ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth

"Toe Jam, Earl, and Latisha too Funky to Touch."

Reviewer Disclaimer: Personally, I find Toe Jam & Earl 3 to be an enduring blend of platform gaming with some role-playing elements. All in all, it was enjoyable to play. However, half way through the game elements began to become repetitive.

Ratings: Presentation/Gameplay/Graphics/Sound/Value

Presentation:(7) Toe Jam and Earl 3 firmly establishes the motives of collecting funk albums and other items for the three aliens Toe Jam, Earl, and Latisha. Essentially, Lamont the Great Funkapottamus notices a disturbance in the funk near Earth and it is up to the Toe Jam gang to remedy the situation through the use of Funk-Fu and music notes. Although, the theme of 3 aliens trying to be cool by imitating funk and hip-hop behavior added a bit of humor most of the time, sometimes it seemed more forced than funny. Overall, the story is placed well within the game through a nice and long video at the beginning with short clips later in the game, but the story isn’t the most enthralling and I wish there had been a more rewarding ending.

Gameplay:(8) From the beginning, you can choose any of the three aliens to play as and can even swap characters at designated areas as you play. It was a great touch that the developers designed the three characters to have different attributes, so you can choose the one that best suits your playing style. For example Earl can eat spoiled food without taking damage. Beyond the character attributes, another role-playing like element of the game is earning experience, so one earns better Funk Fu belts and can Funktify earthlings better. The platform elements of jumping, dispatching unfunkly earthlings (enemies), and finding items are all in order. They also have a few refreshing mini-game like elements to take a breather from the overly used search the map for items to accomplish the mission. The blessing and burden of the platform elements of the game occur when attempting to accomplish all of the mission objectives for the maps. One in particular is when you have to find all the keys to open new maps, which can be a burden to get every last key. Although it is not required to find everything to finish the game, the collecting is overly used which becomes more of a chore than anything else. Another blessing and burden are the presents, which act as the power-ups in the game. Throughout the game, you can uncover and unlock dozens of presents, which can have positive and some have negative attributes. First of all, the bad presents aren’t much fun unless it is useful for making a mixed present or to sell for a couple of bucks. Secondly, there are only about a dozen of the presents that you will really either use frequently or are nice for warping to collectable items. Finally, there are mail boxes and sales people that you can purchase presents one wants, but you’re restricted to a limited number and often you can not find the present you really want (why didn’t they have a more expensive way of getting any present one would like, say over the internet; they have mail boxes?).

Graphics:(7) The graphics aren’t bad, but I don’t think that they fully utilize the XBOX hardware. Personally, the three aliens look and animate nicely. The environments are good and ethereal with a dynamic night to day sky. The sky bridges are beautiful, and I wish they did more with them. However, the earthlings are really lacking in polygons and are limited to only a few different, though nice, animations.

Sound:(7) The in game sound effects fit the game nicely and accents the overall cartoon like experience. The cut scene voices and in game voices are also performed rather well, although the earthlings will become extremely repetitive. I found the background music to be decent, but certainly nothing exceptional. Surprisingly, I didn’t find the music to be that funky, maybe Stevie Wonder’s “Superstitious” and Jamiroquai don’t represent what funk is.

Value:(7) To tell you the truth, I wanted a platform game for the XBOX, which Toe Jam and Earl best represents. The graphics are decent, the game-play is solid, and the game has a nice two player mode. Toe Jam and Earl 3 will take a long time to finish. I somehow managed to finish at 100% even with missing six or seven keys. However, I realized half way through the game that I was doing the same tasks and it grew very repetitive for me. The mini-game elements and hoping for a rewarding end movie are what motivated me to finish the game, not the tasks presented on the main maps or the story necessarily. I honestly felt disappointed with the ending and just a little cheated, but the game will fix any platform gamers needs.

End (7) Add 1 point if you really like platform games or if you are a big Toe Jam and Earl fan.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/23/03, Updated 06/23/03