DuckTales: Scrooge's Loot Review

Uncle Scrooge's money is gone! And it's up to the ducks that work for him to try and bring it all back. DuckTales: Scrooge's Loot provides a red vs blue multiplayer experience that fits the bill, literally. You control a duck who is part of a team hoping to bring Uncle Scrooge's money back, and there's a rival team trying to do the same thing. Surprisingly, Disney brought created a third person shooter set in Duckburg. Does DuckTales: Scrooge's Loot earn the beaucoup bucks in terms of quality? Queue the theme song, because life is like a hurricane... here in Duckburg!

Unfortunately, there's no Huey, Dewie or Louie to be found within Scrooge's Loot. You play as a random duck who must try to get into the good graces of Uncle Scrooge by retrieving back his lost money. Launchpad McQuack will fly you to one of four arenas where you must compete with other ducks to pick up his lost gold and bring it back to the landing zone so Launchpad can haul it back. You're armed with various homemade tools and gadgets in order to fight off the other ducks and bring back more of the gold yourself. So does this third person shooter make our TailSpin?

For a Disney title of a cartoon series that has been out of syndication for over 20 years, I was genuinely surprised by the quality Scrooge's Loot offers. The graphics are extremely well done and capture that Disney feeling. It's one thing to have cartoon ducks in cartoon levels, but the buildings are warped and objects are exaggerated to have that distinct look that I haven't felt since Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.

In order to fight the economic fight, you have an array of gadgets and PG weapons to use so you can thwart the rival ducks. There are spitballs, watermelon shooters, huge ice cream cones to lob and even a toilet that shoots out plungers. These weapons were very reminiscent of the weapons from South Park 64 in terms of their childish, simplistic but enjoyable hilarity (without the yellow snowballs). You can also swing a tennis rocket at another duck as a melee attack.

You can also change your duck. There are four classes: adventurer, pilot, scientist and chef, with each class offering distinct attributes and abilities to the battlefield. Within each of these classes, you are able to customize how your duck looks. The advanced duck classes, costumes and top-tier weaponry all cost a lot of coins, so if you become addicted to this game and want to constantly win, expect to shell out actual cash for coins since the prices get so high.

The controls of DuckTales: Scrooge's Loot are decent. As usual, it's the dual control scheme where you would have your thumb on the left to run and strafe, with the right thumb aiming. Similar to what I encountered in Dead Effect, Disney's developers were smart enough to put the controls for shooting and melee by the intended place for your right thumb so you can swing or shoot on the fly.

I personally felt that the shoot stick (the bottom right stick), could have been moved over a little so I could look without shooting (dragging your thumb on the right side of the screen), a little easier. As you can guess from the pictures, I had my right thumb above the right shooting stick in order to look around and would switch when I had to shoot. The resulting experience was that I would constantly hit the racket/melee button by mistake while running around.

Surprisingly, DuckTales: Scrooge's Loot was a lot better than I was expecting it to be. It could have been a LOT worse, but it could have been a lot better. The pitfall deaths in the cavern level were extremely annoying and took away from the firefight. But Scrooge's Loot stays true to the DuckTales visuals (despite the absences of just about all major characters from the series except from a few cutscenes). Scrooge's Loot has some great voice acting (except for your starting duck), and captures much of the chaotic fun DuckTales is known to bring. If it controlled a little bit better and didn't take forever for its multiplayer to load, it would have actually been worth it to invest in the freemium content. But for a free game, its enjoyable and children should love it. Anyone hoping for some DuckTales nostalgia, I suggest just rewatching the cartoon intro.

Ultimately, I recommend Scrooge's Loot to those with children due to it being free, imaginative and simplistic fun. But for those hoping for a clear-cut shooter, I suggest you look elsewhere. Here's to hoping for a Darkwing Duck title!

6.5 out of 10 arcade sushi rating