I'm a sucker for a good horror game where you are tasked with hunting down and killing a beast in a large map. Bigfoot is one of those games that I've had my eye on for quite some time and it has changed tremendously over its early access life. The game as of writing this is completely different than it was way back in 2017. The only other game with a similar premise to Bigfoot that I've played beforehand is Skinwalker Hunt. It's very good for another early access horror title, so I had high hopes for this game.
The game is very fun yet a bit frustrating for multiple reasons. Let's start with the good stuff. The map I played on (Redwood Forest) is large and beautiful. It has plenty of structures to search through you may come across notes around these areas which give you a bit of insight into what the people were up to. There's also many other animals in this forest that you can hunt for meat which can be used to bait Bigfoot into traps. Not all wildlife is friendly though, wolves and bears will attack you on sight. The map also has ziplines you can interact with to move across areas faster or if you need a quick getaway from an attacker.
Another thing I like is how much equipment you have to play around with. Other than your weapons that you use to hunt down Bigfoot, you have bear traps to place down with the option of adding meat onto it as bait, you have cameras to place around and a remote control drone, you having GPS sensors, you have a nightvision camera to help see in the dark alongside a regular camera to take photos of evidence such as dead bodies, footprints and claw marks, you can find explosives to deal huge damage to Bigfoot and you have totems used to revive other players.
However, that's where the good stuff ends because this game still has a lot of rough edges. The first problem being Bigfoot's AI as it just feels too aggressive most of the time. Bigfoot will always attack you during the night (with the exception of the first night) and while this is your chance to damage him, he can also wipe the floor with you as he has an excessive amount of special attacks (which are clearly implemented into his moveset for PVP). However, I was so used to how the Skinwalker works Skinwalker Hunt that I expected Bigfoot to flee after getting shot once similarly to the Skinwalker, however Bigfoot ate my first shot like a champ and just demolishes a third of my health with one of his annoying grab attacks. After he takes enough damage, he seems to flee (unless I shoot him with a flare gun, then he flees instantly). After Bigfoot flees, I run in the complete opposite direction so I can get away from him, but I notice that Bigfoot just beelines straight back towards me after a few seconds despite seeing him run away. I keep scaring him away with flares while shooting him because I cannot afford to use up all my medkits in one night, but once again, he keeps running back towards me after scaring him off for a few seconds. I ended up using all my flares and he eventually attacked me multiples times between fleeing and returning shortly. And because I had no means of warding him off, I had to tank his attacks and I ended up using all my medkits. In one night, with Bigfoot's AI set on the default settings, he attacked me over 6 times and made me use up all my shotgun ammo, all my flares and all my medkits, just to survive his ridiculous amount of attacks in ONE NIGHT. I ended up having to mess with his AI by staying near those ziplines and using those to get away from him whenever he got close just to survive the next nights and slowly whittled down his absurdly large health bar that he can heal.
Yeah, Bigfoot can heal. Anyone who's played Killer Instinct 2013 will know how this type of health bar works. When you damage Bigfoot, his health bar gets seperated into white health and red health on the same bar. Red health is how much health Bigfoot is currently on and white health is how much health he can heal during the day. Unlike Killer Instinct, there's no way to "cash in" and remove that white health bar with anything and because you rarely ever see Bigfoot during the day, he will just slowly heal back all your precious time spent preparing for an attack.
One of Bigfoot's most obnoxious abilities is his ability to make traps hidden in the trees that are activated by tripping over a rock. However, these rocks are almost impossible to see and the trap hidden in the tree (to my knowledge) cannot be spotted beforehand. So you have to pray that you don't come across a trap or else you'll take an insane amount of damage or you can escape the trap with a quick-time event but for some reason you still take some damage even after hitting that QTE so you'll lose health regardless.
Moving on from Bigfoot's sheer aggression and tankiness, this game is extremely reluctant on spawning in medkits. Medkits in this game are scarcer than good takes on Twitter. So if you have more than 5 medkits, you better use them when absolutely necessary. This creates a huge sense in artificial difficulty as when you run out of medkits and cannot find any more, you're essentially screwed and need to start a new game unless you want to spend the next few hours using ziplines repeatedly so Bigfoot cannot hit you. This was how I killed him my first time and it felt very cheap. I had no flares to scare him off, I had no medkits and I was on low health, so I had no choice but to cheese him to death. I doubt this was how the developers intended for a PVE game to go down. Bigfoot can destroy ziplines but he'll only do so if you ride them when he's 2 inches away from you. So if you know when to use them, Bigfoot is no longer threatening and the real danger is your decrease in patience. There seriously needs to be more ways the player can heal. In Skinwalker Hunt, you can heal yourself by cooking and eating meat from hunted animals, why can't you do the same thing here? Raw meat is only used for bear trap bait, so why not give it another use in the form of healing?
Overall, Bigfoot has a very good foundation to make a fantastic hunting game, but the power imbalance between the player and Bigfoot alongside the lack of essential healing items to be able to survive makes the whole experience more frustrating than frightening. The moment your game becomes more frustrating than scary, you've failed as a horror game, but the developers have the chance to fix that because the gameplay itself is fun when you start to get the hang of things. But the future of this game is unknown as the developers are situated in Ukraine which is under attack. I hope the developers make it through the invasion in good shape and take care, because nobody should have to go through an event like this. Take as much time as you need with things.
The game is very fun yet a bit frustrating for multiple reasons. Let's start with the good stuff. The map I played on (Redwood Forest) is large and beautiful. It has plenty of structures to search through you may come across notes around these areas which give you a bit of insight into what the people were up to. There's also many other animals in this forest that you can hunt for meat which can be used to bait Bigfoot into traps. Not all wildlife is friendly though, wolves and bears will attack you on sight. The map also has ziplines you can interact with to move across areas faster or if you need a quick getaway from an attacker.
Another thing I like is how much equipment you have to play around with. Other than your weapons that you use to hunt down Bigfoot, you have bear traps to place down with the option of adding meat onto it as bait, you have cameras to place around and a remote control drone, you having GPS sensors, you have a nightvision camera to help see in the dark alongside a regular camera to take photos of evidence such as dead bodies, footprints and claw marks, you can find explosives to deal huge damage to Bigfoot and you have totems used to revive other players.
However, that's where the good stuff ends because this game still has a lot of rough edges. The first problem being Bigfoot's AI as it just feels too aggressive most of the time. Bigfoot will always attack you during the night (with the exception of the first night) and while this is your chance to damage him, he can also wipe the floor with you as he has an excessive amount of special attacks (which are clearly implemented into his moveset for PVP). However, I was so used to how the Skinwalker works Skinwalker Hunt that I expected Bigfoot to flee after getting shot once similarly to the Skinwalker, however Bigfoot ate my first shot like a champ and just demolishes a third of my health with one of his annoying grab attacks. After he takes enough damage, he seems to flee (unless I shoot him with a flare gun, then he flees instantly). After Bigfoot flees, I run in the complete opposite direction so I can get away from him, but I notice that Bigfoot just beelines straight back towards me after a few seconds despite seeing him run away. I keep scaring him away with flares while shooting him because I cannot afford to use up all my medkits in one night, but once again, he keeps running back towards me after scaring him off for a few seconds. I ended up using all my flares and he eventually attacked me multiples times between fleeing and returning shortly. And because I had no means of warding him off, I had to tank his attacks and I ended up using all my medkits. In one night, with Bigfoot's AI set on the default settings, he attacked me over 6 times and made me use up all my shotgun ammo, all my flares and all my medkits, just to survive his ridiculous amount of attacks in ONE NIGHT. I ended up having to mess with his AI by staying near those ziplines and using those to get away from him whenever he got close just to survive the next nights and slowly whittled down his absurdly large health bar that he can heal.
Yeah, Bigfoot can heal. Anyone who's played Killer Instinct 2013 will know how this type of health bar works. When you damage Bigfoot, his health bar gets seperated into white health and red health on the same bar. Red health is how much health Bigfoot is currently on and white health is how much health he can heal during the day. Unlike Killer Instinct, there's no way to "cash in" and remove that white health bar with anything and because you rarely ever see Bigfoot during the day, he will just slowly heal back all your precious time spent preparing for an attack.
One of Bigfoot's most obnoxious abilities is his ability to make traps hidden in the trees that are activated by tripping over a rock. However, these rocks are almost impossible to see and the trap hidden in the tree (to my knowledge) cannot be spotted beforehand. So you have to pray that you don't come across a trap or else you'll take an insane amount of damage or you can escape the trap with a quick-time event but for some reason you still take some damage even after hitting that QTE so you'll lose health regardless.
Moving on from Bigfoot's sheer aggression and tankiness, this game is extremely reluctant on spawning in medkits. Medkits in this game are scarcer than good takes on Twitter. So if you have more than 5 medkits, you better use them when absolutely necessary. This creates a huge sense in artificial difficulty as when you run out of medkits and cannot find any more, you're essentially screwed and need to start a new game unless you want to spend the next few hours using ziplines repeatedly so Bigfoot cannot hit you. This was how I killed him my first time and it felt very cheap. I had no flares to scare him off, I had no medkits and I was on low health, so I had no choice but to cheese him to death. I doubt this was how the developers intended for a PVE game to go down. Bigfoot can destroy ziplines but he'll only do so if you ride them when he's 2 inches away from you. So if you know when to use them, Bigfoot is no longer threatening and the real danger is your decrease in patience. There seriously needs to be more ways the player can heal. In Skinwalker Hunt, you can heal yourself by cooking and eating meat from hunted animals, why can't you do the same thing here? Raw meat is only used for bear trap bait, so why not give it another use in the form of healing?
Overall, Bigfoot has a very good foundation to make a fantastic hunting game, but the power imbalance between the player and Bigfoot alongside the lack of essential healing items to be able to survive makes the whole experience more frustrating than frightening. The moment your game becomes more frustrating than scary, you've failed as a horror game, but the developers have the chance to fix that because the gameplay itself is fun when you start to get the hang of things. But the future of this game is unknown as the developers are situated in Ukraine which is under attack. I hope the developers make it through the invasion in good shape and take care, because nobody should have to go through an event like this. Take as much time as you need with things.