Sometimes it just sucks to be a duck. Mickey gets all the accolades, the
pretty girl mouse, and the chance to hang out with the Super Bowl champs. Even
when Pluto has a bad day he does not realize it because, um, well, he is so
goofy. Donald Duck, on the other hand, always seems to get the short end of the
stick. Daisy gives him the runaround, Scrooge never has a dime to spare him, and
his nephews are simply out of control.
Such is the case again as Donald is trying to live a quiet life as a night
security guard at his uncle’s Ducklair Tower in the game PK Out of this World.
Donald is quietly minding his own business, when he is “discovered” by the
building’s super computer, named “One”. For no apparent reason (but
fortuitously, as soon will be seen), One decides to outfit and train Donald as a
super hero named PK (which, according to the game, is Latin for Platyrhynchos
Kineticus, or Duck of Energy).
No sooner has Donald become PK, then the world is invaded by the evil aliens
known as the Evronians (no, not Enronians), who travel through space looking for
worlds to conquer, and now have their eyes on earth. The invasion begins at
Ducklair Tower, and the Evronians have sent in their troops and captured Earth’s
top scientists. It is your job to guide PK in clearing out the baddies and
freeing the scientists.
PK comes pretty well equipped with a laser and a nifty super hero suit. Along
the way you can pick up extra health, weapons power ups, and special tools. In
each level, you and PK will need to zap all of the Evronians, find and free six
scientists (by walking over them), and pick up enough activation stars (similar
to the coins of Mario Bros. fame) to finish the level. Most of the enemies you
will face are Coolflames. These are the emotionless foot soldier/slaves
controlled by the Evronians who do not know how to do much other than fire
lasers at PK. You will also run into the somewhat tougher Evronians themselves.
A little smarter than Coolflames, they still do not pose too much of a problem
for PK. Other tests for PK along the way include traps that zap your store of
activation stars, and search lights that fire lasers when their beams catch PK
sneaking by.
Once you and PK have cleared the levels and rescued forty scientists, you can
make your way to the Evronians’ mothership and do battle with the chief bad
guys, Zoster the master mad scientist and Zondag, the darth-vader-batman’ish
general.
Control of the game is nothing short of easy. One will give you pointers
along the way, and moving around for a couple minutes gives you a good feel for
the game play. This is a little disappointing, as there is not much room for
developing skill, and you find it difficult to find much freedom for PK to
explore the levels.
The graphics are good enough, with a comic book feel (which is appropriate
since PK is a comic book character from Disney Europe). Guts and gore are
non-existent in true Disney fashion.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
65%. If you have kids around that
you can pass the game on to, take a chance on it. Otherwise, PK will leave most
gamers feeling like not-so-super heroes.
