Duck Game (PS4)

With a name as plain and simple as Duck Game, you almost have to suspect the game isn’t going to be so straightforward, and when you see the title image with the overly detailed and serious ducks about to fight to the death, you know you can prepare yourself for some irreverent action. However, Duck Game still has one more layer to the deception, because as you turn on the game and get ready for the over the top combat that even seems to want you to believe it will be an 80s movie pastiche by having everything take place in 1984, you instead see some rather silly looking pixelated ducks with goofy hats.

 

Duck Game is irreverent to its core, this being a game about extremely quick fights where you need to shoot the other squat humanoid ducks with whatever weapons are laying around in the latest arena. Whether you’re fighting with bazookas, laser guns, or even the Bible, Duck Game is all about grabbing what you can to kill the other ducks quickly and pressing the dedicated quack button afterwards to rub in your victory. That quack button is really the only element of the game directly tied to the fact you are ducks, the characters you play as basically humans in their ability to handle weapons and leap around the 2D platforming levels the fights take place in. But since this is the game where eligible weapons range from sniper rifles to banana peels you use to make other players slip, the silly option was definitely the one most often picked when designing the title and Duck Game’s ridiculousness gives it a much greater appeal than a game that kept its focus completely on the substance of the action.

 

While the humor of the game is definitely a plus, the action is fairly well designed for quick and intense little battles. The stages are very compact, this multiplayer game allowing up to four players to participate in a series of duels where the last duck standing will earn a point for winning the round. Every duck appears with nothing in hand to start a round and no way to kill each other, but all of the 80+ stages that can be randomly select for play have weapons littered throughout that are meant to complement the specific level’s design. The immediate scramble to get something to defend yourself with is a big part of the game’s appeal. The tension of having to avoid another player if they’re better equipped, the careful approach of trying to successfully shoot your foes without getting shot yourself, and the insanity that can be caused by the strange weapons and level gimmicks all make these matches that can take merely seconds exciting and varied. Even if you do get killed, the next round begins fairly quickly and might allow you to get revenge if you can be quicker to grab the goods this time around, ensuring the player is always active and engaged as victory can be so easily achieved or taken away.

The level layouts embrace many different concepts, much of the enjoyment coming from how you have to navigate the stage to try and get your weapons or avoid trouble. Stages might feature teleporters that players can fire through to catch ducks unaware, spikes near a nice weapon pick up to potentially punish greedy players, plenty of platforms to hop between for a battle with high movement, or barely any ground at all where it might as well be a coin flip who is going to survive the immediate gunfight. Sometimes a player might start next to a weapon and have an instant advantage over a player with an unlucky spawn point and the rapid play does mean you’ll start to see repeat levels despite their number, but the quickness of the combat also means that they don’t have much time to grow old. Spending a minute in a stage either implies a specific stalemate, the use of deliberately cumbersome weapons like the muskets that have long reload times, or the stage is focused more on messing around with things like playable instruments rather than immediately trying to kill each other. However, this can’t completely assuage the fact some stages still become a bit too familiar and thus a little less exciting since you can skip the mad scramble now that everyone playing knows where everything is. There are the fully randomized designs of the Pyramid levels if you want to tinker with the settings, but they lack the intelligent touch of the developer created levels that make for many funny and exciting situations.

 

The rapid rounds definitely live and die by their weapon availability though, the stages needing to be designed in a way that brings out the best in the tools you’ll be using to kill other ducks. Duck Game has a selection of realistic, fantastical, and outright silly items to be used in battle, most able to kill another duck instantly if successfully used. Pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, machine guns, a flamethrower… a lot of the guns and shooting weapons that would come to mind are available here and fired mostly by pressing or holding a single button, your aim determined by where you’re looking rather than really trying to set up a shot much. The traditional weaponry is common and does its job well, the skirmishes about reacting to what your opponent has and trying to use what’s available to make sure you land the killing shot first. This can get especially lopsided or ridiculous with certain weaponry. Charging someone with a chainsaw can be surprisingly effective even if they have a gun, there are laser guns whose beams ricochet off walls for tricky shots, and weapons like grenades and mines can be used for area denial. However, if you’re in too much of a rush to kill the other duck, you might grab one of the joke guns like the pistol and minigun that fire Nerf darts instead of bullets, or you may even end up shooting yourself if you don’t notice the pistol you picked up has its barrel pointing at your own face instead of the enemy’s. Items like the Roman Candle practically coat a level in flames and the mind control helmet allows you to make enemy ducks throw themselves off the level to their doom, and there even references to other media like the Quad Laser from Aqua Teen Hunger Force that fires a very slow moving square shot that works as a lingering threat.

The weapon selection is a good fit for the action and the rush to grab what you can can lead to situations where you must find a good use for whatever you could get a hold of, but after going through so many rapid rounds it is a bit of a shame when you realize you’ve seen all the game has. The level layouts still do their job of making the fights entertaining, but a lot of Duck Game is about the enjoyment of seeing which place you’ve ended up in and what tools you’ll be able to use in the fight. There are other items that can crop up like armor for protection from a single shot or shoes that let you jump onto duck heads for the kill so there are things to find that aren’t just about pressing the fire button and seeing what happens, but this does limit the game’s longevity a touch. The game does have an unlock system, but it seems to be more of a joke than something that really pushes you to play the game for more than the simple enjoyment of fast paced action. Deliberately making fun of other progression systems in games, the increasingly convoluted level up system for playing more and more matches doles out rewards rarely and these are usually just pieces of furniture and junk that will start appearing in the game levels to sometimes interfere with a shot or movement.

 

The progression system could have been the perfect way to keep earning silly hats though. Duck Game lets you pick a hat for your character before the action starts, these ranging from things like having a burger or log for a head, giving your duck a sailor’s beard or wizard look, or even making your duck look like it has big anime eyes. The silly animations of the hats and masks when quacking make many fun to wear, and you can sometimes even pilfer an opponent’s with the right weapon and wear it as a taunt, but besides sometimes rewarding these for earning certain trophies, most of these must be acquired through the game’s single player mode. The multiplayer is definitely the main attraction here, the game built around its rapid fire rounds and trying to outsmart a human opponent, so single player is constructed almost like a way to get to know the game’s mechanics in preparation for playing with others. It has some clever ideas for challenges though, such as using the chainsaw’s unique property to pull you across the ground with its spinning blade to design race courses, and some like target shooting with the grenade launcher train you to be more accurate with your shots. You need to perform well at these to earn medals though, the solo player needing to earn plenty of gold medals in hard challenges to potentially unlock all the hats and special modifiers for multiplayer such as having players start with certain weapons every round. These can be quite demanding but getting things to finally work out can be very satisfying, however they still couldn’t carry the game on their own, the multiplayer definitely being the main attraction and the one prospective players should expect to play the most due to its quick thrills and the variability afforded through human interaction.

THE VERDICT: High speed ridiculous action is the name of the game in Duck Game. The levels and weapons mix together well to ensure that the rapid rounds have action that moves at a quick pace but can have many tense moments and interesting standoffs, and while the speed at which they go by means you start seeing some repeats fairly quickly, the multiplayer action remains exciting because of the strange concepts that crop up and the twitchy mix of platforming and shooting you engage with. The silliness built into the game and the moments that emerge from trying to gain an edge in these quick battles make it a good pick for short but entertaining multiplayer visits, and while the single player challenges aren’t quite as thrilling, they add a bit more to do with the systems that otherwise exist solely for killing enemy ducks quickly.

 

And so, I give Duck Game for PlayStation 4…

A GOOD rating. Duck Game’s more a game that leaves you hungry for more content than one whose content comes up short. The discovery period of picking up a new weapon and learning its function through fighting is a great thrill, but the item’s appeal thankfully isn’t entirely lost once you understand it. Using it effectively or cleverly becomes the new way to enjoy the weapon, and while it would be nice to keep seeing new stages and tools, there has to be a finite amount of developer built content and the randomization option can’t produce the same kinds of strong and unique concepts that are featured in the curated battle stages. Duck Game exists for fast fun, and the oddities in it like strange weapons and silly hats are a good fit for a game where the laughs and action both come quick. The concept of the game is as simple as its title and the complications never reach a point where they interfere with the game flow or require an absurd degree of skill to master. A better player will still likely emerge on top, but the instant kill nature of the weapons means there can at least be decent competition despite skill gaps. All of this means Duck Game fits comfortably into an easy recommendation for a multiplayer title, but the consequence of its focus on speed and simplicity is that it doesn’t have the space to encourage robust strategy or involved approaches to battle.

 

Duck Game is more than it sounds like it would be, perhaps less than it looks like it will be, but it is still a good multiplayer title that focuses on quick thrills and ridiculous fun. The ducks may technically be incidental, but they’re also a great fit for a game where everything is deliberately wild and weird.