The new GARGOYLES REMASTERED is all style and no substance

Disney Games recently sent me a copy of the new one Gargoyles remastered to review. The game is currently available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Steam and Xbox Series Gargoyle It was one of my favorite shows as a kid, but never having had a Sega growing up I didn’t have much of a chance to play this game. While this new remaster does a great job of making the game look good, it could have used some quality of life updates to really make it shine.

Let’s start with some things the game could have done better. While I appreciate his dedication to not changing the gameplay of the original game, this was a challenging game. The controls, compared to today’s more responsive games, felt clunky. Sometimes I felt like I had to press a button a few times to get the desired reaction. My biggest problem though are the hit boxes for attacking enemies and grabbing objects to do jumping puzzles. I don’t mind a challenging experience for these types of games, but these hit boxes seemed to randomly change on the same type of enemy or background object to swing from. There were several jumping puzzles that made me want to quit because I could line up in the same spot every time I went to grab a pole to swing only to make Goliath fall without catching him. My last problem was fighting the bosses. If you die while fighting a boss and still have extra lives, the boss will also return to full health, so you need to make sure you take it out in one life. The rewind feature was somewhat helpful for these moments, but they could still become frustrating. These were certainly challenges that existed in the original game, and honestly, I don’t really mind them carrying them forward. However, I would have liked to see this game include a version close to the original and then one where these issues were fixed and updated.

I would have really liked to see more added to the game. This would have been a perfect opportunity to add more to the story or even add more playable characters. The remaster did a good job of staying true to the source material, but it really missed the opportunity to develop it.

This game definitely nailed the updated look. Goliath is awesome and the backgrounds are great too. There were a few times where I got tripped up figuring out where to go because the levels aren’t always clear on what you can grab to swing and do a jumping puzzle. At any time you can go back to see the original look of the game, which helped a lot with this problem. This is a feature that I thought was really cool, I enjoyed changing up the graphics to see how far the game has come. I also appreciated the ability to choose between difficulty levels as this game was much more challenging than I expected.

I liked this remaster, but other than the updated look it doesn’t have much to offer. There are difficulty levels to choose from, but that’s about it as far as additions to the game go. Remasters are a great opportunity to not only honor the original game, but also add something extra for fans to enjoy. This worked very well at updating the look, but it didn’t work as well at adding something new for past fans to discover and enjoy. If you really enjoyed the original game, I would recommend it. Overall I would give it 6/10.