Bertie the Duck

Ducks have had a hard time at the hands of TV and film. Consider Howard the Duck, the foul-mouthed extra-terrestrial star of the film of the same name whose antics did little to promote duck kind. Consider, too, the bumbling sociopathic antics of legendary ducks, Donald and Daffy.

True, during the late '80s and '90s the bad boy image of the duck was slightly improved by the tireless efforts of one Edd the Duck (formerly Ed) who championed the cause of these birds all over the world as the mascot of the British athletics team. So here's hoping that Edd never meets Bertie, a fellow aquatic avian who seems set on undoing all of the hand puppet's good work with this lacklustre virtual pet game.

From the company that gave us Benjy the Puppy, Bertie the Duck at least scores high in the looks department. Your pet duck is excellently rendered, and capable of expressing a variety of feelings with his body language alone. Indeed, the game is well presented across the board – from the easy-to-use menu system to the stat-altering mini-games, Bertie rarely shows a feather out of place.

Comparing Bertie to its stablemate in Benjy the Puppy is inevitable, as the two games share much in common. But before drawing a comparison, let's take a look at what this title offers.

Bertie the Duck features a selection of mini-games that act as the tools you employ to look after your pet's welfare. Bertie's Feeding Time, for instance, has you moving Bertie left and right along the bottom of the screen, pausing with his mouth raised in the air to catch particles of food that steadily drop from an automatically moving bucket at the top. This method of feeding proves to be annoyingly inefficient, as it's nearly impossible to catch every single mouthful with your slow-moving avatar.

Other games include Flight Training and Exercise Training. The former sees you take control of a flying Bertie, freely moving in both the horizontal and vertical axes to avoid the oncoming birds, while the latter challenges you to push '1', '2' and '3' in order, steadily increasing a power bar in the process, to set the speed at which your duck presses a set of weights.

These also prove to be deeply unsatisfying affairs, especially the weight training, which requires more in the way of keypad-mashing than any real skill.

The fourth game is Discipline, familiar from the sister title. Bertie's version of the whack-a-mole attitude readjustment game replaces Benjy's buckets of water with a more traditional mallet. Strangely, despite being exactly the same game as the one found in Benjy's outing, beating a duck over the head proves to be far more satisfying than soaking a cute puppy with a pail full of cold liquid.

There are other similarities, of course. The pet shop contains exactly the same set of foodstuffs as in the dog game and, although the pet upgrades are different, the mechanic behind them remains identical: they're just like Benjy's, only they affect a different set of games.

Indeed, the whole game feels almost like replacing one of your favourite characters in a movie with a cheaper and less able star, while also rewriting some of the key scenes to suit the newcomer's more limited talents.

Perhaps this stems from the fact that Bertie is a great deal less charismatic than the doleful-eyed puppy of Sprite Interactive's other title. Another contributing factor is the much lower quality of the mini-games here – Discipline aside – which as a result are comparatively less enjoyable to play.

Or maybe it's simply the fault of those irascible cartoon characters who have so prejudiced our perceptions of duckhood.

Whatever the reason, Bertie the Duck fails to arouse the same nurturing instincts that Benjy does, and this bodes badly for the lifespan of a virtual pet. Ultimately, the combination of good looks and enthusiasm can't quite make up for Bertie's lack of charm.