Nostalgia is almost insulting if you think about it, it's basically the notion that we continue to like the things we enjoyed when we were young and stupid and ate paste into adulthood because we lack the critical spectrum to evolve our own tastes. Franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokémon pretty must entirely exist based on people claiming it's the best thing ever because it seemed that way when they were seven. I was a Sega kid growing up and I had all the Sonic games for the Master System, Mega Drive and Game Gear and I will proudly state right here that Sonic is a conceptually flawed series with a bucketlist of poor design choices and there isn't a single game of that series which can hold a candle to the (proper) Mario games of the time. Know that no game released in 2013 shall get a free pass from me because it used to be good.
Oh right DuckTales, let's get point one out of the way quickly. If you've never played the first NES DuckTales game or seen the TV show of the same name....get out. There is nothing for you here and don't buy DuckTales Remastered, I assume you that you'll get zero enjoyment out of it. And if you happen to have played the second NES DuckTales game...I'm sorry...I'm so so sorry...
This project was handled by Wayforward, an extremely talented developer known for producing a lot of strong retro inspired titles for a variety of systems. You can generally rely on them to do justice to the original game and serve the nostalgia blinded when handling a remake....and little else. The first issue one runs into when remaking DuckTales for modern release is the fact that one thing a lot of people seem to forget about the NES game is that it's like 15 minutes long. You can probably speed run it in under 10, so obviously Wayforward needed to find a way to pad this out a bit and their chosen method of doing so - CUTSCENES.
Yes cutscenes, you know cutscenes, that entirely non-interactive entity that interactive experiences regularly use to tell stories for some reason. The idea here was to package each level of the game with it's own DuckTales style storyline, and have the action stop every so often for Scrooge to blabber on about how he's just found a coin or a key or a sex toy or something. They even managed to get the entire TV show cast back to do the voices, and all in all there's a lot of effort into it and it's all really nice, but ultimately the main effect achieved by these cutscenes is that they bring the games pace to a crashing halt.
This is Wayforwards biggest, and for some people crucial, error on DuckTales Remastered. You want to redesign and repackage the game to have a storytelling focus in the spirit and personality of the original show, fine. But you can't do that and still keep all the unforgiving NES gameplay on board, with the main offender being the inclusion of a lives system. Lives systems have made little sense in non-arcade games for pretty much forever now, but this is a game where they especially don't make sense.
If you happen to lose your three lives because sometimes the controls screw up a bit (and they do), or because of some obnoxious level design, or because you can barely see some platforms and blocks because they blend into the background (another common issue), or because the hitboxes on a lot of enemies and hazards are really weird...then BAM! Back to the stage select screen you go and if you play the level again all the cutscenes come with them, you can skip them but you have to pause the game to do that so it still ruins the flow and makes reattempts a frustrating and depressing experience. I'm not saying it's too hard either because it's not, but this is the kind of game that has a lot of niggles like the ones above and sometimes you will just die, it's not necessarily a matter of skill.
You CANNOT have the NES unforgiving gameplay with longer levels and bigger bosses, keep the same lives system and then give the game a story focus, that makes NO sense.
Wayforward have done what they do best well, the art (with the help of Disney animators) is amazing, Jake Kaufmans updated soundtrack is astounding, and there's clearly a lot of love for the original game here and nice touches such as the option to swim around in Scrooges gold for no reason other than why not? DuckTales Remastered is confused though, it's like Wayforward are so terrified to offend fans of the NES game or get accused of "dumbing it down" that they made design decisions that make no sense. I know they're a strong developer, their entirely original Mighty Switch Force titles are wonderful, intuitive and brilliantly designed games, but in handling a nostalgic retro product they don't seem to bring that to the table.
Overall, DuckTales Remastered is a cartoon that's less entertaining to watch than the actual show, and a game that's not as fun as the original NES version. Instead of using the original title as a jumping off point to make a truly fantastic title, Wayforward have instead preserved, padded and stretched it out almost to breaking point. It's not worthless by any means, and if you are a big fan of the original game you will still probably at least appreciate it, but it is confused and it could have been a lot better.
I'm happy DuckTales Remastered exists, I'm happy that Wayforward handled the project, but this could have been a lot more.
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