Duck Dynasty: Review

Duck Dynasty is not, as I had originally hoped, a game about romance, scandal, betrayal and gigantic shoulder pads, as told by a cast of adorable aquatic birds. Rather, it’s a tale of a redneck family with a penchant for murdering animals. Sometimes they eat them. Sometimes they leave their corpses to bloat and fester in the soupy waters of the bayou.

The tale begins with what feels like a 20-minute cutscene of back-and-forth between a few incredibly beardy men. It’s a shame the game couldn’t get the hair quite right, because most of them end up looking like they’re wearing hirsute Elizabethan ruffs.Shortly after they’re done with what I can only assume is banter, voice acted by a bunch of guys more suited to splintering squirrel skulls, you're plonked into the body of John Luke,a taciturn Bieber lookalike, who has to learn to kill things because… manhood?

You’re given a shotgun, a few shells and told to turn a bunch of ducks into ex-ducks. Seconds after you've washed the blood from your hands, you're tasked with fetching some squirrels from the woods because Gramma who sounds like Tree Trunks from Adventure Time, but slower and hammier wants to make gumbo. You want to ask, “Since when has squirrel been a part of gumbo?” but you can’t because the game doesn't let you use the controller in cutscenes, so tough luck, John Luke. Eat your squirrel stew.

Of course, it’s not all squirrel-murder and duck deaths. There’s a fishing mini-game that’s about as dull as… real fishing, and a tender moment where you detonate a beaver dam. You’ll get achievements for these, but they don’t really live up to the unintentional comedy if the beaver-splosion achievement was called ‘Dambusters’, we might have given this game a 10. In conclusion: too much murder, not enough ’80s hair.

3/10