Blinx: The Time Sweeper

"Blinx should use a rewind to go back in time and make this a good game."

Admit it, there’s been some point in your life when you wish you could control time. You know, take something back you said to some hot chick that made you look like a dork in her eyes. Perhaps you wish that you could pause time in order to get out of the clutches of that big guy that is about to beat the living crap out of you. Well, evidently some of those crazy Japan people woke up one day and said, “Hey, lets do this thing! And…yeah!”

And so, Blinx was born.

At last year’s E3, Blinx caused quite a stir when it was announced, and won such accolades as best xbox game in show, and maybe even a couple best game in show awards. Over time, more info of Blinx began to come out, and everyone was gearing up for what was sure to be an awesome game. Now that Blinx is out, it is official that Blinx will be remembered for being the first game ever where you have the ability to control time. Will it be remembered for anything more than that? Most likely…no.

Blinx begins as a simple game, with a simple premise. You’re Blinx, and you have to go throughout some temporal world named TS-164 to rescue a princess. And that is…pretty much it, seeing as Blinx literally has no story whatsoever. Not even a cut-scene. Thanks to the story being so non-existent, I just made an extra paragraph that probably wasn’t needed. Stupid Blinx story.

Now, as a game, though, Blinx is a breakthrough for modern technology. Your main goal through the game is to rid over thirty-five areas of time monsters that threaten the safety of the world as we know it. In order to do this, it is important to collect time crystals with your vacuum thingy. There are six time crystals that you can collect, each with a certain color and shape. Red Hearts will give you retries, Blue Moons will give you pauses, Purple Crosses give you rewinds, Yellow Stars give you slows, Green Diamonds give you records, and Orange Pyramids will give you Fast Forwards. Each of these time crystals can help you along in the game. Want to make a bridge that collapsed come back? Do a rewind. Need to be in two places at one time? Take a record. Unfortunately, this is where the problems start.

At any time in the game, you are able to hold four different time crystals in your little vacuum. But, in order to gain a time crystal, you have to have either three or four of the same crystals to get a time control. This would be a good system, except for a few problems. First of all, time crystals are placed so close together, that due to Blinx’s loose, lumbering pace, it is very easy to accidentally pick up the wrong crystals. Along with that goes the problem with your enemies. When you defeat one of the many time enemies you will face in each level, they will give you three or four time crystals. Unfortunately, all three are random, and usually only one of them may pertain to the crystal you’re trying to get, if not none at all. This can make it so that you could scour a whole level just to get one time crystal, and have to go back for all the others, which you may or may not have needed earlier.

You have all the time in the world to save the world of time…in ten minutes.

Truthfully, crystal hunting and time-sweeping is not the only part of the game. The rest of the game consists of Blinx mainly going through level upon level upon level, trying to clear it out of time monsters. This is the one aspect of the game that is really strong. The levels are simply gorgeous, and once again, take the graphical level of the xbox up a notch. When you first start the game, you will be dazzled by the awesome lighting effects and shadows upon the walls, and later on, you will be eve more impressed by the water reflecting off of cave walls, and sand flows that look like a real live river. Enemies are modeled very well, and everything is incredibly smooth looking.

Now, it’s too bad you can’t enjoy these levels to the fullest, since you have only ten minutes to make it through each one. This is easily the biggest flaw of the game. Having only ten minutes to go through a level at first is easy, but once you get to the fifth or sixth stages, and you have around 20-25 monsters to clear out of each level, it becomes very challenging, even too challenging for some people. Due to the lack of time of playing each level, this makes for a mandatory shortened game experience. If you take ten minutes to do each level (the case will likely be 6-8 minutes for the most of you), and times that by around forty levels, you get only about seven hours of gameplay altogether in a game that could’ve had a lot more depth to it. The only good thing to come out of this is that the length of gameplay is good for someone who has little time to have fun, since it is very to just pick up and play.

As for secrets, Blinx is a box of buried treasure holding nothing of value. Where in Crash Bandicoot you get relics, in Mario you get Blue Coins, and in Sonic you get Emeralds, in Blinx, you get Cat Medals. Unlike the rest of these games though, they do absolutely nothing except open up one or two cut-scenes, something the game should already have in it in the first place. Not even a secret ending is opened up, something that will usually happen if you get 100% in a game. The only thing it does have in common with any of these games is that, like Crash, you have annoying one hit deaths, except instead of aku-aku masks, you get Retries, only these come at a cost. Through the levels you may pick up gold, which can be used to buy new vacuums, and buy more options for your vac. Basically, it just gets really annoying.

Now on sale in the Time Cat shop…More annoyances!

One of the many things in the game that becomes more annoying after time is the annoying camera. Honestly, I bet people who have had an all-nighter with 20 bottles of Vodka could see better than this. If you’re in a close space, the camera magically changes to a first person view, and makes the controls even clunkier than they already are. Away from corners, the problem gets even worse. When you’ll be going through the levels, the camera will magically change over to where a time monster is that you have to kill. When this happens, you will start to turn into another direction, whether or not you want to. One time this happened to me while I was jumping across a chasm, and I fell into a pile of spikes. Unless you’re some sort of saint, I bet you will utter a few naughty words and possibly hit a wall. Although, that would kinda hurt, so don’t do it.

In closing, Blinx is easily one of 2002’s greatest underachievers. Blinx borrowed the best bits of Mario, the worst bits of Sonic Adventure, and the worst bits of Crash Bandicoot all into one place at one time. The result? A breakthrough of a game that could have easily been a candidate for game of the year, had it not been for it’s glaring flaws. When people look back on this game, it will simply be remembered for being “that game where you could control time.” Nothing else.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/20/02, Updated 10/20/02