KMGR: "Deer Hunter 3"

Image via WikipediaDeer Hunter 3, a venerable franchise, has reached its third iteration on the mobile platform. Unfortunately, all it did was to make the game harder, instead of actually make the game more enjoyable to the max amount of users. The purpose of lure and deer food and scent was barely mentioned, and the gun shakes makes it nearly impossible to aim as you can't "spin" fast enough to keep the deer in your sights. You also have a play a LOT of hunts in order to raise your skills, with little to add to your "trophy room". Net result is more frustration than the previous version.

The game was tested on LG enV, which has a large wide screen (at least compared to most mobile phones), and it is used fully. No black bands here. As usual, you can choose a variety of weapons, though most will choose bolt rifle as it doesn't quite shake as much. There are crossbows, and compound bow for those who prefer NOT to use guns, as well as a shotgun for those who don't want to be sporty. You can only carry two weapons though.

You can carry two accessories... could be scent stomper, deer scent, male call, female call, deer food, and so on. Deer have sensitive noses and they can smell you if you don't use scent stomper, but obviously they need to be downwind of you. Your lure skills also affect the effectiveness of these accessories. Use them too much and you'll scare the deer away.

You have to 'track' the deer (and bears, and whatnot) on the GPS screen. If you spot some tracks, you determine how far, then you enter into "actual location" to spot the actual animals. As there can be like 10 animals on this plot of land, and you can only bag 3 of them, you want the largest, and that means a lot of back and forth, as you must "tag" every one of these critters until you locate the largest ones, then go after them. You want the ones with the biggest rack, then you want the ones with the most weight. That's how the points are calculated. You get bonus points for one shot kills (preferably in the head or in the chest), and for using certain weapons. The higher the difficulty, the more the animals will move, and you have to engage at further distances. Again, you decide.

It's basically "fake 3D" with terrain generated by 360 spinning. You can't "move" except by quitting out to the GPS map and move your cursor to somewhere else. However, the terrain quality ain't bad, just not real 3D, as there are no "hills". It's all "flat", though some places have more trees than others.

As you score skills you'll be awarded points, and as you accumulate points you will earn higher "ranks", which will unlock additional skill points which you can apply to four areas: tracking, spotting, shooting, and lures. Pretty obvious stuff, but gives it a little bit of RPG flavor.

While the name is "deer hunter", you can actually hunt bears in this game as well, though that's optional. In fact, you can actually CHOOSE what you want to hunt: bears, deer, or both. Let's just say that bears coexist with deers here and they don't like human intruders.

Animation of the animals are somewhat lame and repetitive. Animals just go in straight lines, instead of actually doing animal moves. Bears act more like Yogi Bear (the cartoon bear) than real bear, as they occasionally sit down like they're enjoying some honey, and occasionally stand up for no apparent reason. At least the terrain looks quite decent.

There's supposed to be "shooting gallery mode" and "challenges mode" for those who need more challenges. Shooting gallery is basically shoot as many as you can, while challenges require you to accomplish certain 'missions', like "Shooting 5 deers in 5 minutes" (much harder than you think!).

All in all, Deer Hunter 3 is somewhat of a disappointment as it doesn't really add much to the series and genre, esp. when other hunting titles have gone far beyond that. Some even have full 3D terrain, and allow you to actually move around. If there was some sort of a tutor that teaches you how to stalk deer it's be much more of a title. As is, it's just revamped MOTS (more of the same).

Overall rating: 5.5 out of 10
Pros: It's the same game, with a few new twists
Cons: It's the same game, PERIOD