The ducks at your local park may seem a fairly lazy bunch, waddling around, snarfing up breadcrumbs. But maybe that's just because they spent their adorable chickhood training in mini-games for races that would take them across five different terrains in a quest for eternal glory. I mean, after that, you'd like to retire, right? Relive those exciting days in the Wix Games fourquel Duck Life 4.
The game combines favorite minigames from previous installments of the series with new ones, and each area (running, swimming, flying, climbing, and jumping) features 3 mini-games, to keep repetition down a bit. Just like in earlier games, during the actual races you can't do anything... other than cheer at your computer screen, so get out those pompoms if you have any. Compared to previous Duck Life games, this one may seem to be more grindy, since the game suggests you should build a team of three ducks, each of which needs to be trained separately. Just keep in mind this is really only a suggestion. It is very possible, and indeed faster, to train just one duck. Plus this leaves you with more money to buy your duck ridiculous hats. Duck Life 4 shows just how far the series has come, and though it's still a relatively simple and silly collection of minigames, it's the perfect thing to sink your spare time into when you want something fun and casual. Viking helmeted avians ahoy!
When I get to the end of the swiming training, there is a black band across the level. The end of the training box is behind it, so I can't select the button to continue. restarting seems to keep all my progress, but I have to sit through all the ads and loading times again.
you can use tab to switch between the buttons there.
Swimming has alot of bugs. First there's the diving thing, where a huge black line covers the first few feet down. That you can overcome with the tab button, as said above. Then in the swimming mode most like the original, the land at the bottom right flickers. Also, I'm probably just being picky here, but why is my duck so big in comparison to the alligators? :)
I wish I could practice each type of training separately. I'd like to master the diving, but it isn't worth it to grind through the first swim training. I know that I could just immediately fail in the first two levels, but that seems even more like grinding.
The flying training was too difficult and I was bored by then, so I never did find out what the other types of training were.
Does anyone have the stamina to train more than one duck?
Another bug:
"Clear all saved data" does not completely do so. I was able to start a new game, and choose a new starting "duck" (they really don't look at all like ducks, IMO), but the additional ducks I bought in the last game were still there. They were reset to Level 0, but kept stealing the food I bought for the new duck. Dragging them away was also difficult, since they then hopped right back to the mouse position. They also crowd around the trainer "duck", making it hard to click without grabbing my "duck". Most annoying.
Good concept, but needs a lot of work to be playable.
More bugs. Climbing training in the Glacier area sometimes completely fails to recognize that your duck is on a ladder, so you just get stuck. The second leg of the tournament in the Glacier area seems to be completely bugged. After climbing the first wall, my duck always becomes stuck in the floor and stops moving. This effectively makes progressing through the rest of the game impossible. Very shoddy.
Everything about this latest sequel seems thrown together. Why keep the energy mechanic from the old games, when it is completely forgettable? You buy a little bit of seed initially, and then hardly have to bother doing so again. The idea of leveling multiple ducks is ridiculous, and I'm glad at least that it's not required. The different mini-games are nice for variety, but having to go through them all in the same order each time completely undermines that. If you had a choice of which to play each time, it would be much better.
I wanted to give this game a five, as I liked the three predecessors. That being said, there seems to be a LOT more grinding than in the others. It took me around five hours (from yesterday and today) to complete the game. Ninety-nine percent of that time was just grinding through the mini-game training.
Additionally, if I were to have used more than one duck (which doesn't make sense to do) it would have doubled that time. One duck with max stats (150+ on each level) and you can easily win, however, be prepared to spend a LOT of mind-numbing time on the mini-games. Plus, the game is surprisingly processor heavy for a Flash game, so there are some latency issues if your computer is older (mine is from 2007).
That, and the payoff is that the finish is a simple platform game that lasts about two minutes, I had to give this one a much lower rating than it's predecessors.
Disappointing.
I have to agree with the other commenters that this sequel doesn't live up to the rest of the series. There is indeed a lot of grinding through mini-games (more so then in the predecessors) and indeed the concept of training more ducks at the same time doesn't work. May be of each individual duck had it's own strength or something.
On top of that it's extremely buggy and on my laptop also very laggy. Shame...
I kind of miss the special seed from the last few games that you could feed to your duck to upgrade your duck's stats with its energy. Why'd they do away with it? And I hate how the minigames are in a set order- hate, hate, hate. :( It's really redundant to go over
and over
and over
the same old games in the same order without being able to go back and practice one.
Also, bugs very annoying.
And on the jumping training the one block stays in the right corner for all the rest of the minigames. Very annoying to trampoline through a brick.
"Trampoline or die!" was cute though.
It could be my computer, but I found the game very glitchy. I am a fan of the duck life games though so I had to see this one through.
weird glitch/cheat:
If you buy the cone hat in one of the stores, when you go back to the glacier area and play the first mini-game your hat makes you taller, so you skip up to the latter above sometimes. makes getting highscores much easier
over-all a bit disappointing
duck life 4 is brilliant. there are bugs, but you can easily work round them. the band on diving training is not on all websites where this game is available.
p.s my ducks are: sweetie, duke, duckipo, duckette, duckonia and duckina.
then i got duckaine, ducked
amazing game.
I really liked Duck Life 4!
There are some bugs and glitches here and there, and training your ducks can be quite the tedious task. Despite all of that, I like how you aren't just training a virtual duck, but in a way, you are also training yourself. Your reaction time becomes faster and so does your timing! And I do love the whole new additions. They make things a lot more exciting, even though it's a pain that you can't go to a specific minigame in a training session at will. I love all of the Duck Life games, and this one has to be on my favorite list. It changed Duck Life completely. I wonder how the next one will be?
How does the save process work? Everytime I log on and off all of my progress is erased. Making a new duck and doing this daily is even more tedious than the game itself.
Update