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Duck Dodgers
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Graphics & Sound:
Yes, Duck Dodgers suffers from the same Blurry Texture Syndrome that pretty much every Nintendo 64 game out there has. No, you won’t care. Although the beginning world may seem a little sparse -- something of a desert planet -- once you hit the 30s, you’ll be thrown into environments that are simply popping with --stuff, from arcade machines (that work!) and beyond. The world is garish and bright, just like all cartoon worlds should be, and it all feels just like it should be. Dodgers himself looks like a complete dork and yet somehow cool, which is how he came off in the cartoons as well. And the various enemies are very well-rendered, especially the various bosses. While not the pinnacle of graphical excellence, Duck Dodgers certainly looks better than most of its counterparts on the 64.
The sound’s quite nice too. The music is nice, but forgettable. Dodgers’ lines aren’t. He makes all sorts of quips as he does various things, and most of them are damned funny. They’re probably all lines from old cartoons, and they certainly have that same feel, although I was never a huge fan of Looney Tunes. (You can all stone me now.) It’s sort of like Gex, only you don’t want to turn it off after five minutes. Yeah, they do get a little annoying, but there are certainly worse things in the world than having to listen to Daffy ramble. And it’s always cool to leave it on the title screen and hear him bicker about you not wanting to play the game.
Inarguably the coolest sound effect in Duck Dodgers, and the one that totally sold me on the game, is the tiptoe effect. The game makes that exact ‘dun-dun-dun-DUH-dun-dundun’ that you hear in every cartoon ever made where someone skulks around, and it absolutely -killed- me the first time I heard it. I spend tons of time tiptoeing around just to hear the little music. It’s not always the same, either, or it’s on a long enough loop for me not to notice. Very, very cool. |
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Gameplay:
Marvin the Martian's up to his old tricks again, he's trying to blow up the world, and it's up to you to stop him. Yadda yadda. What you're going to be doing in Duck Dodgers is basically running through the various worlds, picking up the Atoms (this game's version of Donkey Kong 64's bananas, or Banjo-Kazooie's puzzle pieces), defeating bosses, and jumping around like any good platforming character should do.
And it’s certainly entertaining. There are five worlds to explore, each with 20 atoms to collect. Some are hidden, others are in plain view. To get the best ending to the game, of course, you have to find them all. Each world is broken up into sections, and each section usually contains a number of atoms. In the first world, getting them usually entails some difficult jumps or using a strapped-on rocket to get something far away. In the second world, many of them come from mini-games. It’s a nice change of pace, really.
But Duck Dodger‘s main flaw seems to come out here. Although the platforming is generally enjoyable, the controls are absolutely atrocious at times. Walking in a straight line is often an exercise in futility, and I can’t tell you how many times I fell off of the minecart track trying to get that last atom in the first world. Ugh. And while most of the mini-games are enjoyable, some of them are downright annoying. It usually has to do with the game camera, which just doesn’t pick up the pace quick enough to be really useful. If you don’t mind fighting with the camera, though, you’ll find yourself an enjoyable little platformer gem in Duck Dodgers. |
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Difficulty:
Like any good platformer, the difficulty in Duck Dodgers slowly builds up. Like any imperfect platformer, it has at least one hitch in said ramp. This occurs in the first world, in the area where you must use the rockets to hop from island to island through a narrow canyon. I lost all of my lives (I hadn’t died up to that point) in my first try at this point. Ugh. A few tries later, however, and I had it down pat. There are the occasional ‘pain in the butt’ sections, and the fact that the game doesn’t let you save except for when it -wants- you to save is something of an irritant, but most of the game is pretty smooth sailing once you get past that first little hump.
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Game Mechanics:
As stated before, the controls mar what otherwise could have been a fantastic game. You’ll fight with moving Dodgers around more than you’ll do anything else. Other than that, however, the menus are clear and understandable, and the worlds are a joy to experience. The disallowing of saving at any point is something of a nuisance, but one that you’ll soon overcome. And that tiptoe sound makes me tingly just thinking about it.
Duck Dodgers is a solid platformer. It has control issues, and it’s perhaps a bit too short for its own good, but it’s also enjoyable enough that it can warrant another run-through after you’re done with the first. While it won’t break any originality records, Duck Dodgers is an enjoyable romp through the Looney Tunes franchises, much better than most of the other fare (with the notable exception of the quite enjoyable Looney Tunes Collector: Alert!, also published by Infogrames, for the Game Boy). Anyone that ever wanted to be in one of those cartoons should certainly check out this game. While you may not buy it, it’s certainly worth a short visit. |
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-Sunfall to-Ennien, GameVortex Communications AKA Phil Bordelon |
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