Note:Metal Snake was my old name on this site hence why you see it on the title cuz that's a review series I'm doing.
Anyway
Before I started with the review,let me just say that I'm a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge fan of Ducktales,I grew up with the Cartoon as a kid(alongside Goof Troop and Darkwing Duck),recorded a lot of the episodes on VHS and played the NES game a looong time ago before I lost my copy of it.So when it was announced that Capcom and WayForward would remake the game I got excited,I couldn't get it on it's release due to my growing backlog but after I became a huge WayForward fan thanks to Shantae,and after the seeing the game on sale last week for 6$ I decided that's the best time for me to jump in and was excited to relive a childhood favorite in a new form by one of my favorite developers.................................................................or so I thought.
*sigh*.......I really don't know what to say,if you want a short summary for this review it would be: Ducktales Remastered is not a bad game,it's just a really,really,really disappointing one.
Before I go to what I didn't like about this game,let's start with the stuff I enjoyed about it.
First of all,the sprite art for this game is GORGEOUS,I love the sprite art in this game so much and the animations for them are really good,they tried to make it look as close to the show as possible and I just can't get enough of it....the only complaint about the graphics I have is that the foreground(the platforms you walk on) look very artificial and blocky compared to the vivid backgrounds and sprite art.The Soundtrack remixes by Jake Kaufman is just amazing,which is to be expected since he later will did a great job on Shovel Knight and Shantae & the Pirate's Curse in 2014 and his previous works were great already so I'm happy to see that he did justice to the original soundtrack of the NES game with the remixes he did.The controls are mostly accurate to it's NES original and you can still do most of the stuff you used to do in the NES game like short hopping and such..........................................unfortunately that's where the nice things stop for me.
-Deep breathing- okay here we go:First off the pacing of the game is firetrucking abysmal.What do I mean by that?The firetrucking cutscenes,they interrupt you constantly....and I mean CONSTANTLY throughout the entire game(except the final level of all places).I swear there are parts where cutscenes will interrupt you almost every minute.The worst cases of this were the Amazon and the African mine stages.ESPECIALLY IN THE AMAZON where Scrooge will stop and make observation on every...single...treasure he gets and it gets boring really fast.I get that they were trying to make the game closer to the show by doing this especially since they went out of their way to get the voice actors of the show themselves(the Voice acting was fantastic btw),but that was the completely wrong way of doing it.Sure you can skip the cutscenes but I doubt you'd do that on your first playthrough and even on a second one they interrupt you just as bad since some of them transition you sometimes into different parts of the level.......which brings me to the second point:The changes they did to the level design range from unnecessary to sometimes annoying and non-sensical.Sure they don't always need to be 100% copying the level design of the original but that doesn't excuse the pointless deadends that leads you to nothing,extra minecart sequences that lacks momentum for your jumping which will lead to multiple deaths,the stupid changes in the Himalayas where you can no longer bounce on 90% of the stage because of the snow(I know it's more logical but I'M A firetruckING RICH DUCK WHO POGO-BOUNCE HIS WAY ON SPIKES AND LETHAL OBJECTS SO LOGIC IS OUT THE firetruckING WINDOW)the padding with stuff like the plane sequence....and don't even get me start raging on THE WHORESHIT EXTRA LAVA CLIMBING SEQUENCE AFTER THE FINAL BOSS THAT MADE ME REDO THE ENTIRE THING FOUR firetruckING TIMES!!!if you thought the lava climbing sequence after Sigma in Megaman X3 was bad hooooooooooooooo boy this just blows that out of the firetrucking water.that sequence didn't even exist in the NES version and it's the most pointless,worthless,unneeded "addition" to the game by far.
I really really really wanted to like this game since I was a huge Ducktales fan and there were some legitimately enjoyable moments in this game but they're completely overshadowed and buried beneath the extra annoyances added to what was an already great game back in it's 8-bit days.I only recommend this to the diehard Ducktales fans and even then,I say go with the NES original and stick to it as unfortunately this remake proved to be an inferior product despite it's amazing presentation.
I don't do numerical scores anymore but if I would rate the game I'll give it either a 5.510 or 610.
I might be a WayForward fanboy,but this is honestly my least favorite WayForward game(Well technically it's a remake of a Capcom game but still)
With that out of the way,I'm in the mood to rewatch the show again.
Note:Metal Snake was my old name on this site hence why you see it on the title cuz that's a review series I'm doing.
Anyway
Before I started with the review,let me just say that I'm a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge fan of Ducktales,I grew up with the Cartoon as a kid(alongside Goof Troop and Darkwing Duck),recorded a lot of the episodes on VHS and played the NES game a looong time ago before I lost my copy of it.So when it was announced that Capcom and WayForward would remake the game I got excited,I couldn't get it on it's release due to my growing backlog but after I became a huge WayForward fan thanks to Shantae,and after the seeing the game on sale last week for 6$ I decided that's the best time for me to jump in and was excited to relive a childhood favorite in a new form by one of my favorite developers.................................................................or so I thought.
*sigh*.......I really don't know what to say,if you want a short summary for this review it would be: Ducktales Remastered is not a bad game,it's just a really,really,really disappointing one.
Before I go to what I didn't like about this game,let's start with the stuff I enjoyed about it.
First of all,the sprite art for this game is GORGEOUS,I love the sprite art in this game so much and the animations for them are really good,they tried to make it look as close to the show as possible and I just can't get enough of it....the only complaint about the graphics I have is that the foreground(the platforms you walk on) look very artificial and blocky compared to the vivid backgrounds and sprite art.The Soundtrack remixes by Jake Kaufman is just amazing,which is to be expected since he later will did a great job on Shovel Knight and Shantae & the Pirate's Curse in 2014 and his previous works were great already so I'm happy to see that he did justice to the original soundtrack of the NES game with the remixes he did.The controls are mostly accurate to it's NES original and you can still do most of the stuff you used to do in the NES game like short hopping and such..........................................unfortunately that's where the nice things stop for me.
-Deep breathing- okay here we go:First off the pacing of the game is firetrucking abysmal.What do I mean by that?The firetrucking cutscenes,they interrupt you constantly....and I mean CONSTANTLY throughout the entire game(except the final level of all places).I swear there are parts where cutscenes will interrupt you almost every minute.The worst cases of this were the Amazon and the African mine stages.ESPECIALLY IN THE AMAZON where Scrooge will stop and make observation on every...single...treasure he gets and it gets boring really fast.I get that they were trying to make the game closer to the show by doing this especially since they went out of their way to get the voice actors of the show themselves(the Voice acting was fantastic btw),but that was the completely wrong way of doing it.Sure you can skip the cutscenes but I doubt you'd do that on your first playthrough and even on a second one they interrupt you just as bad since some of them transition you sometimes into different parts of the level.......which brings me to the second point:The changes they did to the level design range from unnecessary to sometimes annoying and non-sensical.Sure they don't always need to be 100% copying the level design of the original but that doesn't excuse the pointless deadends that leads you to nothing,extra minecart sequences that lacks momentum for your jumping which will lead to multiple deaths,the stupid changes in the Himalayas where you can no longer bounce on 90% of the stage because of the snow(I know it's more logical but I'M A firetruckING RICH DUCK WHO POGO-BOUNCE HIS WAY ON SPIKES AND LETHAL OBJECTS SO LOGIC IS OUT THE firetruckING WINDOW)the padding with stuff like the plane sequence....and don't even get me start raging on THE WHORESHIT EXTRA LAVA CLIMBING SEQUENCE AFTER THE FINAL BOSS THAT MADE ME REDO THE ENTIRE THING FOUR firetruckING TIMES!!!if you thought the lava climbing sequence after Sigma in Megaman X3 was bad hooooooooooooooo boy this just blows that out of the firetrucking water.that sequence didn't even exist in the NES version and it's the most pointless,worthless,unneeded "addition" to the game by far.
I really really really wanted to like this game since I was a huge Ducktales fan and there were some legitimately enjoyable moments in this game but they're completely overshadowed and buried beneath the extra annoyances added to what was an already great game back in it's 8-bit days.I only recommend this to the diehard Ducktales fans and even then,I say go with the NES original and stick to it as unfortunately this remake proved to be an inferior product despite it's amazing presentation.
I don't do numerical scores anymore but if I would rate the game I'll give it either a 5.510 or 610.
I might be a WayForward fanboy,but this is honestly my least favorite WayForward game(Well technically it's a remake of a Capcom game but still)
With that out of the way,I'm in the mood to rewatch the show again.
So until then,DUCKTAAALES WOO HOO