A Ducking History

Poor ducks. It feels like they’ve been the butt of the joke in games for decades. They’ve been hunted by a dog with a gun, given either a leek to hold or the ability to confuse others and not do much else in Pokémon, used as a toy explosive device in Hitman, and now they’ve been taken hostage by a sentient videogame cartridge and cannot be freed until they play every single one of the 100 microgames on offer. 

Even Donald Duck – canonically the strongest mage in the Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts series (seriously) – cannot save these canards.

DUCK: Dangerous Ultimate Cartridge Kidnapper is a collection of 100 microgames in a similar vein to the Warioware games on Nintendo consoles. A bunch of ducks – Sandra, Sergio, Greg, Dennis and Alex – are taken hostage and forced into playing these games in order to escape.

DUCK’s main mode where you will unlock the games is Story mode. Each duck has their moment to shine, but they all play the same and offer no individual differences.

Let’s Get Quacking

Story mode has four difficulties to choose from. Easy has just ten games all on easy difficulty, normal has 15, with five easy and ten on normal, and hard mode has five normal and ten on hard. For the ultimate challenge, original difficulty features all 20 games in that set: ten on easy, five normal and five hard.

Unlike the Warioware games, you can (and will) fail these microgames without worrying about them. Lives are only lost when you choose to ‘skip’ a game, and depending on what difficulty you choose, your remaining lives at the end will determine whether or not you can even skip the boss level.

The games themselves are a bit of a mixed bag. Some are less micro, and more mini, taking upwards of five minutes to complete. This goes double for some of the boss levels; these aren’t so much you taking on an oversized enemy, but feel more like levels ripped from a completely different videogame. These will have you facing wave after wave of bugs, skulking round a haunted maze in first-person and even attempting to save your partner whilst playing as a cat ninja.

Ducking Out Of The Way

Also, their quality varies massively too. Most of the games are fun, with just the right amount of challenge. One example I encountered had you trying to keep in sync with a team of cheerleaders. At first, the timing window felt very unforgiving, but it was just a case of learning the pattern and understanding it a bit better. Most microgames are like this, and after a few turns you will have them nailed.

Unfortunately, some of them are either too obtuse for their own good, or the game cannot keep up with your button smashing. One has you smashing the A button as fast as possible to stop a progress bar reaching the end and causing an overflow. Or rather, you can be pressing the A button as quickly as possible only for the game to not even register it. Having tried this on multiple controllers it feels less like a ‘me’ problem and more an issue with the game. And having had some more serious bugs at launch – that, credit where it is due, have since been patched out – there appear to be a couple of errors still in there.

And then we get to the ones that feel too obtuse or even unfair, and there are a few out there. Each game has a small description at the beginning that somewhat details what is required, but it is only through trial and error that many of these games will make sense. Even then though there are some that just need to be skipped to save your sanity. 

One in particular has you running from a tiger, with the challenge being inputting the right button based on the tree branch that blocks your path. No matter how many times I try this one, I cannot figure out whether I am required to press the one button, or a combination of the two. And it feels like this microgame doesn’t really know either, willing to accept all manner of combinations.

But once a microgame is completed in Story mode, it is available to play – or avoid – in all the other modes too. Endless mode has you seeing how long you can complete levels for sequentially, there is a party mode where the nostalgia really hits home in some local multiplayer shenanigans, but the biggest effort will be spent earning golden ducks. Each unlocked microgame in this mode then has to be replayed and completed three times in a row, presumably across its various difficulty modes. Manage this and you will earn a golden duck for that game, and seeking every single golden duck is going to be the real test here.

Ducks In A Row

Whilst it may be a little rough around the edges, those looking for a Warioware inspired game on Xbox have one here with DUCK: Dangerous Ultimate Cartridge Kidnapper.

The humour and surrealism is present, and there are enough microgames included to make it worthwhile. More than a few of them don’t quite work though, whether that be due to dodgy mechanics or simply being a bit too obtuse for their own good. And it is those which prevent this from being an easy recommendation.

Important Links

DUCK: Dangerous Ultimate Cartridge Kidnapper Brings Microgame Madness to Consoles – https://www.thexboxhub.com/duck-dangerous-ultimate-cartridge-kidnapper-brings-microgame-madness-to-consoles/

Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/duck-dangerous-ultimate-cartridge-kidnapper/9pm42qmppgfc