Big Buck Hunter Arcade Review (Nintendo Switch)

Big Buck Hunter was originally a light gun game in the arcades. I’d never actually played it, but I’ve seen it loads of times in bars in American and Canada and it always seems to attract the same sorts of people you see trying for the high score on the punching machines.

I recently saw the game on sale on the Nintendo Switch eShop for £1.79. I’ve zero interest in hunting, but I’ve zero interest in fishing either and loved Sega Bass Fishing in the arcades back in the day so I thought I’d give it a go.

There’s not too much to explain really, it’s an arcade hunting game. You have the option to hunt deer, mouse or elk, in a choice of 3 different locations. Each level has three deer scuttling about the bushes in amongst doe’s. Your goal is to kill the deer without hitting a doe. The instant you hit a doe, the game is over. There are also various critters minding their own business you can shoot for bonus points and the occasional ‘trophy’ animal such as bears and tigers who try ago attack you to end you killing spree.

I imagine most of the fun with this game in the arcades is playing it with the prop shotgun, shooting at the screen and that is where the biggest fail of the home port is in the controls. The only control option is to move a crosshair around the screen with the left thumb stick. As seen in other Switch lightgun games, the motion controls in the Joycons is far from accurate with an annoying amount of drift, but not having this option really does leave the game feeling sterile. And on top of this the thumb stick control for the reticle is incredibly twitchy. There is a sensitivity setting that is ‘3’ by default, but I had to dial this down to ‘1’ before it was playable at all.

To stretch out the game a little for the home version there is the inclusion of the ‘adventure’ mode which allows you to play though the level consecutively giving you a final score. I’m not quite sure exactly what a ‘trail guide’ is, but you are provided with one for each level and they always seem super excited about it… and not very prepared either. I’m going to have to lend Nikolina my coat if we’re hunting moose in the snow here….

Oh and do you like that little animation of a deer running? I hope so. Thats the loading screen, you’ll be seeing it a lot.

There are a few redeeming features though such as the mini game selection. Random scenarios such as shooting cockroaches in an infested kitchen, bottles of moonshine in a shed or eel’s in a sunken ship. These are actually way more fun than the actual game. The problem is once you play each game once which only lasts 30 seconds or so, you are dropped back to the title screen where you have to fight your way back through all the menus and tediously long loading screens to play again. There should have been an option to play all of these back to back, or at least retry each one over and over for high score without having to reload constantly which takes significantly more times long than you’ll actually play the mini game for.

There is an online leaderboard too to add some reply value to the main game where the trail guides also like to hang out and be excited about your high scores… I’m not personally offended by stuff like this and its so ridiculous it’s must have been done in jest. I think the arcade was released in the early 2000’s, different time and all that, but I did think it was a bold move to leave this in in the current climate huh.

So yeah, over all its a tough one to recommend this. It really isn’t great. But maybe if you played this back in the day, it will be fun to have a bit of nostalgia with. Or like me, if you're still intrigued to have a look, £1.79 isn’t going to buy you much else in 2022 and it will keep you amused for an hour or so even if you never go back to it. I mean it must cost a pound a go in the arcades which barely lasts a minute if you’re good! But I couldn’t recommend paying any more for it.