Bird Hunter: Wild Wings Edition

THE BAD:
Primitive graphics. Too much keyboarding. Inefficient game engine requries far too much of your computer.

SUMMARY:
Said by many to be the best bird hunting simulation around, Sunstone/Wizard Works' Bird Hunter Wild Wings Ed. has its merits. But after the graphics and mouse friendly operation of such great games as Age of Kings and the Internet only Combat Mission, BHWWE falls far short of great. There is a pretty steep learning curve, but once you get all ten fingers active on the keyboard the action is not too bad. The turkey, duck and goose hunts are OK. The generic dog (all the various "breeds" in the game are merely different skins for one basic AI dog) works OK. But you can use for example an English Setter or a German shorthair pointer to retrieve ducks. Not very realistic that. But the Upland hunting really sucks. Only two venues are offered both winter snow covered. Even when hit solidly and the game voice says "nice kill" the birds won't go down and are 99%unfindable by either you or the dog unless you happen to be by a frozen lake and then they stop at the edge of the ice.
The documentation and help files are almost useless. You'll have to figure BHWWE out for yourself. Worst oversight of all is that there are no difficulty levels built into the game. It is not only hard; it is in some respects, especially the Upland hunting, so hard that it literally cannot be played without using the cheat codes over and over. I give BHWWE a big "F" --- not for fantastic or fun but for FRUSTRATING. That's not why I buy games.