The developers over at LOOT Entertainment must have known they had a winning name when they came up with Fluster Cluck. The name embodies everything trying to be accomplished by the game; a silly experience that tries to create hectic multiplayer mayhem centered around chickens.

Fluster Cluck isn’t overloaded with content since there are only two modes, Career and Battle with both being about having four player matches. There isn’t all that much difference between the two modes, career lets you team up with a friend against the CPUs and Battle is just you battling on the maps you’ve unlocked in the game through winning matches and gaining levels. Besides having the maps chosen for you in career I can’t find a real difference between the equivalent modes found in Battle and Career you still level up regardless. The gameplay is rather simple you fly in spaceship which you custom build from a combination of different ship types, which character pilots it, the type of gun it uses and a single equipment that effects your stats in another way, most of these options are unlocked through playing the game.

You’ll spend most of your time inside Battle with its four available options. You’ll find Regular or Team Chikkin Hunt modes which involves collecting cows or other collectibles that will net you points for putting them inside the Chickenizer. The Chizenizer turns whatever is put into it to to all important chicken as the game title suggests. You can also get points by killing players and then even more for putting their remains into the Chickenizer before they have a chance to respawn. There’s also Regular and Team Death Match mode which plays the same as the last mode except there’s no collectibles to put in the Chickenizer just killing players and collecting their remains will win you points. There’s been times where I’ve gotten 0 points for putting something into the Chickenizer, I couldn’t find any explanation inside the in-game manual but my best guess is there’s an unexplained mechanic that putting players killed by other people doesn’t win you points but I’m not sure. There’s no online modes to speak up so if you don’t have any friends over you’ll have to settle for playing against the lacklustre AI, ramping up the difficulty doesn’t make them any smarter they just tend to get faster and their weapons seem to do more damage.

The controls are on the loose side though that’s by design so I wouldn’t say it’s a con. My main issue with the controls is that you have firing both assigned to R1 and R2 for front and back guns and the right analog stick. The right analog was a bad choice because you accidentally hit the weapons all the time when trying to turn the camera. This isn’t a big deal with a fast firing weapon but it can be deadly with one with a slow refire rate.

The graphics won’t be blowing anyone away, they look at best like a middling PS3 game. The frame rate however seems rock solid which is always important in an action game. The music isn’t all that much better, the main menu is rather repetitive almost immediately feeling familiar in a bad way. The sound effects all involve a loud chicken screeching at you and the gameplay songs are rather basic and repetitive as well.

Fluster Cluck isn’t going to blow anyone’s world but in a pinch it’s a fun local multiplayer game. The asking price of $14.99 is rather steep however it can be bought over Playstation Plus for $8.99. At $14.99 there’s no way it’s worth it but at $8.99 if you are looking for some fun local multiplayer games, a genre that doesn’t come out too often on the PS4 it could be a fun party game to play with your friends.

Gameplay

Graphics

Sound

Overall