Maximo: Ghosts to Glory

"Capcom needs to do a lot better than this..."

When I went to my local Blockbuster the day I rented Maximo, I wasn’t exactly planning to rent it. I didn’t see the game I wanted, and I remember my latest PSM issue gave Maximo good ratings. So I picked up Maximo, expecting it would be good, but in my opinion it was exactly the opposite. Maximo is sort of like Jak and Daxter, but you have to follow a given path instead of roam around freely. The object of the game is to beat each level and rescue princess’ and stop this one guy that is bringing the dead back to be his army or something. Simple? No. It’s as if Capcom wants this game to be no fun and nearly impossible.

In each level, there are coins (they are called krons) and these little bright things that fly around. You need to collect these things in order for the game to be the slightest bit easier. You get krons from enemies you kill, and a lot are just lying around each level. The krons are something you will need a lot. You have to use 100 krons just to save your freaking game! You get the little bright things when you break a tombstone that has lights floating around it. I think once you get 50 of those little things you get a continue coin, which you need to use to continue after you die a certain number of times.

As you can probably tell, I think Maximo isn’t the best game out there. The game is so hard, it makes me want to break the disk and never play it again. One of the most annoying things is not being able to save whenever you want to. In order to save, you have to complete a level, then go to this little pool of water in the place where you choose what level you want to go to (if you don’t get this, read the next paragraph, I explained that level in more detail there). When you’re at the pool, to save, you have to use 100 of your krons you collected. This is a big annoyance. Maximo would have been a lot bigger success if it had the feature to save anywhere.

After completing a level, you are sort of warped into this one level where you choose which level you want to go to next. It’s the place where you can save. There are still skeletons here, so you have to be careful. The developers must’ve been high when they had this idea, cause it is highly inefficient. This new idea Capcom came up with could’ve worked, but it’s better off not being different from other games. This warp level place makes Maximo very confusing, and it would’ve been way better off with the conventional sent to next level after beating a level format.

After playing Maximo for a while, I got the idea that they were trying to make this game different, wanting to set it apart from others. Well, I don’t think Capcom should’ve done that. It completely makes the gameplay less enjoyable. I mean, what if you are in the middle of a level and have to go? You can’t just save there, so you have to turn off your PS2 and restart the level next time.

One good thing about Maximo, the developers actually did well with the sound. The music has an eerie sound, which of course, goes well with the game. It would be fun to play this at midnight, with all that eerie sounding music going. The sound FX is very well done, I have yet to find any sounds that don’t go well with the action.

One cool feature is you get power-ups that sometimes drop from things you kill. Ranging from a double strike attack, to a flaming sword. This game has some of the coolest power-ups I have ever seen in a game. Power-ups are one thing that was very well planned out in Maximo. Of course, they can’t make up for some of the horrible ideas for the gameplay Capcom had.

I usually don’t pay much attention to graphics in a game, cause all they do is make the game more enjoyable to look at. If I can look at the graphics and not puke, they’re good. Maximo has no annoying things like clipping in the graphics. Yet with these good graphics, I would still rather go to a family reunion than play this game.

Don’t ever play Maximo if you hate games that have messed up camera angles, cause that’s another major flaw in this game. The messed angles make battles really tough, you can’t see everything and to get the angle how you want it, you have to keep using the feature to center the camera behind Maximo.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/03/02, Updated 02/03/02