I recently picked up Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2011 Top Shot Elite bundle for the Xbox. It came with the game and the sexy looking gun controller. I have to admit that the reason I bought the bundle was because I saw it displayed at my local GameStop and I thought, “Wow this is pretty sweet looking! I gotta have it!”(Yes I fell for that marketing practice) So I got it! (One perk about being an adult, we can buy games whenever we want hehe.)

First thing I did when we got home was bust open that bad boy. The gun looks great and feels great in your hand. We popped in the game, synced the gun to the Xbox, placed the sensor bar above the TV and away we went until we started the calibration process. Talk about a pain in the a$$! No matter where we stood, the gun would not calibrate. The only area where the sensor bar worked, was RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TV!!!  We were like WTF?! Obviously, we can’t play a game with a giant sensor taped to the middle of the screen, so we improvised. We got the packing tape out and taped the sensor bar hanging from the top so only a little bit of the screen was covered (See picture.)

Now that that was done, I went to work to satisfy my thirst to hunt! There are two modes in Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2011, Story Mode and Galleries. They story mode was a lot of fun but I highly recommend that you use your regular controller for this as I tried playing with the gun at first and it was a nightmare! The controls are very similar to any FPS game, so transition from gun to controller was a piece of cake.  In the game you’ll expect to see bright detailed environments, great sound effects that add to the suspense of the hunt ( it even made me jump a few times) and of course plenty of wild animals to hunt like bears, lions, baboons, and tigers. Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2011 is pretty straight forward; you hunt, kill, and try to stay alive. To make the game a little more engaging they added tasks throughout the level. For example finding journals and buffalo horns, to shooting all the Marksmen targets in each level.


The other gametype, Galleries, is filled with more than 30 challenges including timed score tests, survival challenges, and multistage treks that feature branching paths. Now this is when the gun becomes FUN! It’s like Duck Hunt on Steroids but instead of ducks, its wild animals.

All in all this is a fun game and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes to hunt and/or shoot wild animals. Also, you can get some easy achievement points out of this game as there are only 19. I’ve gotten 8 out of 19 w/ a total of 450GS and that’s just for completing the game! Now the big question, “Should I buy it new?” If your heart is set on getting the gun controller then I would get the Top Shot Elite bundle for $79.99 otherwise rent or buy used.