I never played the original DuckTales game on the NES and while I am familiar with the cartoon, it wasn’t something I watched on a regular basis, though I do love the character Scrooge McDuck. He is an unusual main character for a game, there aren’t many out there that have you play as an old man duck using your cane as a weapon, (Solid Snake still had all his gadgets in Metal Gear Solid 4 after all). You can either give enemies a smack of your cane up close or use it like a pogo stick and bounce on their heads.
The story is a fun one, Scrooge is on an adventure across the world to find even more treasures for his fortune. You will journey through levels such as jungles, mountains and space, (Nathan Drake has nothing on this duck).
The care gone into this remake is immediately obvious, all the areas are full of bright colours and the character sprites have lovely animations as you go through each level. The music is equally upbeat and the well known theme tune is here too…which after completing the game I had stuck in my head for a week, how many times can you mumble to yourself ‘Life is like a hurricane, here in Duckburg? Countless times is the answer…
Getting the voice actors from the cartoon was an excellent addition and really added to each scene. Hearing Scrooge berate Launchpad or listening to the three nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie will be something anyone familiar with the characters can appreciate. Unfortunately even with the top notch voice acting the cut scenes really do tend to drag on though you do have the option to skip these if you find them going on too long.
There are collectable pieces of art you can buy with the gold you collect in each level that show concept sketches for the game, it wasn’t enough to convince me to replay levels purely to collect gold but it’s a nice feature to have for those that do replay levels as it means they have something to spend that ever increasing amount of gold on.
Like the original, the game itself is quite short; the only length in it really comes from dying and retrying a level, (or if you’re like me, spending too much time having fun jumping in Scrooge’s gold coins in his giant safe and swimming around in them). The boss and enemy patterns quickly become obvious and repetitive though this would make it more accessible to younger players. The game can’t really be faulted for these points as it is a remastered version of the original so you are getting the same type and amount of gameplay the original offered but this does mean it’s a struggle to justify a €14.99 purchase. DuckTales Remastered really is a game aimed at fans and I doubt those who aren’t familiar with it will be impressed with what is on offer. However if you actually are completely unfamiliar with DuckTales then really how have you managed that and perhaps you should check this out anyway just for an education.
