July 16, 1998 by Misha Sakellaropoulo SRP: $24.99 MacSoft Deer Hunt Pros: very unique Cons: very boring; poor graphics; deer are the only thing that move (making them easy to spot)     Popularity and success speak louder than hype - usually. Deer Hunter, a hunting simulation, experienced a relatively quiet release for a PC game and had hardly any media exposure prior to hitting the shelves, yet in a matter weeks it became the #1 PC game. You would think that this says something about the game. Think again. Deer Hunter is a seemingly pointless and boring game that won't even keep the hunting enthusiast entertained.     The object, like deer hunting itself, is very simple: shoot and kill a deer. No blood, no guts, no exploding heads or flying legs, just a clean kill like the sport it simulates. Not your usual game by any means, but unfortunately you can't take a sport that relies so much on being immersed in the surroundings and convert it to a computerized form. If only you could move...     You, the hunter, travel across a choice of three maps looking for signs that deer are in the area (droppings, scrapings, a bedding area) and then stake out the area in a 360° view. There are several flaws with this approach, though. Some how the hunter is also able to cover acres of land in a matter of seconds, but worse than that you don't make a single sound when you're running across dried leaves; not exactly realistic. Beyond that, though, when you find a place you wish to stake out you have to wait a few seconds for the graphics to load before you can switch view modes, and that's all you can really do. In the hunting view you have a choice of using binoculars (which don't really help since they only make the pixels a bit larger, not smoother), a deer call, antler rattle, or your weapon of choice (rifle, shotgun, or compound bow). The biggest problem is that you can't move . Turn all you want, but the hunter gets a case of cold feet when he's waiting for a deer to come along. Worse still, if you see a deer wander on the horizon and then switch to the map view to walk closer, when you go back to the hunting view the deer will have vanished.     The graphics are another dismal point of the game. The hunting scenes are generated based on your location in the map view which means that trees look like cardboard cut outs pasted on a painted background. The worst part is that these pine trees have no gaps in their branches which means if you plant yourself in the middle of a forest you'll be able to see all of a few feet in front of you before the trees block you view. An interesting flaw in this is that the binocular mode will let the hunter tell you the point size of a deer if its in the lens, even if the deer is hidden from view behind a tree. Misses the mark     Deer Hunter is, to say the least, an interesting attempt at making what is considered to be a dull spectator sport more interesting on the computer, but it's full of flaws that make it worse. From the restricted movement and dismal graphics, to the disappointing end of a game (when you kill a deer your hunting session is over and you have to start another), this game defies the belief that popular opinion beats any publicity campaign. I guess that there are more game players in the midwest of the US than we originally thought. © 1998 The MacNN Review