Duck Hunt (NES) review "I hate hunting. I don’t see the point of walking through the woods all day with your 12-gauge, shooting innocent animals for pure sport. If you’re going out shooting ducks because you think it’s fun is a little sadistic for my liking, if it was for survival purposes then it wouldn’t bother me but the fact of killing an animal just for a thrill is a little primitive. "

I hate hunting. I don’t see the point of walking through the woods all day with your 12-gauge, shooting innocent animals for pure sport. If you’re going out shooting ducks because you think it’s fun is a little sadistic for my liking, if it was for survival purposes then it wouldn’t bother me but the fact of killing an animal just for a thrill is a little primitive.

Which brings me to Duck Hunt, something that puts the fun back into killing innocent animals. It headlined the NES collection by teaming with Super Mario Brothers on a 2-in-1 package. It was also one of the few NES titles to use the light gun, making it stand out form the majority of NES games. Provided you have the correct hardware (which may be a little awkward to track down), Duck Hunt can be a fun blast for a short while but can delve into the pit of mediocrity rather quickly because of its rather bland repetitiveness. It’s like eating a ton of toffee apples one after another, it’s sweet at first but you get a vicious stomach-ache afterwards.

If you don’t have a NES light gun, then don’t pick up Duck Hunt. Otherwise, all of your friends will laugh at you until every scrap of your self-esteem has been ripped up and pissed on. If you’re one of the lucky few that have the gun then you probably have this game already. Duck Hunt has a simple concept: shoot the flying ducks with the gun. That’s it. It may sound easy but when these little bastards get going they’re really hard to hit. You have ten ducks to kill each round with three bullets to each duck. They fly around like crazy so you’ll have to think and aim fast so you can kick some ass. If you kill them, you’re happy hunting hound will pop up with the duck in his hand and a grin on his face. However, if you miss and scare the duck away then the cheeky canine will piss himself laughing. Don’t try shooting him to make up for your lack of skill, you’ll waste your time.

If you miss a duck three times, the little quacker will fly off in a panic and you’ll lose the point. Each round has ten ducks so in order to successfully complete each round; you have to kill at least five. They get as fast as hell a little later so you’ll really have to be on the ball to get past each stage. If you don’t shoot enough ducks, then you have to go all of the way back to square one.

Aside from this main mode, you also get a harder mode where you have to trash two ducks at the same time. As you can imagine, it gets as hard as fuck so you’ll have to have your razor sharp reflexes at the ready. You only get five rounds on this stage but, again, you only have three bullets so it’s far trickier than before. You also get a rather bland clay shooting game, which is fun at first but gets old fast. Shooting grey clay balls isn’t hard and after five minutes, you’ll realise that it isn’t very fun either.

The main problem with Duck Hunt is that it gets old rather fast and even though it may have been a classy title back in the day, it’s nothing too great nowadays. Shooting ducks with the light gun is fun at first but begins to decay into repetitiveness and tedium after the fifth round or so. The extra modes do little to enhance the overall package and it all comes out a bit drab and dusty. Duck Hunt may be a collectors item, a retro fans dream come true and one of the first console light gun games available but it sure isn’t anything special. At the end of the day, it’s repetitive and too simple so most people will find little to like. Nowadays, it’s truly for the collector, as the rest of us will require something with a little more bite to keeps us hooked.

Community review by goldenvortex (September 16, 2005) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.