Home Page / gc / D / Disney's PK: Out of the Shadows / Review Listing / Review

If you happened upon Disney’s PK: Out of the Shadows, on the shelf of your local game store, the first thing that probably came to mind was “Who the heck is PK and why does he look like Donald Duck?” Okay maybe you never did that, but I did. Even my wife who’s a huge Disney fan had never heard of this alter-ego of everyone’s favorite duck. So who is this PK and why does he deserve a game?

This PK thing is from a comic book and that’s probably why you’ve never heard of it, also I think the comic came from Europe. In the end, you just keep asking yourself ”Why?” I’d rather them revive Darkwing Duck than produce this derivative pile of platform garbage. It’s not that this game just isn’t fun, because it’s not. It’s not that the graphics are bad, they are. It’s not that it’s glitchy and feels rushed, it does. It’s that all these things come together. The poor license mixed with the poor game leaves you asking ”Why?”

Story:

We start with our good pal Donald Duck dosing off at his security job. Donald gets transported to the future and becomes his superhero alter ego, PK. Recruited by the ”One” to help defend the planet from the evil Evronians. Along the way you will have to shoot your way through multiple levels rescuing scientists while collecting tokens and power-ups.

It doesn’t feel like a Donald Duck game, because it’s not about Donald. If you’re not familiar with the PK storyline, which you probably aren’t, this isn’t real exciting stuff. It’s too bad we don’t really get to know the character better, or have Donald switch back and forth between forms.

Ubi Soft went with a cel-shaded look for PK and while it does give it a unique cartoon style, unfortunately it looks very dated. Think Jet Grind Radio for the Dreamcast and you’re on the right page. Cel-shading, when done right, makes for fantastic comic book style visuals and can really bring art to life. The graphics aren’t horrible, they just don’t live up to what we expect out of a next generation console product. In some ways I wish they would have went for a more traditional style of graphics, but what we see in PK works to some degree which would be fine if the gameplay was spot on.

Speaking of the gameplay being spot-on: it’s not. It’s your stand platform fare. You’ll shoot multiple enemy’s with the help of a lock-on feature makes it almost too easy. Jumping from platform to platform and collecting power-ups is the basic premise here. Does this all sound familiar? It should. It’s been done a million times before and done better. The added power-ups and costumes do little to help lift it above the recent wave of excellent platformers like Ratchet and Clank or Sly Cooper.

It’s kind of funny that PK stands for “Platyrhynchos Kineticus" which translates to something like Duck of Energy. That’s exactly what’ missing from this game, energy. It’s like the game is dealing poker with out any face cards. It’s a wholly forgettable experience and it’s tough to really recommend this over the other obvious choices in the genre, even for the budget price of this game (my local Gamestop was selling it for $14.99). Rent first, but a strong warning to Disney fans that this isn’t your standard Disney fare.