Donald Duck: Quack Attack

Back story

Not only has Disney’s favourite duck been starring in cartoons for 60 years, since the early Eighties, Donald has appeared In games on the Master System, MegaDrive, Game Gear, SNES, and Game Boy.

If this had been classified as a ‘retro gaming experience’, perhaps things would have turned out differently. Perhaps the content of this review would have been more lenient, but as it stands, Quack Attack deserves to be covered in plum sauce and strung up in a Chinese restaurant window. This offensive piece of gaming is nothing more than a platformer in the most primary sense. You run, you jump, you collect stuff - and that’s it It’s coated with lush visuals, cool animation and a DVD-streamed intro, but Quack Attack's gameplay has been dredged up from a decade ago.

Charged with rescuing girlfriend Daisy Duck from the clutches of evil magician Merlock, our meteorological mallard must recover weather vanes from each tedium-filled level in his valiant rescue attempt How this is supposed to actually aid Daisy remains a mystery.

Aesthetically, it doesn’t just borrow from Crash Bandicoot as much as shamelessly rip it off. Donald and his surroundings are rendered in 3D, but he’s always stuck on a single path, unable to explore beyond the boundaries of the screen. These limitations may have been acceptable on the old 32 bit PSone five years ago, when the hardware was still finding its feet, but not in these Emotion Engine-powered times; even screenshots of the next gen Crash show everyone’s favourite bandicoot has progressed beyond such linear trappings.

Sure, there is a measure of variety. But not much. After running ‘into’ the screen for one level, Donald then lethargically shifts his feathery butt to a different perspective, running from (wait for it) left to right. Donald, arguably the House of Mouse’s most likeable critter, has just two moves at his disposal: jump and kick. Strangely, for his species, he can't even duck. Oh, and swim too - he doesn’t seem to be too good at that either.

DUCK DOWN

Each of the four worlds follows this same, tedious pattern - the fact that programmers still insist on resorting to basic designs when there is scope for so much more is annoying The game falls into the category of being too tricky for the bairns, yet too basic for the more seasoned gamer. Whether you’re in the city of Duckburg with its pneumatic drill-wielding workmen or a creepy castle filled with sonic-spitting bats, the gameplay's exactly the same: either dodge or attack the onslaught until the end of the level painfully creeps towards you. No reward. No fun.

It's doubtful that you'll want to visit Duckburg ever again

To be fair, Quack Attack is obviously aimed at the very young PS2 audience, but how many PS2 owners are lusting after such schmaltz, when the likes of Tekken and TimeSplitters are on offer? If Quack Attack does find its intended audience, and a tot does pick it up, they'll soon be putting Donald down to play Pokemon instead, when they come up against the Everest-like learning curve that kicks in way too early for comfort. With no option to look around his environments. Donald just has to jump and hope for the best - and hope is a dangerous thing More often than not he invariably becomes an ex-duck’

In an attempt to liven up the leaden proceedings, Donald’s trio of nephews, Huey,

Duey and Louie, offer special moves for collecting tokens throughout the levels, in a PoRoppo-like sequence of rapid button bashing Despite each series of button combinations triggering a different animation (Donald pole-vaulting, ring-swinging, kicking a football and so on) the result is always temporary invincibility, which seems a somewhat pointless prize.

Quack Attacks one redeeming feature is the inventive boss battles. At the end of world one, Donald must avoid eggs farted at him by an overweight, irate bird. Another level sees the plucky hero dodging a wrecking ball thrown by his dogged assailants. While these attacks are creative, the action is over far too quickly. A patient gamer will have all 24 levels licked in an afternoon, mainly due to an abundance of extra lives - no doubt thrown in to alleviate the frustrating difficulty. The only longevity comes from replaying the levels to collect any items you missed, or fulfiling a challenge to complete as many special moves as possible in a set time. But after getting to the end by sheer blind luck the first time, it’s doubtful that you’ll want to visit Duckburg ever again.

Quack Attack is a wasted opportunity. Where are the power-ups? Why cant we play as other characters, like Huey, Duey and Louie? Why are the special moves so useless? And who ever heard of a duck drowning? PlayStation 2 may be in its infancy, but its games dont have to be infantile. Quack Attack? Excuse the pun but it’s more like Cack Attack.