
• Never truly feel like you’re surviving as the game is so linear