Maximo: Ghosts to Glory

"Not bad, but a bit of a disappointment"

I had been looking forward to Maximo for quite a long time. Even though Ghouls and Ghosts hasn't exactly been a favorite game series of mine, any game that prescribed that deliver the glory of so-called old-school games sounded appetizing to me.

Unfortunately, it hasn't quite lived up to its potential. Granted, there's a lot to like about Maximo - there are plenty of levels to explore, all with a lot of nifty secrets to find. There's also a large variety of power-ups, sword and techniques to find throughout the game. It's here where the game shines.

The biggest fault of the game was supposed to be one its greatest strengths - the difficulty. One of the largest appeals of old-school games is that they took awhile to beat - you really needed to master a given section of the game before you could progress, and that called for quick thinking and quick reflexes. Instead of this, Maximo just simply throws legions of overly agressive bad guys at you, coming from all directions, and hoping you survive. Granted, you can take a far number of hits before dying, but your life meter will run dry pretty quickly.

What's worse is that many of the gameplay mechanics seem counter-intuitive. I eventually found out that battling these legions of skeletons - many which requires several hits and can block your attacks - was made much easier by using your own shield. This was until I found out that you can only use your shield a limited number of times before it breaks. What? Why?

Similarly, one of the techniques you'll find yourself moving often is the forward slash, because it can defeat enemies fairly quickly (there's also a similar jumping-overhead slash). Unfortunately, in most cases, if you end up missing (which isn't hard to do), the bad guys will often counter-attack, leaving you hurt. Ouch.

What's even worse - and this was in the final nail in coffin, so to speak - is the bass-ackwards save/continue system. As mentioned before, one of the key aspects of old-school gaming was getting better through practice. That almost necessitated unlimited continues, which many of the better games (Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden) provided. Maximo, however, does not. You're granted one continue at the beginning of the game, and need to collect more ''continue coins'' by gathering fireflies throughout the levels. This wouldn't be so bad - but the price of continuing grows each time you use it, until it becomes so expensive that gathering enough fireflies surmounts to an impossible task. As a result, the game almost forces you to play a level over and over until you get it done perfectly, without dying, since lives and continues are a precious commodity. For a game that you WILL die a lot - well, this completely contradicts the nature of the game.

Even more so, saving the game requires that you use coins that you collect. Oftentimes, I found myself using coins solely to save between levels, and never having enough to buy anything else. Exploring the levels to get more coins, more often that not, results in losing more lives.

As for the more superficial aspects of the game - the graphics are nicely detailed, but given that the game is meant to be pretty dark, don't expect lots of pretty colors like Jak and Daxter. Still, they're competant and serve their purposes. The music is nothing special - there's some nice variations on the Ghosts and Goblins theme, but it's pretty low key and not very interesting.

It's even more frustrating that a handful of flaws keep Maximo from becoming what could've been a classic game. Quite a shame. ''Old school gaming difficulty'' does not equate ''dying a lot''. There's more to it, and it seems that the designers didn't quite realize this.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/24/02, Updated 01/24/02