Seriously Quacked Up
No, we don't want any MOOOOORE DUCKS...
Published: May 6, 2007
How much would you pay for a tech demo? How about a tech demo shoehorned into the basic construct of a puzzle game? A couple bucks? Three? Four? How about seven, because that's apparently what Sony thinks you should pay for it. But hey, there have been more than enough folks online with early reviews that will tell you no amount of money is worth the game. That's not entirely true. It probably should have been included with the system to show (albeit poorly) how the SIXAXIS' tilt controls work, and maybe could have passed for a $.99 impulse buy.
But as a $7 game? C'mooooon, there's so little here that actually feels like a full game that even the most hardcore of demo players will be hard pressed to justify their purchase, and nearly all the criticism about the game will likely stem from the very thing that was supposed to be its selling point: the controls. There's really little need to elaborate beyond saying that there's really no way to tell just how far you should tilt things -- particularly when the more advanced obstacles like currents start to pop up. Regardless of how far you're supposed to go, moving too quickly is read as a jump, so you're double-screwed.
It's not like the basic concepts here weren't tolerable; take the running gag of a rubber ducky in a tub that has been recycled at Sony's pre-E3 press conferences, hand off development to the talented folks at UK-based Sumo Digital and make a basic demonstration out of it. Except someone forgot to mention to Sumo that they should probably make the tilt controls as intuitive and responsive as possible to ensure maximum accessibility for newcomers since, y'know, it is a glorified tech demo.
That didn't really happen, so you're left with an overly simplistic showcase for sloppy tilt controls and the PlayStation 3's knack for some very pretty water with little else. Oh, don't get me wrong, I was actually amused enough to play through the entire set of 20 Fun difficulty levels, but getting into the later ones, it became obvious that the idea of popping bubbles floating in a sloshing set of progressively more complex mazes fraught with dangers like missing tub lips, duckling-chomping sharks and powerful currents just couldn't be done in a fun way with the controls as loose as they were.
Stuff like allowing you to flip almost anything not encased in a bubble with a flick of the SIXAXIS was smart, and introduced a fun strategic element into things, as did the idea that the more ducks in a row that you can get to head into the level-ending drain, the more time is subtracted from your final time (which in turn gives you both a medal and an online ranking), but without proper tactile or at least relational feedback as to how you're doing when doing more advanced tasks like jumping or fighting currents, the fun swirls down the drain just as fast as the water in one of those fancy-looking whirlpools.
There's really little need to say more. The controls, such as they were, always seemed too unresponsive when I needed them to be (jumps, in particular, usually took a couple tries), and overly touchy when I didn't (again, accidental jumps made it all doubly frustrating). The level designs actually showed some imagination, but left to the devices of the SIXAXIS, the two elements never seemed to meet in the middle. Kinda like your wallet and this game on the PlayStation Store, got me?
But as a $7 game? C'mooooon, there's so little here that actually feels like a full game that even the most hardcore of demo players will be hard pressed to justify their purchase, and nearly all the criticism about the game will likely stem from the very thing that was supposed to be its selling point: the controls. There's really little need to elaborate beyond saying that there's really no way to tell just how far you should tilt things -- particularly when the more advanced obstacles like currents start to pop up. Regardless of how far you're supposed to go, moving too quickly is read as a jump, so you're double-screwed.
It's not like the basic concepts here weren't tolerable; take the running gag of a rubber ducky in a tub that has been recycled at Sony's pre-E3 press conferences, hand off development to the talented folks at UK-based Sumo Digital and make a basic demonstration out of it. Except someone forgot to mention to Sumo that they should probably make the tilt controls as intuitive and responsive as possible to ensure maximum accessibility for newcomers since, y'know, it is a glorified tech demo.
That didn't really happen, so you're left with an overly simplistic showcase for sloppy tilt controls and the PlayStation 3's knack for some very pretty water with little else. Oh, don't get me wrong, I was actually amused enough to play through the entire set of 20 Fun difficulty levels, but getting into the later ones, it became obvious that the idea of popping bubbles floating in a sloshing set of progressively more complex mazes fraught with dangers like missing tub lips, duckling-chomping sharks and powerful currents just couldn't be done in a fun way with the controls as loose as they were.
Stuff like allowing you to flip almost anything not encased in a bubble with a flick of the SIXAXIS was smart, and introduced a fun strategic element into things, as did the idea that the more ducks in a row that you can get to head into the level-ending drain, the more time is subtracted from your final time (which in turn gives you both a medal and an online ranking), but without proper tactile or at least relational feedback as to how you're doing when doing more advanced tasks like jumping or fighting currents, the fun swirls down the drain just as fast as the water in one of those fancy-looking whirlpools.
There's really little need to say more. The controls, such as they were, always seemed too unresponsive when I needed them to be (jumps, in particular, usually took a couple tries), and overly touchy when I didn't (again, accidental jumps made it all doubly frustrating). The level designs actually showed some imagination, but left to the devices of the SIXAXIS, the two elements never seemed to meet in the middle. Kinda like your wallet and this game on the PlayStation Store, got me?
