What the Duck

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

What the Duck is an Action-RPG released in 2023 on PC and Nintendo Switch. In this game, players take on the role of a brash idiot named Illy who hopes to impress a girl (who really isn’t interested in him beyond what she thinks she can get him to do for her) by finding his spirit animal and becoming an impressive warrior. However, he finds that doing so may be difficult once he discovers that his spirit animal is a duckling.

It’s a silly premise, and there’s certainly some potential to wring some comedy and unique gameplay out of it, but unfortunately this game is just far too much of a disaster to accomplish anything.

This starts with a presentation that is overburdened by terrible load times. Once you finally get into the game, the 3D graphics with a slightly-cartoony art style are actually pretty decent, but these are undermined by an absurd lack of polish, with some awkward animations, clipping, characters standing on air, and a jittery camera all make this game look far, far worse than it needs to be. Add to that an annoyingly repetitive soundtrack, and you have a game where the presentation often seems like it’s actively trying to get you to hate it.

And while you might hope that at least the characters and comedy could save this presentation, the truth is quite the opposite – this game takes what should have been a silly concept and drains any humor out of it with terrible characters speaking terribly-written lines with terrible voice acting. I actively hate every character in this game, and yet they all insist on constantly talking and making me have to see more of them.

Sadly, the gameplay fares no better. Horrible camera controls that don’t work properly half the time, janky controls, and goal design that often leaves players clueless as to what they’re supposed to be doing. And beyond that, there’s just nothing about this gameplay that’s truly fun.

I credit What the Duck for being an ambitious game, trying to do big things while being silly and unique at the same time, but virtually none of it works. The gameplay is a janky mess, the graphics are unpolished to the point of the game looking unfinished, the soundtrack irritating and repetitive, and the characters are all hateable jerks. This game needed more time in development, possibly even more time measured in years. What we got instead was an absolute shambles of a game.

tl;dr – What the Duck is nominally an Action-RPG about a silly man who fights with the help of his spirit animal, a duckling. But what it really is, unfortunately, is a giant mess. Nothing in this game works right – not the controls, the camera, the graphics, the music, the characters, the humor. Everything is lacking polish and at times seems designed to actively make the game worse. If this game’s goose is cooked, it’s because the duck is absurdly undercooked.

Grade: D-

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