Gargoyles was a fantastic, animated television series that holds a special place in many millennial hearts. It’s often brought up when Batman the Animated Series gets discussed and showed how creators and studios, in this case Disney, were more open to telling adult stories in animated form. And since this was the 90s, it was inevitable that something like Gargoyles got a video game adaptation, especially since Disney was on a roll with fantastic offerings on the platform since the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Gargoyles came around at the end of the animated Disney video game renaissance. The company had a lot of hits from Rescue Rangers and Duck Tales on the NES to Castle of Illusion and Alladin on the 16bit generation of consoles. There were lesser hits in-between all those games like Tale Spin and The Jungle Book, and while some were less than great, they all looked amazing in terms of animation thanks to that Disney touch. Gargoyles was one such game that a lot of people, me included, passed on, or didn’t even know existed as it was relegated to the Sega Geneses and not even released in Europe.
So, it makes a lot of sense to give this mostly forgotten 16bit adventure a fresh coat of paint and help introduce the series it’s based on to a new audience. And while that idea is great, the execution leaves a lot to be desired considering the core game was one of Disney’s weakest 16bit efforts in terms of gameplay, level design, and combat. And when your gameplay is already weak, it doesn’t matter how pretty you make it look. You simply end up with a pretty looking game with outdated controls and gameplay that actively punishes the player.
The first thing that I need to address is the visual overhaul that initially got me excited about the project. The original game didn’t stick with the animated shows style for whatever reason. Everything was much darker and had a far grittier look than the show. The colors are also wrong for characters, and I can only assume this was either done because of the limitations of the system the game released on, or that they wanted a darker look detached from the show to draw in more people outside of the show. Still, that 16bit outing had a very cool look that helped it stand out.
Gargoyles Remastered is very pretty, calling to mind something along the lines of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. The graphics are gorgeous and represent the show 1 to 1 which is great. This will delight fans of the cartoon who grew up with it, but I couldn’t help to feel that the game actually lost a lot of its unique style and soul in the process. Instead of this dark adventure that took full advantage of the 16bit pixel format, we now have essentially the cartoon in motion, built on a base that it was never intended for.
Gargoyles Remastered lacks visual depth, feeling really flat, and because the team simply drew over old models and animations, the game ends up feeling like an old Flash project. Cleaning everything up means that you can now see the limitations and imperfections of the original game. There are lots of times where you will clip through structures, and sections that had your character hidden behind an object now leaving them exposed looking as if you are floating in air. The original had a style that was used to hide its imperfections and now those are on full display.
This becomes a real issue with animations as the new detail again exposes the corner cutting that you didn’t notice in the pixel version. Movement feels clunky and fighting against you with combat being essentially a guessing game that lacks impact. Combat was the biggest problem of the original release and things haven’t been fixed here at all. Gargoyles was always a difficult game, but only because of the weak combat system that seemed to play it fast and loose with hitboxes and enemy projectiles and clunky jumping/gliding.
Another thing that really blew my mind was that they team actually did include something totally new: loading screens. For whatever reason the game now has a lot of loading screens between sections that drag on longer than they should for what we have on offer. This remaster feels like a fast and cheap turnaround to help promote the series getting a potential return, instead of taking the best of the original and fixing the pretty minor issues of the game to make it modern. Tweaking the jumping/gliding mechanic and implementing a combat system with a little weight to it could have turned Gargoyles Remastered into a real gem.
Thankfully, if you did like the original game you can switch on the fly between the new and remastered versions with the tap of a button. This is always a neat feature to have but you’ll quickly realize that the style of the original trounces the remake. The remastered version is brighter and in line color wise with the cartoon, but it ends up feeling empty, flat, and like you are running around a cut-and-paste world that lacks the detail the original had in spades. You can really see this in the first stage as the original had this dark and damn-near adult look and feel to it. Underground stages had warmth to them with a really nice use of shading on the world. The remaster feels clean and clinical in comparison.
The original Gargoyles game had a unique look that helped set it apart and let the team behind it hide a lot of its weaknesses. The remastering looks pretty but only helps to expose the shortcomings of the original. This title demanded a remake, or at the very least a remaster that fixed the serious gameplay issues the original game had. You can polish a turd all you want, but in the end it’s still a turd. Gargoyles Remastered isn’t a turd but it sure was a very lacking 16bit platformer that deserved more than this, especially as a solo game and not part of some sort of Disney collection like has been done before.
Gargoyles Remastered nails the cartoons style but loses the visual depth and darker look of the original game while doing nothing to address poor design and clunky gameplay
Final Score:
(For fans of the original only)
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