Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers

"An OK Game But A Bit Too Short"

Introduction

The Dreamcast receives a game from Disney Interactive in a joint effort with Ubi Soft to deliver a game starring Disney's very own Donald Duck in his own adventure. In this game, you will meet other Disney characters, like Huey, Dewey, and Louie, as you try to rescue Daisy from the evil Merlock.

Story

Donald Duck is watching a report by Daisy with his friend, Gyro Gearloose, and his cousin, Gladstone Gander. The report Daisy is giving is from the temple of the evil Merlock. While Daisy is reporting, Merlock looks up and sees Daisy. He charges at them, the camera falls over, and the whole screen goes to static. Donald decides he is going to save Daisy, but Gladstone says he is going to beat Donald and rescue her first. Gyro offers his help to both of them with teleporters to take them to different worlds and eventually, to Merlock's lair.

That about does it for the story. The only further advancement in the plot is at the very end of the game when you finally succeed. There are no interesting twists or anything like that as you progress through the game. You simply beat some stages, beat a boss, and do it all over again. You never get treated to an interesting turn of events, so if you're looking for an engrossing story, you better try something else.

Story = 5

Graphics

The graphics in this game are very well done. The characters are fairly smooth and the levels themselves have a variety of colors that make them very appealing to everyone. For any of you who have played Rayman, these graphics are basically identical. All in all, the graphics are very nice in this game.

Graphics = 9

Control

The controls in this game are very easy to learn and use. The buttons you use are the ''A'' button, the jump button and the ''B'' button, the punch button. You may sometimes use ''Y'' or the ''Right Trigger'' to look at your status, but this is something you will usually not need to do. You use the joystick to move Donald around the screen and it is pretty responsive. The controls are not hard at all to get down. You will be able to perform all the functions with ease in no time at all.

Control = 9

Gameplay

And now for the meat of this review, the gameplay. I was fairly disappointed when I saw that you would not be able to run around in open fields to do your missions. Instead, about half the levels are just 3D side scrolling missions and the other half is just have you run down a single path to the end of the level. There are a couple stages that have you run toward the screen, on a single path, in ''chase'' type sequences.

There are four normal stages per level, a chase sequence you will have to earn, and finally a boss fight that you have to earn. There are a total of four levels in the game. The missions you will perform in these levels are the same three missions the entire game. In a single stage you will have to collect three toys for one of the nephews. A nephew will be standing on a teleporter when you come into the level and will only let you use it after you collect all of the toys from the four stages. Along with the toys, you will also be collecting a piece of the boss teleporter pad in each stage to let you access the boss. The piece you find makes up 1/4 of the boss teleporter pad, so you have to collect all four pieces from the four stages to access the boss. After you have collected all the toys, you give them to the nephew, and he'll let you use the teleporter. The teleporter always leads to a ''chase'' sequence and at the very end of the stage, you will find Gladstone Gander, who tells you if you can beat his records in that level, he'll give you ''something worth running for.'' You have to go back and do all the stages again trying to beat Gladstone's time. You do these same missions for the next three levels in the game. I wish there could have been more variety, but this is all you get to do. It does get boring at times because it is so repetitive.

The enemies in this game are extremely simple to kill. For almost all of them, all they require is a simple punch. The others may require a jump on the head due to some kind of protection around them. There are also a few objects that are invincible but are easily avoided by jumping over them. There are pretty much the same type of enemies on enemies in every level. There are always guys that just walk around, enemies that spin with something in their hands or on their legs forcing you to jump on their head, and a type of invincible object.

Your health is something that may cause you problems in the game. You can only get hit twice and then you die after that. There are checkpoints you will get sent back to if you die, so you don't need to worry about always starting the stage over. You will also encounter milkshakes. These refill your health and make you invincible for about five or so seconds. My only complaint about this, is that the invincibility doesn't work on the invincible objects. I would usually get careless and run into one of them and get knocked off a ledge. Pitiful, isn't it?

There are also stars scattered around the stage. They are big yellow, blue or red ones. The yellow stars equal 1, the blue equal 10, and the red equal 20. If you collect 100 yellow stars or another combination, you get an extra life. There are always plenty of these things lying around, so running out of lives is almost never an issue.

To sum it up, you go through stages doing the same three missions, collect toys, boss pad pieces, or beat Gladstones' time for all the levels while collecting stars and defeating enemies. This may get boring to some players, since it is so repetitive, but you may enjoy it.

Gameplay = 5

Difficulty

This game is easy to complete in the stages and the bosses. Just about anyone can beat this game with almost no trouble. You may encounter some difficulty for a little while when trying to figure out how to defeat a boss, but you will figure it out quickly. Some added difficulty probably would have made the game a bit better, but I guess they were aiming at more of a child audience and didn't want to make it too hard.

Difficulty = Too Easy

Life Span

This is a pretty short game. You should be able to complete the entire game to 100% in about five or six hours.

Life Span = Short

Story = 5
Graphics = 9
Control = 9
Gameplay = 5
Difficulty = Too Easy
Life Span = Short

Conclusion

This game is one that you will probably want to rent since it is so short. This game was enjoyable, however, and will be one that you may want to take a look at. All in all, I enjoyed my experience with ''Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers'' and hope Ubi Soft and Disney Interactive produce another wonderful title.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/02/02, Updated 02/27/03