At what point does a game stop being fun? After full completion? Once a couple of hundred hours of play have been invested? As the final Gamerscore and achievement ping hits your ears?
In fact, it’s a question that is probably dictated by the game itself, with many capable of providing fun and enjoyment for weeks, months and years down the line. It’s that fun and enjoyment which is key though. Without it, what’s the point in playing?
So Duck Run? At what point does that stop being fun? Well, it’s hard to pinpoint the precise moment my love for this game vanished, but I would think it was around level 8 of 50. Yes, you read that right, LEVEL 8!. It was about then that the constantly climbing game timer continued to tick on, as my death count reached well into a few hundred, and the combination of pixel perfect jumps and slightly dodgy hitboxes became a defining factor. But honestly, the fun police could well have turned up long before that time.
I came to Duck Run with hopes high too. Priced neatly, promising a bundle of Gamerscore for some relatively simple precision platforming, I was more than up for what Afil Games were offering. I walk away wishing I’d never set eyes on this infuriating, feathered frustration.
There is no story in Duck Run, but I’m certainly not going to knock it for that omission. Instead we are left to help a little duck traverse some 50 stages, jumping and dashing as if their life depends on it, navigating obstacles, hoping that the mechanics – and player skills – hold up. Spoiler alert, one or both will inevitably falter..
A looping, highly repetitive backing track accompanies this adventure, as you begin to jump spikes, prior to new mechanics dropping in on a fairly regular basis – bouncing green orbs that lift you further, spinning cogs of doom that threaten to shred your feathered friend.
An ‘A’ button jump will be your friend throughout, but you’ll also need to make the most of a dash as well, occasionally ‘recharging’ it for double dash dosage. The problem is, nothing in Duck Run is particularly well done and you’ll consistently fail to get a handle on the mechanics, falling to your doom before respawning in a nanosecond, whether that be at the start of the stage or at a beckoning checkpoint.
Those checkpoints are absolutely vital as your Duck Run death count will easily reach into the hundreds, thousands even, prior to completion of those 50 stages. We’ve mostly blamed our deaths on dodgy hitboxes, something which was hammered home as we passed the controller to our younger family members, hoping the reflexes and button pressing agility of a less aged gamer would help. Second spoiler, it didn’t. They struggled too. In fact, we sat watching, fast losing count of the times they muttered ‘I hate this’. Granted, that was occasionally followed by ‘one more go’, but they too have walked away from this dead duck, promising to never go back.
If you can discover that ‘one more go’ feeling that Duck Run tries to embrace, then you will at least be safe in the knowledge that any mistakes will see you spawning back in without hesitation. For what it’s worth, we commend that development decision; even a second of wasted time would be enough to see Duck Run uninstalled in mere minutes. In turn though, that swiftness does mean the next death will arrive all the quicker too.
And that’s pretty much all there is to Duck Run. You won’t come to this one for the visuals, nor the audio. The platforming is frustrating, and the gameplay is far from polished. So what’s left? A cheap price and some relatively easy to grab Gamerscore? Yep, that’s about the only reason you’ll want to play Duck Run. And only then you should do so as long as your blood pressure can handle it.
Duck Run is weirdly addictive, slightly compelling, but far from decent. Come for the achievements if you must, but don’t say we didn’t warn you about the frustrations of the gameplay.
Duck Run: A Quacking Good Time for Platformer Fans – https://www.thexboxhub.com/duck-run-a-quacking-good-time-for-platformer-fans/
Buy Duck Run on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/duck-run/9P0SKTK8DT0J
