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I've never had much of a knack for cosmetic items, whether outfits, weapon skins or anything else that changes a game without changing how it plays. I love Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, and I know how Ubisoft treats microtransactions, but it has never bothered me much. I wear whatever the game gives me.
That makes theHunter an odd fit for me, since it partly lives on selling maps, skins and weapon packs. Expansive Worlds sent over its newest one, the Old West Weapon Pack, and my first reaction was a shrug. I wouldn't spend real money on a weapon pack for any game, but since it arrived free, I put in the hours to see what its three new guns do.
So far I've only properly hunted the Peru map, the focus of my review of that reserve (link below), so weapon testing wasn't a priority until now. This pack adds the Hween .45-90 Buffalo, a single-shot rifle with two attachable telescopic sights; the Maijo .44-40 Special, a top-break revolver; and the Humphrey 10G Coach Gun, a double-barrelled shotgun.
Hween .45-90 Buffalo
Modelled on the Sharps Model 1874, Expansive Worlds' pick for the most popular single-shot rifle of the Old West. A falling-block single-shot, so every pull counts, no follow-up while you reload. Ships with an adaptive Buckhorn iron sight plus two telescopic sights, and a choice of Cast Lead Flat Nose (forgiving) or Soft Lead (brutal at 100 to 150 metres, loses steam past that).
Maijo .44-40 Special
Based on the legendary Schofield, and the fastest-handling gun in the set. Break the frame and an automatic extractor punches all six casings out at once, far more satisfying than picking rounds out by hand. Choose Black Powder or Full Metal Jacket smokeless. Rated for animal classes 2 to 5, so it's a sidearm, not a rifle replacement.
Humphrey 10G Coach Gun
The showpiece. Double-barrelled, external hammers, 10-gauge black-powder shells that throw a wall of white smoke with every pull. Birdshot for small game, Buckshot for medium animals up to bears, Slugs for the biggest things on the map. You can swap just the spent barrel rather than reloading both. Nothing here hits harder up close.
theHunter has always chased realism, so none of these three will outperform your modern weapons you hunt with already, and that's the point: this pack is here to make you feel like you're wandering the Wild West; it isn't here to make your hunting more precise and powerful. I've put enough hours into Red Dead Redemption 2's arsenal to know what authentic black-powder weaponry should feel like, and these three definitely feel like a real thing. One catch, though: no ammunition comes bundled, so budget in-game currency for the shells first.
Final Thoughts
The Old West Weapon Pack is for players who fancy hunting as a cowboy rather than a marksman and who'll take atmosphere over an upgrade. At $4.99, three well-animated period guns do what they set out to do.
