Remakes, remakes, remakes… They either mean half-remake, half-reboot hybrids that usually fail to get your attention (Painkiller: Hell & Damnation), or they can actually pleasantly surprise you with giving you the exact same product with some interesting additions (Mega Man: Powered Up, Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles). You could imagine how pessimistic I was when I’ve heard of DuckTales being remade, or rather, remastered. Even the first gameplay trailers made me doubt the quality of this game. How did it turned out in the end?
Capcom’s like a hurricane…
It goes without saying that Capcom doesn’t really know what to do with itself anymore. Except, of course, making more fighting games and turning Resident Evil into Call Of Duty in Third Person Perspective. Their ignorant, dissmissive approach towards Mega Man and releasing Steel Battalion on hardly working Kinect keep solidifying the worldwide loss of respect towards this company. It’s actually sad that everytime Capcom hands over their product to a different company to take care of, these companies actually treat it with much greater respect. Swedish studio Grin resurrected Bionic Commando, adding this game more punch than it packed on the NES. Nintendo somehow pulled off Mega Man’s character in the upcoming Super Smash Bros. with a completely opposite result to the mockery everyone remember from Street Fighter X Tekken. And no, I will never buy the excuse that it was a throwback to the horrible NES cover art of the first game – if every other character got a proper treatment, with Mega Man being famous for being treated like shit by Capcom, it just speaks for itself. And now, the Californian game developers from WayForward could show what they’re capable of by resurrecting one of the greatest 2D platformers of all times. Because, let’s be honest, Capcom and Disney used to make wonderful games back in the 80’s.
To feel like a kid again
I think it’s pointless to explain what DuckTales is about. The show is still being aired in many countries, and it’s still holding up, despite its age. WayForward decided to fill the game with much more throwbacks to the actual show and give it a story. While on the NES, the whole game was all about Scrooge trying to get the treasures from distant lands, the remastered version does add a story which can be easily counted as a bonus episode of the show.
The game opens up with Scrooge fighting off Beagle Boys attacking his vault. This tutorial level alone shows how many things have changed in comparison to the original. Many reviewers complain about the game actually having too much talking (despite the option to skip every dialogue) and spending way too much time at explaining the smallest details. However, modern shooters with their obnoxious auto-aim, bullet time, cover based shooting, hints and button prompts, pretensional stories and lackluster lore that pretends to be deep keep getting high scores? Let’s not forget that this is mostly a game for younger audience. And even the adult gamers who grew up with DuckTales have something to listen to during these – WayForward actually managed to get many people from the original cast, including Alan Young himself. The actors who passed away since that time got replaced with similar sounding ones, just like in Kingdom Hearts. Needless to say, the dialogues in this game are pleasant to listen to for the first time, and while it may get annoying when you constantly skip a cutscene after picking up every important item, it’s far from making the game tedious. The overall dialogues are on the same level as the ones from cartoon – cheesy, full of simple humour and fitting for every age group. Once again, many reviewers complained about that. I know we’re living in the sad age where kids most likely prefer to listen to “badass” dialogues from DmC: Devil May Cry, but staying true to the original which is far more enjoyable than most of children shows nowadays is anything but not moving with age. With that said, if you loved the show as a child, the game will be much more enjoyable to you. If not, you will at least catch a glimpse of DuckTales’ style, so absent in the current shows owned by Disney.
Carl Banks would’ve been proud
The transition from 8-bit to a current gen graphics puzzled many in terms of quality. In the end, the game looks good, but it does have its flaws. The very firstt hing you will notice is how great looking the sprites are. They’re reminiscent of the art in the show, with fluid animation and rich colors. Unfortunately, WayForward hasn’t included lip movement during dialogues, which was bothering me. I guess the overall project absorbed so much money they couldn’t afford it, given how expensive the game is, for what it is. The environments are a mixed bag as well, being 3D models of rather mediocre quality. If you’ve played Hard Corps: Uprising or Bionic Commando: Rearmed, you will most likely find the environments in DuckTales: Remastered unimpressive.
The situation definitely looks better in terms of the actual level design – the actual path you’ve got to follow is more or less the same as in the original game, but the creators added some new segments here and there, which are definitely welcome. For example, Glomgold appears as a mid-boss in Himalayas, while proceeding through African Mines doesn’t require you to look for the key in Transylvania anymore. These changes make the game more modern, but still highly enjoyable for being a bigger challenge than many games nowadays.
Curse me kilts! This game is hard!
Unlike the original game, the remastered version does aim for the much more accessible approach. Right off the bat you can choose the difficulty setting. Easy provides the player with gigantic life bar and unlimited continues, Normal is generally easier version of the original game, with three more health bar expansions to find, Hard is almost equal to the original, but with continue system and the unlockable Extreme difficlty is completely the same as the NES game. This allows the players to experience the game despite their gaming skills, and let’s be honest – if you’ve been playing 2D platformers as a child, then spent 11 years with 3D games only, you will be so out of shape after returning to a game like this, it will always shock you. I’ve been playing this game on Normal for the first time, and I was dying much more often than I should, just because of me still having to re-learn how to play games like this. Still, it was a lot of fun and in the end I’ve beaten the game on the harder difficulties too. The same cannot be said about, once again, the other reviewers. Many sites and gamers complain about how punishing this game is. In reality, it’s not. Yes, if you’ll lose all of your lives, you will lose your progress on the level and need to replay it from scratch, but the game is easy to memorize and the levels short enough for you to not waste much time. Once again, people say that DuckTales: Remastered is a game of the past, yet other difficult games like Dark Souls and Hotline Miami actually are praised by their high difficulty and the player having to memorize and repeat the levels. My guess is that players nowadays got used to the easy games and this title, with its children friendly atmosphere, made them think that everything here will be a cakewalk. And to tell you the truth, this game isn’t hard. Compare it to Ninja Gaiden a.k.a. Bird In Your Face or Battletoads and you’ll be able to tell that the difference is significant. What does complicate things at times is that the pogo jumps do not want to work at times, and from what I’ve undrstood while playing, it’s got something to do with frames of animation. It still happens rarely, especially once you’ll get the timing right.
In comparison to the legend
If I’d have to decide if I prefer this or the original, I’d actually say that the remastered version manages to not only be equally good, but actually surpass the original. It is the same game, but with more content and higher accessibility for the players. The Soundtrack got remixed in a surprisingly good way, with the option to unlock the classic songs and use them as a background music as well. Of course, the NES version will always be remembered as the true original DuckTales game, but as far as this version goes, the amount of disappointing things is much smaller than I thought it will be. It does convey the show’s atmosphere to a bigger extend than the NES version and it does contain a real nostalgic value as well. Especially given that nostalgia is a shaky thing on its own, as many games and shows we remember from our childhood tend to look disappointing after the years. This game, just like the show it;s based on, just never gets too old to entertain. It is a simple game, but from the highest shelf.
Overall: 7.5/10
Pros:
– Reminiscent of the show it’s based on
– Much more accessible than the original
– Impressive sprite quality
– Extremely pleasant to play
Cons:
– A little too expensive
– Pogo jump may lead to few unfair deaths
– The 3D environments and lack of lip movement collide with the overall high quality of the visuals
VincentArisato 
I like how the topic of how other reviewers treaded the game was sort of a returning topic of the post, even more so when many reviewers seem to forgot just what kind of a game DuckTales was, and is still even when it comes to the Remastered version. It’s like the majority of the complainers got blinded by the nostalgia that they either experienced firsthand, or via the nostalgia wave the Internet generates in general towards this game, and they now realised that this game isn’t the kind of classic as say Super Metroid, or Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is, games that are complex enough to stand the test of time when it comes to complexity. I can see their point when they say this game is simple compared to the platformers of the current day because it is, but let’s not forget that enjoyable gameplay isn’t equalent with complexity, and the Disney-Capcom games were essentially made with this kind of mindset. DT for instance wasn’t even that complex or deep when it first came out, and while this element sticks out more compared to today’s games, it doesn’t mean that it’s automatically became average, or even old-fashioned. It’s still the relatively simple but still enjoyable license-based platformer it used to be 24 years ago, except this time WayForward took advantege of the opportunity and brought the game even closer to the source material than the NES game did. To be fair, liking the Disney-Capcom collaboration games is essentially a recommended thing to appriciate the game and prevent yourself from chasing delusions originated from modern games (especially with this price tag), but once you get past this, it’s smooth sailing if one remotely enjoys platformers of the past.
Speaking of which, I like that little jab you made when you compared this game’s storytelling to what modern games are usually doing: I do admit that the Amazon level could’ve used half the amount of coins needed to be found, but aside of that, I don’t have much to complain about given not only the cutscenes are true to the show’s style and the expanded stages are just long enough, but the cutscenes can be skipped anytime you want. Which of course, is much better than standing still for minutes while the NPC fails to get you immersed with the story, and don’t get me started on the difficulity. I don’t want to appear as an elitist, but this game is nowhere near as hard as most complainers are saying, and no, the punishment system isn’t anything special if one played ANY game from the 8/16 bit era (or any game with decent challenge), and can get used to the thought this game doesn’t have checkpoints at every 10 steps. Heck, the original game didn’t even had a continue system to begin with, so I would be interested to see how these people would react to it after the praise the 3D Ninja Gaiden games and the Souls series received.
If there is a beef I have with the game, it’s definietly the graphics: we talked about the sprites numerous times, so I’m gonna skip it to the 3D side of the things. I actually like the backgrounds due to how they imitate the show’s often minimalist style, but the foregrounds are a different manner, if only because they can be such a mixed bag even if we talk about one random stage. I think the Himalaya and Transylvania stages look the best in this regard, but the rest of the stages are rather varied, especially the Amazon where there’s such a difference even between two nearby textures (case in point: the fauna looks fine, but the rock textures are plain awful). Part of the reason why Rayman Origins/Legends looks so good is because almost the entire game uses hand-drawn tile-sets rather than 3D objects and thus it blends in well visually with the sprites, and it makes me wonder why most developers are so fixated on the “2D sprites with 3D stages” notion when it almost never works out well enough to make the two truly work in harmony.
I can see their point when they say this game is simple compared to the platformers of the current day because it is, but let’s not forget that enjoyable gameplay isn’t equalent with complexity, and the Disney-Capcom games were essentially made with this kind of mindset.
+1, and it once again shows how ignorant everyone are given that Guacamelee keeps getting 9/10 from every reviewer. I mean, this game is most likely praised for being Indie, it’s a short Metroidvania platformer with combo system straight out of Beat ‘Em Up game. Or even better, have you seen GameSpot’s review for a PC Indie game called Gone Home? It’s basically an artsy game you can finish in 2 hours, involving you walking around an empty house and reading letters, only for the reveal that the protagonist left her parents because she’s a lesbian. Overall score – 9.5/10, making it the second highest rated PC game on GameSpot after the original Diablo. *facedesk* You know, I can appreciate the games dealing with taboo, but I’d take Capcom’s take on Poison’s character from Final Fight over any artsy game any time, especially after reviews like that keep pissing me off because people are getting paid for writing these. DuckTales is as good, especially in its own category (being a remake). Granted, I believe that nothing will ever beat Dracula X Chronicles in my book as far as remakes go, but to take such a simple game like DuckTales and expanding it is like doing Capcom a favour. I believe that this remake is what this game was meant to be originally, but the technology obviously wasn’t able to provide such storytelling or better boss fights. WayForward really did a great job at it, and it’s honestly painful to read that this game is already “dated and not belonging in this era”. Call me an ass, but I would take DT Remastered over Heavy Rain, a.k.a. DEEP Playing With Children Simulator, no matter how good the story of this “game” seems to be. The original DuckTales was mostly remembered for its unique (even now) pogo jumping mechanic. I do disagree with WayForward that more games should have that, because this is what makes DT original, just like Bionic Commando is original with its swinging mechanic replacing jump completely. Especially given that nowadays, every good game idea gets copied so fast, you literally forget who started which trope. Like parkour-based sandboxes, I already can’t tell if Assassin’s Creed was first, or was it inFamous. DT Remastered has taken over this original mechanic to the new game and made the overall experience even more fitting DT’s license. I honestly can’t see what everyone are complaining about.
Which of course, is much better than standing still for minutes while the NPC fails to get you immersed with the story, and don’t get me started on the difficulity.
Congratulations, you’ve just summarized Assassin’s Creed in one sentence 😀 I mean really, the biggest fun I’ve had with this game was spinning the character around, while the NPCs were just there talking to me, and even that was as fun as moving the cursor over your screen. In other words, it is fun when you’re using a PC for the very first time in your life, then get over it 5 minutes later. Granted, Borderlands suffers from the exact same thing, but here, the game’s goal isn’t the story, plus Gearbox actually fixed NPCs in the second game, because the first one was just a test of how well this FPS RPG will sell. Amazon in DT Remastered seems to be the level people complain about the most (DSP included), just because of these infamous coins of exposition, but it still is much more bearable than the first 20 minutes of Silent Hill Downpour – not only this game forces you into this “interactive storytelling” where you just walk down the corridors listening to NPCs nagging, the cutscenes cannot be skipped as well. And the prologue alone takes about as much time as you can rush through the Amazon level in DT Remastered. Now that you mention it, Hotline Miami gets praised by its difficulty only because everyone keep mentioning the generous checkpoints immediately after that. Makes me wonder what would happen to this game’s reception if you could only get 3 continues per stage, and if you would waste these on the boss, you’d have to restart whole chapter all over. I smell 4/10 in that case 😀 Speaking of which, I can’t wait to finally play it and write a review of it myself, possibly next week 🙂
I think the Himalaya and Transylvania stages look the best in this regard, but the rest of the stages are rather varied, especially the Amazon where there’s such a difference even between two nearby textures
It may be a small thing, but I also liked the dark segments of Vesuvius, where you can only see the outlines of characters, this Limbo-esque touch was pretty nice 🙂 But aside of that, I agree, the sprites look superb, the backgrounds are rather okay, but the actual surfaces you walk on are looking like average PS2 game. It makes me wonder why developers decide for such approach too, given that the games like Muramasa or Okami already proved that environments like that can have fluid animation and are doable. I never liked such mixed art styles myself, either go with hand drawn or 3D. Hell, WayForward actually did a much better 3D work on environment in Double Dragon Neon, so maybe once again they had to rush things a bit.
Speaking of Rayman Legends, it’s a rare thing of you to be so absorbed by a game, tells me a lot about high quality already 😀 Then again, it’s not like I’m done with Sengoku Basara myself (75 hours of gameplay, only 62% of Trophies). It’s good to find a solid title on PS3. 🙂