

The sounds you are going to hear the most of are the duck calls and the identical shotgun blasts. You do get a few tunes during management screens, but they are awful too. There is effectively no music to speak of, which does add to the ambiance of being stuck on a duck blind in the middle of nowhere, but could have broken up the monotony. Your dog-whistle blows appropriately, and your commands that you shout to the dog sound authoritative, but those are the high points. I have personally never used a duck call, but there are two of them on display in this game, and both of them sound, well, appropriately duck-ish. Most people who have played a video game or have fired one in real life have a good expectation of how a shotgun should sound. It’s not a boom of a shotgun, it’s a weak, coughing burst. When I mentioned that the guns cough, I meant that. About the best thing I can say for the graphics is that I wasn’t blinded by them. In fact, if you fire while spinning around, the blast effect stays in place for a second while the barrel moves. When they fire, the guns cough smoke and, if you hit something, you might see a puff of feathers. The guns in Wolfenstein 3D, by which I mean the shareware from the early 90’s, were better detailed. Despite a wide variety of shotguns and rifles to choose from, they don’t amount to much on the screen past a black rod sticking out from the bottom of the screen. You are given a radar to help you find things, but that is practically useless as there are no real ways to set your viewpoint.

The mound of dirt your duck blind sits atop isn’t much more than a brown blob. There’s a tree in Virginia, and a white, snow covered tree in Alaska. Backgrounds are virtually indistinguishable. Clipping problems abound, such as my hunting dog somehow becoming merged with a bush half the time. Bleak, gray landscapes, clouds that might be ducks, and birds that suddenly appear and dive-bomb past you are just the most obvious issues. Sadly, any exceptional eyesight qualities that real hunters might have are wasted on this game. Hunters are supposed to have good eyesight, right? They need to be able to tell the difference between a squirrel and a tree at a few hundred yards. Of course, this means finding someone else who would rather play this game than another cooperative or competitive Wii game. There is also a multiplayer mode that puts you head to head against another hunter to try to get more ducks. Once this is done it is time to go hunting, and you’ll pick some part of the country that looks completely different from some other random part of the country.
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And also how to stop moving at the sound of a whistle. Then it is time for a brief training bit so that you can teach your old dog some new tricks, such as how to run forward, right, left, and back to you.

It also features a story mode designed to let you pick a pre-loaded avatar that most hideously resembles you, name them, choose the color of a dog but not breed, and name that poor beast as well. Ultimate Duck Hunting features a “Quick Hunt” mode so that if you just want to get into the slaughter of innocent mallards, go right ahead. Is it easier to just go down to your local butcher? Let’s find out. Boasting realistic graphics and trained retrieving dogs, Ultimate Duck Hunting puts you out in the marshes just like a real hunter. Though it shares nothing at all with the original game, Ultimate Duck Hunting can’t help but conjure memories of that classic Nintendo title. Twenty-five years since the original game was released, a new title hoping to trade on that nostalgia has arrived for the Nintendo Wii. Dating back to the original NES, any gamer who owned that system can remember whiling away hours of their lives aiming a lightgun at a tiny screen while a dog laughed at every miss and cheered every kill. There is a sacred history to the name Duck Hunt.
