DuckTales Remastered Review

The original DuckTales game came out in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System and seems to have quite the cult following. The old game is known for its snappy gameplay and awesome chip tunes that mirror the original show. The new, DuckTales Remastered, takes everything the old two button, jump and attack system has to offer and adds story bits to it. Does the new Remastered version of DuckTales hold up, or should the memory of this game remain a duckblur?

As a big fan of the original title, I was super excited for the Remastered version. Booting up the game had me singing the intro music to DuckTales and had me hooked about as quickly as possible. The music in general for all of the levels brings back fond memories while being a nice upgrade from the chip tunes of the past. Unfortunately after actually playing DuckTales Remastered though, I wish I would have stopped at the loading screen and downloaded the soundtrack separately.

The gameplay is still almost exactly as I remember it. One button jumps and one button makes Scrooge McDuck pogo on his cane to hit enemies on the head. One of the greatest parts of the old game was the precision of these controls and I could feel the precision in this game as well… most of the time. Sometimes the hit detection or controls did feel a little bit off. It wasn’t very often, but taking damage from an enemy that should have been dead is frustrating no matter how infrequent it happens.

Another thing that is frustrating is the amount of darn cut scenes that WayForward has elected to put in this new and “improved version” of the game. Each level has different things or objectives that will have to be collected and for some reason warrants a story bit that completely halts all of the pogoing action. These story bits didn’t enhance my experience or make me think fondly of DuckTales in any way shape or form. Worst yet, there is no easy way to skip the cut scenes. As the player you have to actually hit start to go to a menu to skip the duck nonsense.

Finally rounding off my complaints is the voice acting. Give credit where credit is due, the voice actors are all the original voice actors from the cartoon show. However, this means that some of the voice actors have seen their best days a long time ago. Launch Pad and Scrooge are both probably a few years to tired and just do not deliver a convincing or enjoyable dialog experience. In general, the game in my opinion would have been better if the story bits were thrown to the wayside.

After all of these complaints, it is hard to see how I actually enjoyed the game. Maybe it is just nostalgia for the original game that clouds my memory and makes me pick out only the parts that frustrated me. The gameplay is still tight most of the time and there are a few new bits that are nice. For instance, diving into the money pit and swimming around is a good touch, but not one that makes up for the story nonsense. Likewise, unlockable backgrounds and artwork is a nice look back, but makes me yearn for an old copy of the game rather than the remasterd version.

DuckTales was a great game. The remastered version should have stuck to what the original had going for it.

Gamers Heroes’ honest game review of DuckTales Remastered was done on the PC version of the game through Steam.