i’ve been playing a bit of Escape from Duckov over the last couple of days because i have a weakness for top down shooters and i have been curious about the whole Extraction Game format even tho most enthusiasts of the format are deeply unpleasant people because my roguelike/souls fiend brain loves High Stakes Action.
duckov excises the multiplayer sweat part of the genre completely and winds up a single player roguelite (in that there’s progression that persists across runs, no three boons stuff) where the combat generally has the pacing and tension of an open world shooter despite the characters being ducks. there is an overarching story of trying to get a van running to get out of battle royal hell world but so far i’m still doing the quests to fully open up all the base/crafting stuff and make deaths less painful. there’s some weight to moving & swinging your reticle around and raising/lowering your weapon and reloads all take a decent amount of time. there is fog of war/view cone stuff to consider even tho it’s a top down game and once or twice “quack! [BANG]” was the last thing i heard as some bastard mallard came around the corner and emptied a shotgun into me
you get all the thrills and chills of barely escaping desperate combat situations by the skin of your teeth except you’re yelling “Fuck You Pato Chapo” at a penguin with an AK instead of some weird racist teenager online and shaking in fear every time you hear a “quack! quack!” that’s entirely too close for comfort. there is extensive Birdsona editing and people have already figured out how to Be A Penis
all in all i am pretty surprised that this $20 joke game is actually pretty good
EDIT: i just realized i put this in the news thread and not games you played, if someone wants to move please feel free