629th played so far
Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: Amiga/Atari ST
Year of Release: 1991
Developer: Paul Holmes
Publisher: Activision
There’s a lot of randomness in game selection. In the case of Hunter, it’s because it always makes me think it’s some early 3Dish shooter, while in reality it seems to be something quite different – similar to how Mercenary‘s game play eluded me for some time – even now I’m not sure I really got that game.
Hunter has you go out as a spy – a sort of James Bond – infiltrating, assassinating and so on. You do all of this in a larger world with some semi-3D graphics. It’s an interesting concept, but where does it go?
Our Thoughts
The concept behind Hunter is interesting and the large levels it sets up for you intriguing enough, even though the time limits in the missions didn’t allow for a lot of exploration – it felt more like a way to make it difficult to find your eventual mark. For me, it became more frustrating.
First, with a map this size, you need decent movement options. Maybe no fast travel, but you don’t want lots of dead time navigating when there’s nothing else going on. Sadly, here your movement is slow and you don’t have anything interesting happen in the mean time. I lost missions because I wasn’t fast enough, but I felt I couldn’t go fast enough anyway.
The game seems to have several options in dealing with situations – there is a conversation system that I never triggered – but that seems to be more a puzzle on what to do rather than giving you a way to adjust your playstyle. Again, this is the age, but it didn’t feel like it was communicated well.
What felt bad as part of the polish is that some sprites felt a bit too much like programmer art. I realise there were limits on what you could do with them, and it takes time, but it all doesn’t work as well as it should have done.
Final Thoughts
While Hunter is a nice concept, it doesn’t work for me. Possibly because it has been done better in more modern games, and I certainly felt it was slightly too complex to get in these playthroughs. It just also wasn’t worth the effort – especially as it became too difficult for me.