Dan McFox: Headhunter Review

Developer: Lightwood Games Price: €2.49 / £1.99

For those who are fans of the classic board game Guess Who? Lightwood Games have released this game which is said to be pretty much similar but suited for the 3DS.

Lightwood Games are known for their puzzle and word search games, yet Dan McFox isn’t one of them so it’s good to see them expand from their comfort zone. Dan McFox is a port from the iPhone/Android game Head Hunter Challenge and has been adapted to use the features of the 3DS (using the Streetpass and touch screen).

The game while advertising an secret agent theme, plays more like a old western film with the background music and the suspects’ catchphrases being “You got me and “Nooooo”.

The menu is simple with 4 options to choose from (Missions, Round Up, Challenges and Settings). There are 60 levels in Missions in which you gradually unlock new levels as you go. The first round for instance asks you to find 4 people wearing hats or have red hair and you tap on the pictures with hats or hair colour. It keeps on which different clues until the last round which is finding two details which will help locate the suspect. The faster you find the pictures the higher the score you can get as there is a multiplier bonus for finding them quickly and if you take too long you lose that multiplier. There is a star rating system on each level (3 star, 2 star and 1 star) and depending on your score. The scores needed are the same for all 60 levels so it’s like there is little to no difference in the levels other than a slight difficulty increase.Round Up gives you 60 seconds to find as many pictures can you can and at the end you have the option to set your high score as a StreetPass challenge.

There isn’t much replay value once you have completed the levels other than to beat your high score and that is easy for perfectionists as the patterns are the same in their respective levels. If the player gets 10,000 points on a level their 3 stars turn to gold.

You use the stylus to perform all actions. This is a slight change from the mobile version which was touch screen only, but this suits the 3DS perfectly.

The original version of Dan McFox on iPhone and Android featured asynchronous play with Facebook friends, which is obviously something that is not possible to do on the Nintendo 3DS. Instead, StreetPass is used to send challenges to people you meet. They receive an exact copy of a game you played to see if they can beat your score. That’s where the Challenges option comes up as you receive challenges from other players with the game.

The music and sound effects get really repetitive after a while as the music only has 2 tracks (one for menu and the other for the missions/roundup) and the sound effects from touching the faces can get annoying very quickly.

They were some noticeable bugs such as when you have completed all 60 levels and after you have completed a level it would take you to a “debug” screen and you have to go back 2 screens to get to the playable levels again. Hopefully an update will fix this bug.

Settings is just the basics like Sound. Music, Languages and StreetPass. There are 5 languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Italian) making it accessible to a wide audience.

This is a budget title and costs only £1.99 on the eShop, so it’s best in short bursts. The secret agent fox theme is just for show mostly if you think you’re getting a James Bond themed game.

Pros:

• Good use of stylus control.
• Easy to play on the go.

Cons:

• Gets repetitive quickly
• Music can be off putting.
• Some noticeable bugs.

Score: 4.5/10

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Tags: 3ds, cheap, dan mcfox, eshop, guess who, lightwood games

This post was written by Cyburn, posted on June 20, 2016 Monday at 9:20 am