Duck Amuck Review (DS)
Made after the legendary short, now you get to torture Daffy in your DS!
Developer: WayForward Technologies
Publisher: Warner Bros. Games
Release Date: 30th November 2007 (EU), 9th October (NA)
Platform: Nintendo DS
In 1953, Chuck Jones directed the masterpiece animated short Duck Amuck where Daffy’s cartoon was hijacked by an unknown animator and tortured Daffy, who later revealed themselves to be Bugs Bunny at the end. It very nearly didn’t happen but luckily it did as it became a huge success and highly influential, what with its groundbreaking self-aware humour becoming one of the first examples of fourth-wall breaking which would later be heavily emulated in other characters and mediums. And then to coincide with the release of Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and Wii, WayForward Technologies took that Duck Amuck idea even further by implementing it into a DS game.
Much like the short, the game is incredibly self-aware and utilises everything with the DS and you, the player, into a wholey creative and interactive experience making this one of the most clever games on the DS. But it’s not quite as perfectly made as the short…
In one way, it’s a Wario Ware clone. You’re presented with Daffy—who is voiced by Joe Alaskey— on a white background and your goal is to antagonise him and play through a series of 22 different minigames. With each minigame completed you fill up Daffy’s rage meter and once that is filled he goes berserk, the game ends, and the cycle of torment continues.
In another way, it truly is just the animated short in video game format. It does cleverly use the DS to make the game very interactive making it as though you’re playing a cartoon on your DS and you and the DS are entirely involved. Not only can you swipe and prod Daffy to get a reaction out of him, you can even close the DS on him and he’ll still shout at you through the closed DS and it’ll spawn a whole new minigame where you have to press L and R when Daffy calls them out as he’s hunting a beast. If you’re idle long enough Daffy will complain about it and rant off onto something else to which randomly a dial will pop up. Turn it all the way down to mute him and he’ll flail about quietly and it’ll go into another minigame where you can record your voice and edit it. Pitch it up or down, play it in reverse and add an effect to it and that’ll be Daffy’s voice. Back on the main screen, poke Daffy in the head three of four times and he’ll get annoyed enough to bring out three paint buckets of different colours. Drop a blob on Daffy or circle the blob around and you’ll either get Daffy into a new outfit or change the background to some new minigame. Or just swipe randomly around him, tear up the scenery and Daffy will patch it up with duck duct tape. Tap the patched up hole and a new minigame will spawn.
There’s lots of creative ways to provoke Daffy and interact with him much like the animator did in the short creating some very interesting playability with this game. It’s not like any other kind of game, let alone on the DS itself.
But despite that clever presentation, some of the minigames themselves feel a little cheap and hollow, and in some cases unbeatable. They’re certainly amusing and entertaining to play and after you completed one you’ll want to experiment more to find out what others you can play, but after maybe the third time of coming across the same minigame or even after the 4th level within the minigame you kinda want something else to do because the quality of them doesn’t hold out too well. For example, if you swipe on Daffy horizontally you can cut him in half leading to a minigame where you need to swipe on multiplying Daffys, getting smaller and smaller as they’re cut down, until they’re all gone. You’re swiping on a time limit as well so you gotta be quick. Now, whether it’s to do with the calibration on my DS and 3DS with the stylus or what, but it doesn’t always register the swipes so well meaning you’ll have two or three tiny Daffy’s left and 4 seconds left and no matter how quick you are if it’s not registering your swipes properly you’re not going to get them. It’s annoying. Especially how there is a bomb that pops up every so often that can stun the Daffys or send them from the top screen down, which otherwise can be useful, but if you’re not careful and the bomb detonates on the bottom screen and launches the Daffys up to the top screen there’s nothing you can do and you lose time on it. Things like that will then deter any further motivation to want to play and see what else there is, and you don’t want that.
But there are some decent minigames that are very humorous and match well with the original short. I should point out on most minigames they have multiple levels within them ranging from 5 to 10, but there are some, like the voice changing minigame, that are just singular events. So, on occasion a rubber (or eraser) will appear prompting you to rub out his mouth or, at Daffy’s request, rub out his body. You can then draw out a new bill for him or a new body leading to a new minigame. From redrawing his mouth, you then have to swipe up passing food from the bottom screen to the top and feed Daffy until he bloats up, explodes and zips around the screens. This one gets a chuckle from me because of how ridiculous it can be. In redrawing his body it then leads to an obstacle race with Cecil the Turtle where you need to keep swiping right to pick up speed, swipe up to jump obstacles, swipe down to duck under other obstacles, and blow into the microphone to shoo away swarms of bugs. This minigame is alright but by the time you get to level 9 it gets much trickier trying to keep up and I often find my hand blocks half the screen so I can’t always see what’s coming ahead quick enough to win. But the gags where you rub out and redraw Daffy with something else ridiculous is right from the short and I like that. One other gag I came across that’s quite fun is aiming Daffy in a cannon towards a TNT barrel and carefully putting in the right amount of gunpowder into the cannon. Too little and Daffy flies limply onto the ground. Too much and Daffy is shot way the fuck away and slammed into the wall. That’s pretty funny to see.
There are quite a lot of other gags that are inspired by other shorts too, such as Dripalong Daffy where Daffy strolls into town as its new sheriff and plays a hand of cards with the local ruffians, Duck Dodgers failing to disintergrate Marvin the Martian played through solving a quick pipe puzzle, and the exploding piano where Daffy has rigged a piano key to explode once you press it. So what better way to annoy Daffy than to not press it despite the top screen telling you what colour co-ordinated key to press?
Aside from minigames to find and ways to annoy Daffy, throughout there are random gold glittering bits where tapping on them rewards you with one of 24 character coins. Collect all of them and you’re rewarded with one more minigame. The coins highlight Looney Tunes characters with a short bio to them which you can look at in the gag menu, which really is the only menu next to multiplayer. The gag menu shows you all of the gags you have and haven’t unlocked, with the locked ones having hints available giving you clues on how to find them and what to do with Daffy. On the gags list you’ll see stars next to them. Grey indicates you’ve played through it all and completed it (those first 5 levels), yellow means you’ve done all the advanced levels (all 10 levels) and cleared it, and finally Daffy when you have played through the gag flawlessly. That means racing against Cedric without hitting the obstacles once and not losing a turn through the minigame.
And yes there is multiplayer! Wirelessly connect with another Duck Amuck game and together you can play three more additional minigames. Here multiplayer plays off the part in the short where the film rolls up a little too high and ends up being two Daffys on screen. Very clever idea.
Duck Amuck is a very weird and interesting game in a good way. It genuinely is pretty clever in how it uses everything it can with the DS with the stylus and touch controls, the microphone, and closing the DS. Those capabilities I admire. Joe Alaskey is as marvelous as ever as Daffy. There’s a great sense of humour and genuine funnny moments with the game with how the gags and minigames are presented. It looks good as well on the DS as Daffy is animated nicely and it’s not really an ugly game to look at. Music works playfully well with it. It’s letdown, though, by some weak and cheap feeling minigames that feel like they could’ve been something more or had more time developed on them. It’s also a problem when registering swipes with the stylus, the main control scheme of the game, stops you from being able to complete minigames. As someone who loves Daffy the most out of all of the Looney Tunes characters it’s a bit of a shame that this isn’t as extraordinary as the short itself.
I’d say overall Duck Amuck is a very amusing and entertaining if flawed little oddity of a video game that smartly uses the DS’s capabilities. It’s a fun little thing to play around for a short while and have a little giggle at but you’re not going to get anything deeper than that. Which is fine because jokes aren’t always that deep.
Where to Purchase (As of 23/09/2022):
eBay: £3-£15/$4-50
Amazon: £2-£12/ $9-$15
CeX: £2.00