Super Rub a Dub may be one of the weirder gaming experiences to make it Stateside. Armed with your Sixaxis, you tilt bathtubs to steer a Mama Duck around in order to retrieve little ducks while avoiding wind-up sharks and infinity pool edges – all this to send them directly down the drain. Never mind the painfully pared down gameplay, I had serious issues with sending my little ducklings into tub water oblivion.
As you navigate the cerulean waters you pop bubbles containing tiny ducklings to form a chain. You are rewarded for doing this quickly and in one long single file. Bonuses are awarded for keeping a continuous chain, and penalties for losing one of your brood. Your scores are added to an online leader-board, but you only see your ranking upon completion of a level, you can’t go back. Lame.
The mazes, if you could even call them that, are really straightforward. They number sixty in all, and the biggest challenge is fighting your nerdy competitive streak. In this way the gameplay is strangely addictive and you will find yourself fighting to claim the number one spot in time trial. Otherwise, Rub a Dub isn’t worth fighting over the controller for, it’s just not that engaging.
Tubs may become more challenging as they add enemies (wind up sharks), currents and remove the tubs borders. One fun trick is to pop the controller and make the whole thing hop which launches your duck and turns your enemies belly-up for a period of time. Longer puzzles won’t frustrate you because of the complexity of the maze, rather because the controls are a mind boggling kind of crazy. For steering a duck around a pool the adjustments are awfully fussy, and – lacking surgical precision – no good can come of this.
Visually the game looks, well, clean. It’s 1080p of pretty blue water and saturated colors: very pretty and very simple. “Simple” also applies to the music, which is homogeneous throughout. The water sounds are fun, however, and enhance the environment.
Super Rub a Dub claims the category “multiplayer”, but it’s the lamest kind: first player goes, second player goes. The end. Granted, it couldn’t really function well with cooperative play, but a more versus style could have held up (think shark v. duck!).
In the end, the experience is best described as underdeveloped. While the game is pretty successful in what it does do, it just seems like it should do more. Even as a download, you can’t help but feel a little shorted and when you’re only shelling out $6.99, and that’s no good. Ultimately, Super Rub a Dub functions best as an answer to the Jack Thompsons of the world who think that gaming is all about nurturing a violent streak. Just hope he doesn’t ask what happens to all the little duckies that go overboard.
Score: 6/10
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