Gargoyles Remastered Reviews

Gargoyles Remastered isn’t really worth the time unless you’re a hardcore fan of old platformers or a veteran of the original game desiring to revisit a favorite.

Journey through one thousand years of legend as Goliath, leader of the Gargoyles. Stone by day, warriors by night, the Gargoyles are sworn protectors against the evil Eye of Odin and all who seek to use its immense powers to control the world. While on your journey, battle armies of Viking Warriors in ancient Scotland and smash relentless hordes of menacing robots in modern-day Manhattan. The fate of the Gargoyles and humanity is up to you. Your quest - find and destroy the Eye of Odin before it destroys the world! PS4 version reviewed.

Gargoyles Remastered is a disappointing time. Fans of the original will delight in getting to play it on a modern system and the quick rewind helps to alleviate some of the more egregious design choices, but it also highlights how barebones this remaster really is. The rough and ready feel isn’t helped by modern visuals that look aesthetically worse and seem to add extra lag and imprecision to the controls. This is one oldie that perhaps should have been left to sleep in stony isolation.

Gargoyles Remastered feels very much stuck in its roots, a curse that sadly can’t be broken by a new layer of animation, never mind the moonlight.

While playing through Gargoyles Remastered, the option of switching between the classic graphics and new graphics is as simple as the press of a button, allowing players to enjoy both as they please. Though more refined and obviously less pixelated, the new design just doesn’t hold up to the classic 16-bit look. While the old style was outdated, it still managed to convey a greater amount of detail and impressiveness as compared to the new look. Additionally, the new graphics fail to solve a problem that is apparent in the 16-bit style, which is the inability to differentiate between background and foreground.

For better or worse, Gargoyles Remastered remains a product of its time. The remaster was handled in a way where all remasters of classic games should be handled which is add quality-of-life features like being able to save and modernizing the graphics and sound while giving the player the option to switch to the original version. The remastered graphics are beautiful and it's like watching the animated series as game. The game mechanics are antiquated, however, and don't hold up well. Players who enjoyed this title on Sega Genesis will find that it plays exactly how they remember it and can still have fun with this one. Newcomers who don't have the benefit of nostalgia will likely be less forgiving of the gameplay in Gargoyles Remastered.

Gargoyles Remastered is a well-polished experience shined up for both new and old fans, while sticking true to its 90s origins.

I’m not really upset that I went back to Gargoyles to re-explore some fun childhood memories. This game was special to me as a huge fan of the cartoon series, and I really liked how they adapted the old graphics into a new art style that was so much closer to the animation. I also like that the old graphics and sounds are still here and you can switch back and forth between them as much as you wish. I find it hard to credit Gargoyles Remastered for having a rewind button, because I think it’s simply a necessity to alleviate the frustration of a ridiculously difficult game. It also doesn’t fully alleviate that frustration because of its limitations. Gargoyles Remastered is an interesting and pretty walk down memory lane, but you’d better be ready to have any rose-colored glasses shattered by its unforgiving gameplay if you take that walk.

A neat thing about the original visuals is that the robot enemies have a CGI-esque look that clashes with the sleek pixel art in an interesting way that lines up with the themes behind the characters themselves – the robots being modern replicas and the gargoyles and Vikings being natural things from the past.

It’s well documented to the point of being a meme that licensed games from the 90s were their own special kind of hell. As fondly as we look back at The Lion King, Aladdin or even Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers, we can easily now find evidence that we were subjecting ourselves to a diluted version of our favorite IPs. These games, usually from Disney sources, took vague outlines of characters we loved and hyper condensed the plot to create a mediocre game, usually platform/adventure based, t...

Truly, this is one for the fans. It’s a remaster for people who have fond memories of renting it for the Genesis back in the day. Fans of the cartoon might also find some value in it, as much as it tends to be an unfaithful adaptation. For everyone else, there are a lot of other games you can play before you need to reach the depths of Gargoyles. It’s not terrible, it just isn’t good. But at least it hasn’t been left sleeping for one thousand years.

Gargoyles Remastered is a good addition to the growing library of classic remasters. It's faithful to a fault to its original release. Though I praise the developer for keeping the game as true to the original as possible, that doesn't mean it couldn't have used some extra updates. The visual upgrade is tremendous in recreating the animated series visuals, and the rewind function is excellent. Still, that doesn't keep the combat and platforming from being incredibly frustrating at times.

One thing can be said for sure – Gargoyles Remastered never overstays its welcome, simply because there isn’t much content to begin with. It’s a short, flawed game that would have benefited more from being a remake than a plain remaster, with more stages, more polish, and more… everything. As it stands, it’s going to live off the power of nostalgia, but even so, it’s hard to see it converting many players into new fans of the franchise.

Gargoyles Remastered is an okay remaster of an okay game. Its moody 16-bit visuals and challenging difficulty will no doubt appeal to some, especially fans of the show, but its short length and often unfair design certainly hold it back from greatness. We’d say this one might be worth picking up if you can find it on a pretty decent sale down the road—it’s entertaining enough despite its shortcomings—but you’re not really going to be missing out on a ton if you choose to pass on it.