Ducktales Remastered Review

I don't really buy downloadable games. It's not because I find them inferior to actual disk based games or about taking up space on my console's hard drive or anything other lame excuse. It's really just because I love that feeling of having a game in a case that I can add to my collection. There's just something about me that says that even if a game is a bit more expensive, if there is a physical version of it, I probably will buy it over a downloadable version. In this day and age, downloadable games are becoming more and more popular,but when a downloadable game is released physically, it's just enough to put a smile on my face.


I've never played the original DuckTales on the NES, mainly because I've never owned an NES. I've heard great things about the game and specifically its soundtrack, but I never actually sought out a copy of it to play. I just never felt motivated to do so. Now that Wayforward, one of my favorite developers, has remade the game, I feel like the game lived up to my expectations, even though there really weren't really any expectations to begin with.

Now showing life, but with no hurricanes in Duckburg.

Unlike the original game, whose plot mostly consisted of going to various locations and getting treasures as Scrooge McDuck, now there's a plot that connects all of the levels together. And I could care less about said plot because I can't connect myself with it for a number of reasons. One, the game pretty much assumes you know DuckTales in and out, since all of the levels features side characters that a person like myself would never know, so more often than naught I'm left confused as to what I'm listening to. Two, the constant cutscenes and dialogue can be a huge burden. This game has a cutscene to explain EVERYTHING every five minutes. I don't need a why I can breathe on the moon, just let me play on the moon! And three, I'm not playing this game for a story. I'm playing this game for the gameplay.

On that note, this game is amazing to play. The main gimmick of this game is using Scrooge's cane as a Pogo stick to bounce around levels and collect treasure. The bouncing mechanic is a ton of fun, and there were several points I just stopped focusing on the plot and bounced around the level just because. You can bounce on spikes, enemies, bricks, and whatever to move around. There are two different types of bounces though, soft and hard, and choosing which bounce to do can drastically change the difficulty of the game, so even you feel like you've mastered soft bounces, you can try to go for hard ones to make things a bit more challenging. Also, for close objects, Scrooge can use his cane as a golf club to hit them diagonally to hit chests of enemies that may be out of reach. 

Let that be a lesson kids; Bigfoot hates ducks. 

What's great about this game is that like Mega Man, you can choose which level to challenge at your own pace. The five main levels; the Amazon, Transylvania, an African Mine, the Himalayas, and the Moon. All of them are fun, but can be a bit difficult in you go in unprepared. Even if you are prepared though, the game can be very picky about dying. You have three lives (except on easy mode where you have unlimited lives), and once they all go you have to start from the very beginning. This can be especially frustrating because the bosses are fairly tricky and if you go in unprepared they cab kill you quite easily. This game doesn't joke around with its difficulty.

The reason why it's an issue though is because even if you die, you have to watch all of the cutscenes again. Yes you can skip through them, but it's still an annoyance to listen to Scrooge be a jerk to everyone, despite how good the voice acting is. The original cast reprises their roles, and from the bits and pieces of the cartoon that I've seen, they still sound just like their characters, and if not damned close to them. However, if you do decide to watch the cutscenes, prepare yourself for some really cheesy dialogue. 

The rest of the game is fairly straightforward. You collect money from each level that you can then use to buy concept art of the game and the original TV show. You can swim in Scrooge's money vault, and doing that never gets old. There's an expert difficulty mode if you're insane enough to do it, and the game can be completed in about 3 or 4 hours. 

I'm not going to say that DuckTales Remastered was a phenomenal experience, because it isn't. The attempts at modernizing the game and integrating a story really makes the game a bit of a slog at times, and the difficulty can be unfair to the point where I quit out of frustration a few times. But I'm glad I was able to play DuckTales for the first time and see what all of the fuss is about. It might be everything I told it was going to be, but it's solid for what it is. I give DuckTales Remastered 3 duck nephews out of 5.

They may be cute,  but they never stop talking.

And now to get the DuckTales theme song out of my head......... Ah who am I kidding!