Deer Hunter 2014 is not a hunting game, it’s a shooting gallery. You don’t creep around the bush looking for tracks and day-old crap, putting on camo and minding the wind. The game drops you an arm’s reach of the animal, and all you do is aim and shoot. In some missions, you blast away multiple animals with an assault rifle. It’s a savage killing game, and it’s really fun.
I couldn’t help feeling a little weird about it. These aren’t Nazis shooting back. It’s Bambi enjoying a beauty-of-a-day in the sun, all-you-can-eat fields of grass, flowers and birds singing, “It’s a Small World,” and then BAM(bi)! Right between the eyes. We bought live Dungeness crabs a couple weeks ago. One of the little critters tried to chop my finger so I wanted it to die, and I wanted to eat it, but when we dropped it in the boiling water and it had its death-panic, I felt really sorry for it. The bad boy was very tasty and I thanked its spirit by baptizing its tender meat in extra garlic butter sauce. But I still felt weird about killing it. And that’s I felt playing this game…a little bit.
The free-to-play iOS game is addictive because it’s simple. There’s a rifle, you upgrade it, choose the mission and start the killing. You get to kill deer, wolves, wolverines, ducks and rare trophy beasts such as the White Stag.
In-game cash is the prize for the kill, and more cash means more killing. You get extra rewards for heart and lung kills, which is aided by the use of infrared. I shot a running buck in the eye from a football field away and there was no extra cash, perhaps because in the hunting world, an eye-less buck does not a pretty fireplace make. But this isn’t a hunting game, it’s a killing game, so give me an extra five bucks for shooting a running buck in the eye from a hundred yards!
Some predators like the wolf will come at you if you miss or shoot their buddies. I felt less weird about shooting these revenge-thirsty man-eaters.
Common to many FTPs, there’s an energy meter that’s used up with each mission. Once you run out, you have to wait 8 minutes to refill, or you pay real cash. That never bothered me. I just play some other game for an hour, then come back ready for more killin’. I don’t see myself scratching plastic on this FTP.
Graphics on this iOS game is excellent. Flowers have petals, blood splatters and the streams run fast. The only flaw is when the animal drops dead, it becomes one with the earth…instantly…like half of its body disappears. But I’m not picky about graphics on an FTP, especially if it’s a fun killing game, and Deer Hunter 2014 is a fun killing game. Happy killing!