Vexx

"Another Super Mario 64 clone... but a decent one"

Gameplay
The levels are kind of dull. Nothing really exciting about them, but they work good enough. The hearts aren't really hard to get either you got your basic Mario64 setup here. Collect 100 shards you get a heart. Collect 6 of these urn's you get another heart each level is like that. Then the rest of the hearts are hidden and just like Mario64 before you enter the level you get a clue to what heart you are looking for. A nice feature I really like about this game is that when you select your heart you are going after in the beginning of the level their are red signs that point you in the right direction which kills the need to wonder around aimless trying to figure out what a very un descriptive clue meant. The mini-games in this game are pretty nice too. For example in the Tempest Peak Manor level on heart requires you to turn on a Xbox and you get to play Super Breakout. The game is filled with little things like that, which makes it makes it a fun game to play. The controls were almost perfect. Everything worked like it was supposed too. The only real problem with the controls was that when doing a long jump if you didn't time it right you'd do a ground pound, but it wasn't enough to mess you up too bad. Attacking was just as easy too. depending up how fast or hard you attack determined the type of attack you did. Swimming controls were pretty easy as well. The in game tutorial said if you lightly pressed the button you'd go slower but I never was able to go slow.

Story
The story isn't the best story in the world. But since in a game like this the story isn't really all that important it'll do... it's your basic cliched vengeance story line... it does what it's meant to do, Gives your quest a purpose to collecting all those hearts.

Graphics/Sound
Graphics are average... I didn't really see nothing that was ground breaking. The graphics are all dark and dim but not so much you can't see where you are going. The dark graphics suit this game well. Sounds are basic once again. A slash sounds like a slash. A ground pound sounds like a ground pound. The music blends into the background and I didn't really notice it much. The music was bad, yet it wasn't great either.

Play Time/Replayability
I'm not sure how long it takes to complete the game, but once you find all 81 hearts. I don't see any reason someone would pop this in again, but that's the way it is with most games these days.

Final Recommendation
This game is more of a renter title. I wouldn't pay $50 bucks for this game. It was a great platforms game though and that's it's saving grace. If you play this game fully knowing what to expect then you'll probably like it. If you think this game is the newest state of the art platformer to come out then you'd be wrong. This is a decent game none the less though and anyone that enjoys a decent 3d platformer should like it.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/16/03, Updated 06/16/03