When I saw this video game on Amazon.ca for the respectable price of $29.99 I was like, "Ha, I'm totally getting this even though I know it's going to be absolutely awful." Yes, I purchased this game knowing it couldn't be good. I waited patiently for it to arrive knowing the controls were going to be God awful, the camera angles were going to give me a headache, and the graphics and character animations were going to give me the impression I was playing my PlayStation 2 again. So when the game arrived and I popped it into my 360 it didn't dissapoint me--well, how could it, really, when my expectations were already incredibly low. The game is bad, everything from the controls to the way the story is laid out, it's just not a game any respectable gamer would play. People on my friends list have already messaged me with various lol's and what the heck are you playing's? So why did I play it? Well, the main reason I bought this game was because it was something different. I love my Call of Duty games, and all those other blockbuster titles, but sometimes you just need to play something utterly ridiculous. And you know what, I didn't feel the slightest bit ripped off at the price. Every time I purchase a Call of Duty game and it's accompanying DLC I'm just one of the millions of sheep doing the same thing, feeding a developer that's got money coming out of their ears. I'm fairly certain this game doesn't have a fan base to rival Call of Duty. So the premise of the game is basically the same as the show. If you're unfamiliar with the show, you watch Bear Grylls, an English adventurer, demonstrate the skills needed to survive in the some of the world's most inhospitable and dangerous environments. Bear is no novice to the kind of survival, he was the youngest Brit to climb Mount Everest, he was a member of the British SAS, and on top of that, he's broken his back. To anyone who's seen the show, he's just downright crazy. He drinks his own urine for God's sake (and yes, you CAN make him drink his pee in the game!) In the game you take on the role of Bear and you're tasked with surviving 5 different campaigns: The Rockies, The Everglades, The Sahara, a deserted island, and Patagonia. Your goals are to stay alive through each level by staying hydrated, foraging for food, avoiding the dangerous wildlife, and surviving the harsh elemental conditions. Staying hydrated is main goal, if you run out of water it starts to deplete your energy, and once you're energy is gone, your health begins to deplete. Once your health is gone you become "incapacitated" and have to start over from your last checkpoint. The goals in each level vary, but only slightly. Essentially you're doing the same thing through 5 different levels, which becomes a little tedious. You build fires to stay warm and cook food, and you build shelters to sleep in. Sleeping is best way to heal, as it completely refills all of your status bars. You can arrange traps to catch wild game, you can construct a spear to catch fish (or use your bare hands), you can hunt for earthworms in the mud and millipedes in rotten logs. All of this stuff is great, except that it's all completely linear. Everything you can do is designated by particular icons. There's no freedom to this game. You follow and collect yellow orbs (Survival Points) to level up and you follow these orbs to your objectives. All of the interactions are based around button sequences and stick movements. All of these reactions are repetitive and become boring after the second level. Each level is basically the same: find the camp site, make a fire, catch food, cook food, sleep, move on in the morning, then do the same at the next campsite if you have to. Playing the game blind (I hadn't read any guides or watched any videos) I found all of the different collectables throughout each level, mainly because there was just nothing to explore. If you could go in two directions one was a dead end with some kind of collectable and the other was the route you had to take to progress the game. If you're looking for variety you're not going to find it here. As linear as the game is, there were a few points where I was sitting there thinking "What the heck am I supposed to do??" The in game directions are scare and the game is so graphically inferior it's difficult to determine if you climb a wall or walk under a particular bundle of branches until you're in just the right spot and the game prompts you with a button. The final task of the game involves jumping from the back of a wild horse and onto a moving train. Easy, right? The do it in movies all the time. Wrong. This part was so incredibly frustrating that when I finally finished it I had one of those rare moments during a video game where I feel I've really accomplished something substantial. Usually that comes from beating a game on it's hardest difficulty setting, or finding all the collectables, but not in this game. In this game it was jumping off a freakin' horse. You're so screwed by camera angles and the lack of in game direction that the first 3 times I did it I was screaming "I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO!!" at the television. And after I figured it out I reverted to obscenities for the next 30 tries until I finally got it right. So who would I recommend this game to? Well, anyone who's like me and just likes to play something different every once in a while would probably enjoy this for the first hour or two, then, like me, you'll grit your teeth and finish it because it's good for your gamerscore. A full 1000 on this game might take maybe 8 hours, I'd say significantly less if you're using a guide. Even without the collectables you get 100GS when you complete each level. Counting the training level that's 540GS. If you want to give your gamerscore a little lift, grit your teeth and play this game. I imagine that's the main reason anyone bought it. Awful games tend to be generous with the gamerscore. Who else? Well, probably the fans of the Bear Grylls internet meme involving the drinking of urine. You'd probably get a kick out of making him drink his pee over and over again. But anyone who takes their video games seriously will be incredibly frustrated by this game. This is a game meant for casual gamers or weird people like me who see a game and think "I'll play this because no one in their right mind would spend money on a video game like this." Basically, I played this game so I could tell everyone I knew not to play it.