Games with Realistic Tracking Mechanics

[arccos]

Insipired by Berzee's thread on Detective Games About Detecting.

Are there any games where tracking plays a large part? I.E. broken branches or footprints in a forest, animal droppings, maybe sounds in the distance, etc?

It seems like interactivity isn't quite to the point where games like these would be really good, but I'm hoping to be proven wrong. I imagine there may be hunting games like this? All the ones I've seen consist of wait-for-animal, kill-animal mechanics which isn't the same thing, of course.

[clorax]

UnReal World has tracking using footprints, but I haven't played it in ages so not sure about the rest.

[Kelron]

Try The Hunter. The basic game is free and its pretty to wander around in, even if I totally failed to kill anything.

URW has footprints, sound, blood trails from wounded creatures as well as snares and traps. It's all done via skill checks rather than working it out for yourself, though. Very good game.

[DaftPunk]

Can you hunt stuff with bow in THE HUNTER ?

[Berzee]

Woot! I'm an inspiration!

Interesting question. I don't know of any recent "complete games" that have it (I doubt my preferred genres intersect much with the games where tracking is likely to be implemented =P). Here's all I can think of:

Wolf! It's a game from 1994 where you play as a wolf, and can track prey (and avoid hunters) by using your various senses (smells has the best range and can actually tell you where stuff is from multiple screens away, but it's dependent on being downwind...hearing has medium range in all directions, but provides vague information...sight is limited to the top-down view around you). That's a different sort of tracking, but still. ;)

Yeti Hunter! This is a sort-of-game that has you sort-of-tracking pools of blood and footsteps to seek out the elusive Yeti!

As a sort of weird BEING-tracked experience, I was very surprised when playing a snow-laden level in NOLF2 (I think it was 2) to hear a guard suddenly mutter "Now wheeeere did these footprints come from?"

[Kelron]

Can you hunt stuff with bow in THE HUNTER ?

I think there's a bow. Might have to pay for it.

[DaftPunk]

I checked it out and they have subscribtion :| LAME!

[victory]

I'd really like to see some open-world games (think Far Cry or Stalker) incorporate subtle stuff like animal/human tracks which would occasionally lead you to something interesting or useful. Also dropped/abandoned items, blood spatter etc. which could give you some ideas of what has happened at the location, or inform you about possible future encounters. Specifically, I'd like to see some game do this and never highlight the things for you or explain their significance - either you would spot them and make use of them, or you would not.

Also, maybe real navigation with map and/or compass. No minimap, no quest markers, no dot marking your current location or any found location on the map. You could just scroll and turn the map around, or draw/write on it yourself.

[Berzee]

Far Cry 2 actually does a *small* amount of that with some of the hidden diamond briefcases. It's not animals or human tracks, but there have been a couple of times where I noticed a breadcrumb trail of destroyed vehicle parts half buried in the sand, and when I went to investigate there were diamonds about 50 feet away, with maybe a dead guy laying next to them. It would be nice if it happened more and in subtler ways than smoldering car pieces, yeah =)

[SirKicksalot]

Far Cry 2's grass is flattened by vehicles. I don't think that has any use in the game. Hopefully in FC3 animals will flatten it...

Prototype 2 makes me feel like a predator. You have some sort of sonar in your head used to track targets. Get up to a high building, ping and see where the echo ripples from. It's fun as hell for such a simple mechanic. You can also use that sonar to figure out which enemies are watched by others and consume those that aren't. It's absolutely hilarious to eat your way through an entire base without raising an alert. Basically you're The Thing!

[Olero]

I immediately thought of Discworld Noir [spoiler] where you track, albeit for a very short while, track a murderer while you're a werewolf [/spoiler]

[Henke]

Seconding The Hunter, here's a gameplay video I made of it a while ago:



I had a lot of fun with the free version. The gameplay is very challenging. You'll often spend half an hour wandering around tracking animals without seeing anything, but it all pays off with some very tense moments when you finally get your prey in sight and manage to get close enough to take a shot. And the feeling of accomplishment when you manage to get a clean kill? Oh my god. And, of course, it looks amazing thanks to being powered by Just Cause 2's Avalanche Engine.

[meloncrab]

Dwarf Fortress will have a tracking mechanic with the next big patch.

[Akalji]

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[arccos]

I've tried The Hunter now, and I agree it's a pretty good way to spend a couple hours. Doubt I would pay for it, but the free version is interesting enough.

There is definitely something satisfying about tracking game, sneaking up on it, and getting the kill clean. It is a bit irritating you don't get points for bring down a doe, just bucks. It's the same animal, one just has a branch on its head!

Jeeze.