YMMV / Cabela's Dangerous Hunts

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Samson in 2011. Is he a genuinely good, but misguided man, or a terrible, abusive father whose brief moment of lucidity near the end of the game makes up for nothing? It's important to note, however, that the game implies that he started out as a normal and sane man that went insane after losing both an eye and a friend to the Kaftar.
  • From the same game, the Kaftar as well. Is it a supernatural creature, an experiment that went terribly wrong, or truly nothing more than a particularly nasty and intelligent species of hyena? The Project: Nightfall logs imply at the very least the project didn't create it, but discovered and were trying to duplicate it to little success. But this still leaves it unanswered as to if the project failed simply because they didn't understand a unique animal or if a supernatural element was at work.
• Contested Sequel: 2011 and 2013 are the closest in terms of story mode and gameplay so the comparison is natural. Which was better is up for debate. 2011 is generally thought of either too over the top and failed at being engaging with its story, or was So Bad, It's Good for the same reasons. 2013 either smoothed out those problems and streamlined the plot, or is It's Easy, So It Sucks! because of the massive increase in medkits and ammo pick ups.
• Fridge Logic: 2009 features a mission where the protagonist, Flint Abrahams, hikes up a mountain searching for a trophy brown bear. After he gets directions from a ranger, he finds the bear and shoots it. Immediately afterwards, an avalanche occurs...with the ranger and his cabin right in the path of it. Does this mean Flint put someone's life in danger while trying to take a trophy?
• Memetic Psychopath: For a self-proclaimed conservationist, Jacob leaves behind a lot of bodies over the course of 2013. It's often joked that Jacob is really good at his job because he keeps rare animal species rare or that the animals have a good reason for attacking him as they see him as death personified.
• Moment of Awesome: Say what you will about them not being hunting games in the slightest, the boss fights in 2011 and 2013 especially will make you feel like a badass.
• Narm:
  • Once the series moved on past being a vague semblance of a hunting sim and into more Light Gun Game territory, especially with the Nintendo Wii in mind, the games drastically shifted from simply shooting one or two dangerous animals in a big hunt to gunning down dozens of them for attacking you and becoming more like action movies that tinge into survival horror territory. This is all carrying Cabela's name as Product Placement the entire time and acting like it's a legitimate hunting series.
  • With the above in mind, 2011's plot focuses around the idea of a crazy super hyena monster thing going on a murderous rampage, and Cole and his hunting-obsessed family trying to kill it with a massive swerve into Darker and Edgier territory, with either military experimentation or straight up supernatural circumstances at large. Whether they were trying to Follow the Leader of shooters at the time or simply the "logical" evolution of games prior, it's impossible to take it seriously as a Cabela's game once you realize you're playing something more akin to Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles than anything able to be called hunting.
  • The protagonist of 2013's story, Jacob, is a park ranger for Alaska, and a self-professed conservationist. Cue the very first mission past the tutorial, and right after this fact was established for his character, forcing you to defend a jeep in Uganda as he shoots countless numbers of aggressive animals because of a sandstorm as all hell breaks loose, including leopards inexplicably ambushing him and hiding on trees just for the occasion. And despite the story trying to act like a pair of brothers simply trying to hunt and come to terms with the loss of their father, everything constantly goes wrong and results in local biome genocide that no one even remotely comments on.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The basement part of the hyena level in 2013, and the bear and Kaftar boss fights from 2011.
  • Also from 2011, the Full Moon level. Let's just say that tracking a killer bear alone and in a dense forest, in the middle of the night, isn't exactly a soft experience. All while being stalked by a wolf pack that is just as vicious.
• So Bad, It's Good: 2011 can get pretty endearingly silly, like the main character's father being an over-the-top caricature of manliness, one of the mechanics being pressing a button to draw the skulls of dead animals into yourself, the nigh-useless and headache-inducing Hunter Vision, and the Animal Nemesis being either a military produced animal Super-Soldier or the result of supernatural forces.
• Signature Scene: The Stampede scene in 2013. Before that there's a somewhat grounded tutorial and prologue, the next scene involves the jeep Jacob is in Uganda getting in a stampede caused by a sandstorm, which makes the animals startled. Jacob, a so-called "conservationist" has to kill hundreds of animals to defend the jeep in a high-energy action, including leopards inexplicably ambushing him and hiding on trees just for the occasion, as if it was a Call of Duty level.