Hunting chickens has never been so brief, or so boring.

While reviewing video games may sound like… well, fun and games, I am here to tell you it is not. I won’t say it is always terrible, because sometimes you get to review a good game.

The terrible part factors in when you realize that for every good game out there, you will find ten bad games. As a game reviewer you have to give those bad games just as much attention as you give the good ones. When I was assigned to review Chicken Hunter by Mumbo Jumbo for the Nintendo DS I naturally assumed it would fall into the latter category. Well after my first play through of the game I must confess that I was pleasantly surprised.

It’s not that I was wrong about Chicken Hunter being a bad game, I was just happy when I realized I was only going to have to spend about an hour and a half playing the game in order to fully take in the experience that is Chicken Hunter. Obviously the less time you can spend on a bad game, the better and Chicken Hunter is by far the shortest bad game I have ever played.

Chicken Hunter is comprised of five mini-games, emphasis on “mini”. All of these games have either a timed element or exponential increase of difficulty that limits a play through to about six minutes each. They also feature static backdrops and repetitive ambient noise/music. Once you have played through each game two to three times you will have no motivation left to visit the world of Chicken Hunter.

So, let’s take a look at the roster of games that comprise Chicken Hunter. First up is Classic. Basically this is Duck Hunt… on a farm… with more chickens… and less ducks. There is the unique feature of scrolling left and right while shooting chickens which ads some variety, but you get about three screens worth of travel distance, and the background is always the same every time you play.