Blinx: The Time Sweeper

"Blinx is an innovative and interesting game, though needing tweaked controls."

The basic storyline is pretty simple. Blinx is a time janitor who works in a time factory that makes time for different worlds. On a weird world, called b1qx44, the tom-tom gang stole all the time and warped the world. The time janitors flee this world. Blinx sees a princess that the tom tom gang kidnapped and rushes to save her.

The most interesting features of this game are the time controls, which allow the player to manipulate time in the game, using the xbox’s hardrive. During play, almost 200mb are constantly used in order to manipulate the time of the current level. The developers, Artoon, patented this process.

Time controls work by collecting a number of time crystals, which are located on the stages and also gained by killing monsters. The developers had a good touch by letting the crystals never disappear, contrarily to other platformers where collection is important. This lets the player strategize and use the resources of a whole stage in order to defeat it. It also makes the player think in a 4 dimension like way, which can be challenging at first. I say a 4 dimensional way, since not all of the level is available anytime, meaning that blinx can not rewind 5 minutes of game time, simply a few seconds, which makes his time manipulation somewhat fuzzy.

Each stage possesses a number of monsters to kill, that must be killed in order to finish the level, a number of cat medals to gather, which serve no apparent purpose, and 10 minutes in order to complete the level.

Money is gained by gathering up gold versions of the time crystals. I noticed that in the first few levels, cash is sparse, but you will gain money quickly since the later stages necessitate specific time crystals before entering them. Money is used to buy time holders and retry holders. Time holders enable you to hold more time powers, retry holders enable you to hold more retries. Also, a vast array of time sweepers is available. One thing that Artoon should have done, is an equipment list, letting blinx possess different timesweepers at the same time. Instead, players must buy sweepers, loose their current ones, buy their old ones again. Though this is not so bad, since money quickly accumulates throughout the later stages without even trying to. Stages in the hourglass caverns, round 3, possess over 1000 gold in income.

One of the negative points is the way that the lives or retries work. Simply, it was a bad idea to make them function this way, because the retry makes you loose frustratingly achieved progress, simply by rewinding it to a point before the action was done by blinx, ie the jumping sequences in everwinter.

You will easily breeze through the first 3 rounds, things start getting really tougher in the forgotten city round. You will see that most precious thing here is time. I can not count the number of times that i have finished a stage and that i had less that 10 seconds before my 10 minutes are up. This naturally happens in the later stages, where the difficulty of each individual stage rises to 5 stars. The boss stages are fun. The bosses also get a lot tougher the more you advance in the game. Although most stages in blinx aren’t as tough as some of the mario sunshine old-school warp tunnel levels, the “secret” shines, they are challenging nonetheless, mostly frustrating the player and making him want to beat the game.

The stage disposition sometimes feels very linear, but the sheer challenge of getting to the end of the stage within 10 minutes makes for interesting gameplay. Sometimes, it is not apparent what to do next in a stage, a solution is always present and normally, can be attained in more than one ways, using time controls.
In conclusion, blinx is a fun game, highly addictive, with beautiful graphics. The monsters are interesting and different from one another. Artoon made them respawn at the same health level that before they fall off a ledge, which is a nice touch. The almost total absence of cut scenes, except at the beginning of the game and at the end, is somewhat bizarre, leaving this game with almost no storyline. Blinx himself needs a voice, he should have talked more to flesh out his character. But i can’t wait for blinx 2, if some of the errors in the 1st game are solved, this could be a hell of a game.

Graphics 8/10

Beautiful graphics, large environments, this game impresses. Each round or world has got a different feel to it, a different theme. Blinx can sweep up almost anything on a stage, varying from trash to flowerpots, to derelict cars. Although the graphics aren’t the best on xbox, they are impressive.

Sound 8/10

The game shines with its musical tracks. They are repetitive and possess a large japanese kitsch influence, but get easily stuck in the head, and you can find yourself humming them when you aren’t even playing. But the monsters and blinx himself are pretty much mute

Gameplay 5/10

One of the major negative points of this game, is the controls, especially the camera controls and the way that the camera behaves. Sometimes the camera will stick to blinx, making it almost impossible to navigate correctly. I can remember multiple instances where i was totally frustrated by this process, always falling into the same hole. Also, the camera automatically rotates to face the nearest monster. While this could have been a good idea, ie the z-targeting system in nintendo’s zelda games, this was done badly in blinx. It completely disorients the player, rotating to and fro without any logical progression. Some of these issues could have easily been fixed with a permanently fixed 3rd person camera.

Another problem is the slowness of the camera. Blinx manipulates time, but he moves so slow, its impossible to see why the game developers have not made blinx move faster. Also, extra jumps and controls for blinx would have added a nice touch to the game, ie tripple jumps in mario.

And one last thing, time sweeping should have been made possible during movement. Instead, all movement ceases in order to sweep. A control scheme similar to gun valkyrie, letting the player move his torso independent of his legs would have worked well

Lasting appeal 6/10

Once the game is finished, the only replay value is the collection of the different cat medals. They add a nice flavour to the game, but this game is way behind to mario: sunshine in this aspect. Mario sunshine can be played for additional tens of hours in order to gather all the shines. Not so with blinx. The medals vary between 3-4 per stage and don’t seem to be of any use, except in gathering some strange animations. A sense of pointlessness is achieved.

But while the game is being played, it is very addictive. A good dose of frustration, coupled with levels that get harder and harder make this game a must for all platform loving gamers. A seasoned gamer should finish the game within 25 hours. Less experienced player can vary between 35-40 hours to complete the game.

Overall 8

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/23/02, Updated 10/23/02