Voodoo Vince Remastered Review

Play a voodoo doll who needs to save his creator from utter destruction. You will need to fight using your voodoo abilities, lots of platforming, solving puzzles, and doing interesting tasks that will guide you back to your creator. It's a challenging ride, will you be able to stop Kosmo from delivering evil?

Voodoo Vince Remastered Review

INTRODUCTION

Voodoo Vince Remastered is a graphically enhanced version of its previous release in 2003 on the original Xbox. It’s an action/adventure game where players will use voodoo abilities to defeat their foes and do lots of mini games.

If you like playing mini games and adventure games such as Blinx: The Time Sweeper, Ratchet & Clank or Ty the Tasmanian Tiger then this game will be up your alley.

You can purchase this title on Steam for $14.99.


STORY

Voodoo Vince Remastered is about a couple of thieves that break into a voodoo shop that's owned by Madam Charmaine. The villain of the game named Kosmo breaks into the voodoo shop to steal zombie dust which is very powerful. Upon trying to steal the zombie dust the thieves unleash its power from which turned the voodoo doll on the shelf alive, thus making Voodoo Vince. The thieves took Madam Charmaine back to Kosmos lair but the zombie dust is already starting to warp and bend reality! Fortunately, she was able to have contact with her mind to her voodoo doll that has been brought to life. So it’s your job to now save her through Kosmo’s evil plans to use the zombie dust.

Voodoo Vince Remastered Review - Taking the zombie dust and Madam Charmaine

GAMEPLAY

Voodoo Vince is an action adventure game that will put you in the shoes of playing as a voodoo doll. Vince can punch, spin punch, float and unleash his voodoo powers to defeat his foes. To use your voodoo power is quite easy, all you have to do is kill enemies and collect the orbs that they drop. Unfortunately, this system is quite flawed because you can kill a lot of people at once and when you do you can easily use your voodoo power, again and again, this made the combat portion of the game pretty easy. Not too mention that overall it just felt really simplistic, there’s nothing special or unique about it that makes you want to come back for more.
 Voodoo Vince Remastered Review - Using your voodoo power can kill many people at a time
However, when you're not fighting in combat, you will be collecting voodoo icons so you can unlock more voodoo abilities, health potions to increase your overall health once you collect 100, and pieces of skull paper that will increase you voodoo abilities in how many times you can use them. Collecting the voodoo icons was fun because there was a ton of abilities to unlock and since you’re a voodoo doll, you have to hurt yourself in order to hurt others only when it came to using the special ability if you wish. These new voodoo powers in how you would kill yourself can be absolutely brutal at times, I was honestly shocked at the brutality but there's no blood or any such thing in this game.

Unlocking the icons provided some hilarious ways of killing yourself which made them fun to collect. I thought this was a good progression system in upgrading your health and voodoo power but since the game’s combat felt so weak, I didn’t really feel compelled to want to pick up these health potions or skull pages but I appreciate the fact that it was included. Health potions are everywhere to collect though, it felt fun to collect them regardless of how you feel about improving your health or not. You're not in a lot of danger either and rarely do you worry about your health in this game.

Voodoo Vince Remastered Review - Collect voodoo icons to unlock more powers
The thing about Voodoo Vince is that you're not supposed to be having fun with the game’s basic combat but more of its fun and vast mini games that you will come across frequently, these are what make the game unique and make it a long lasting experience because these mini games you will be doing will be pretty random and obscure but leaves a long lasting impression, I couldn't wait to see what the game had next for me as I kept playing. 

These mini-games can be from a first person shooting gallery on a horror ride, swinging across a rope on a bucket collecting shirts, carrying a flammable object that can explode if dropped or flamed on and much more. It sounds crazy when saying it out loud but it’s actually a lot more fun playing it in a game. Voodoo Vince puts players in weird and obscure situations but you won’t mind because it’s actually a lot of fun to endure these mini-games, it’s what makes this game stand out because you won’t know what will come next.

Voodoo Vince Remastered Review - Riding a bucket collecting shirts looks more fun than you think
Boss Battles are another component in Voodoo Vince that can range from being really hard, to relatively easy. Every single encounter you will have can be entertaining in its own way for each boss is tackled differently than the last. I enjoyed them overall and I think they did a decent job here in creating boss battles for this game, it fits and it was fun tackling them on. There are a couple of boss battles to my surprise and some were more memorable than others. The funny thing is Vince is a tiny little doll and each of these bosses are gigantic in size, it was funny to see Vince take them out. Just goes to show that size isn't always everything!

There was so much variety not only in how you can take them on but in how you do it, like how you use your voodoo powers to hurt yourself to hurt the enemies around you, you will have to do the same here except hurt yourself in a much bigger way which can be entertaining. For example, on one boss I had to impale myself on spikes from a long distance to hurt this two-headed alligator. Another boss was this huge gust of wind that would hurl objects at you and the only way to push him back was to turn on these huge fans but the journey to get to each fan was intense. 

Voodoo Vince Remastered Review - Watch out when he throws objects at you!

GRAPHICS

Compared to its 2003 release the graphics are stunning and are at a solid 60 frames per second, there are a lot of areas to explore that are different from one another, unfortunately if you go up close to some objects or the environment, you’ll notice that they're not as updated as the character models are in the game and I think the sole purpose was really focusing on the things that were more important not so much the environment but I appreciate what they did here and while I didn't play the original game it looks like this was a solid port. 
I liked the fact that the game didn’t feel boring in terms of design, it had a lot to look at and it was very vibrant. I didn’t feel like anything was lacking here. Take a look at what it use to look like versus what it looks like now. You can argue that the 2003 version of this game looks more colorful and vibrant and the remastered version seems darker in quality. Believe me, when I say that the game isn't all that dark as it appears, it's actually quite detailed as compared to the 2003 version. I think that the dark essence of the 2017 remastered version takes a more realistic approach to what should actually be a dark game. I think it would have been completely different if the game was really colorful.

Voodoo Vince Remastered Review - 2003 version of the game

Voodoo Vince Remastered Review - 2017 remastered version of the game

SOUND

The voice acting stood out to me the most because of how fun and silly all the character you encounter were.Each character had their own personality and charm which made playing the game all the more fun. I was excited to see who I would run into next on my travels and playing as Vince is pretty fun. He's a very odd person but he can be sarcastic and moody when he wants. Sure no one would think that a voodoo doll would be very exciting to play as but Vince is definitely has a mature tone to him at times which makes it hilarious for adults and kids alike. The voice actors may all be cheesy, but who doesn't like something that makes them chuckle or laugh? Overall, everyone did a great job here.

CONCLUSION

Voodoo Vince Remastered is a fun and entertaining game, for $14.99 you're getting something that is full of value that will last between 7-10 hours because of all the different things you can do in this game. I would recommend Voodoo Vince to people who like playing action/adventure games such as Ratchet & Clank, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger or Blinx the Time Sweeper. What you'll like about the game is its colorful cast of characters, fun mini games, and challenge. however what you will dislike about it is its simplistic combat that can be pretty repetitive and its platforming that can be hard at times especially towards the end of the game but overall it will leave a sweet aftertaste even since its 2003 release.

PROS CONS
+ Colorful cast of characters – Simplistic combat that's too easy
+ Fun mini games – Platforming can be difficult at times
+ Remaster done right for an old game
+ Entertaining boss battles
7
Good

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

×