ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth

"This is where TJ&E loses all originality"

I'll start by saying this: this was the most disappointing game I have ever played. ToeJam and Earl 2 was one of my favorite games of all-time, and this game was one of the main reasons I bought an Xbox. Boy am I glad I rented it first. On to the review.

Graphics: 7/10
Well the graphics weren't all that bad. At least, not where you look at the scenery. The hills are nice to look at, and houses and buildings have a great cartoony look. I loved this part. The characters also were wonderful... Until you got up close. The faces were all rather undetailed, and their mouths don't even move when they talk. I, personally, find that unacceptable in a next-gen game. The cinemas are the last part I'll go into, and I'll go out on a good note. The animation is very well done, and these are the only things in the game that managed to make me laugh.

Play Control: 8/10
The play control was very tight. You moved with the right joystick, you can look around with the left. A is jump, B is access presents, X is Funk-Fu, Y is fire a Funkify Note. Easy enough. The reason this didn't get a perfect 10 was two reasons. The first is the problem with the D pad, the Quick Present Option. Boy, I just LOVE it when I accidently use a present I didn't want to use yet. This was garbage. You also don't get to choose which present is selected. The other problem is with some of the presents. A few of them, namely the Rocket Skates, are near impossible to control correctly. Is it so hard to add a button for brakes?

Sound: 3/10
Good news first: they used all the original music from the first two games, and once you collect the records, you can choose what you want playing, be it the theme music or the music from the Underfunk, etc. It's even been remastered. Now the bad part: everything else is horrible. The sound effects sound like they come from the first ToeJam and Earl game, and that was from the early days of the Genesis. It's very annoying. Though not near as bad as... The voice acting. I don't know who the hell they pulled in to do this, but it's bad. It's all done in a very corny manner that bugs the people listening. Add in the fact that they are reading from a very stupid script. And then there's the rapping. Oh the rapping. I damn near pulled a Vincent Van Gogh when I heard this. It starts when choosing a character, pretty bad. Then, every now and then, when levels are loading, you don't get the opportunity to listen to an annoying hip-hop beat, but instead you hear ''Latisha's Rap.'' I won't even describe this one.

Gameplay: 2/10
Oh the humanity! They took an original, groundbreaking series and turned it into a normal, run of the mill modern platform game! And not even a good platform game, one of those crappy ones that tried to cash in on the whole fad! It's become Croc! Here's what you do: run around collecting keys. When you have enough, you can enter another area. You also collect Kareoke microphones for reaching the boss battle of each area. When you're not doing this, you're looking for presents to unlock or humans to ''funkify.'' You use either your Funk-Fu or Funkify Notes to convert earthlings to the ways of funk. You do this for points. When you get enough points, you can be promoted by the Wise-Man-In-A-Carrot-Suit. You'll get new abilities and a higher belt rank, allowing you to attack stronger enemies. Yay. The problem is, the amount of points between promotions is too high. Way too high. It's fun to defeat earthlings with Funk-Fu, but half of them are too strong for you. As soon as you're strong enough, guess what show up? Stronger enemies!
So here's a rundown on gameplay:
TJ&E1: Walk around randomly generated platforms, collect pieces for your ship. Original at time.
TJ&E2: Run around Funkotron capturing earthlings and shipping them back to earth. Fun as hell.
TJ&E3: Collect keys to go to new level where you... Collect more keys. Fight earthlings. Do missions for microphones to reach bosses. Yawn.

Replayability: 8/10
If you liked playing through the first time, I'm sure there is a ton of replay value. Use different characters. Choose random mode, where all the maps are randomly generated, making it different each time. And also, you can download new levels and characters off of Xbox Live, so there's another perk. If you're like me, though, you really don't feel like going through this again.

Buy or Rent?
RENT!!! I cannot stress this enough! Even if you're a diehard fan of ToeJam and Earl, RENT IT FIRST!!! I was waiting for this game with baited breath, and I have never been so glad I rented first. If you like it, go ahead and buy it. But if you're expecting another original, fun adventure from the duo (now trio), you're better off making sure it's what you expect.

Overall: 4/10

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/03, Updated 01/03/03