With the friendly help for mczonk I recently completed Goof Troop on the SNES.
It’s a interesting game that doesn’t receive too much attention. It is a goofy-themed top-down action puzzle game with a good co-op mode. It consists of 5 levels. Each level fells a bit more lengthy than a Zelda dungeon. The gameplay is quite similar to Zelda in general. The biggest difference is that there is no primary weapon an the focus is on picking up and throwing objects. Also, there is no overworld.
The co-op mode is really polished and it is a lot of fun to figure out things together. It certainly feels like the game was developed with co-op in mind. On the other hand, there are hardly any puzzles that require you to work together with the second player. I’m guessing that this was done to not lock out people, who play single-player.
The puzzles and challenges are a bit mis-balanced. The difficulty is all over the place. Most of them are really easy. But every now and then, a real mind-bender comes in. There was one room we couldn’t clear even after minutes of really hard work. We had to use a FAQ . It was getting late so we might have been not on the top of our game. But it certainly felt inconsistent at times.
There are bosses at the end of each level. While they are fun and imaginative, they suffer from hit-point sponge syndrome. The battles felt a bit drawn out. Luckily, we never had to restart a level because of them. But I think it’s only because of mczonk’s mad gaming skills.
On a more positive note, the visuals are very polished and the game mechanics a solid. Actually, I was surprised that the game only had 5 levels. It seems like there is enough stuff for at least 10 more. On the other hand, the short length fits perfectly for a co-op experience. We finished it in two settings. We could have made it in one.
Generally, we had a lot of fun. It is not perfect but it surprisingly good. As an added bonus, I finished another batch of 5 games! Which means I “deserved” the right to play GT5. Yay!
