Gex: Enter the Gecko

"It makes a good coaster! Really! It does!"

WARNING! WARNING! AVOID THIS GARBAGE AT ALL COSTS! IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU GET ANYTHING OUT OF THIS REVIEW, AS LONG AS YOU AVOID THIS CRAP LIKE THE BUBONIC PLAGUE!!!

Gex. Does that word sound vaguely familiar? It should, because the trio of Gex games is a well-known and well-liked series on the PS-X. This game is what happens when a company (in this case, Crave) takes a perfectly good title, adds a new, degenerate branch to the original's family tree, and almost succeeds in ruining the name (at least in my unimportant but opinion, which is about as subtle as a garlic sandwich). Spawned from Gex: Enter the Gecko from Playstation, this game generates one famous quote in my mind: ''Anything to make a quick buck.''

The game takes entirely too long to start up. The music starts after the GameBoy screen, and keeps on playing, while the start/continue menu takes eons to appear. After you utter curses under your breath, and get so exasperated that you begin to regret your purchase of this dumb game, the screen finally appears. Then you can start playing. But believe me, in no way is this game a reward for having to wait so long for the *@#! thing to begin.

Okay, now the game is on. What do you do now? Why, the answer is easy! Choose between two impossibly hard levels, that are absolutely no fun at all! Yay! Crave thinks it's cute to name the game and every aspect of it (including the levels) after its big brother, Gex: EtG for PlayStation. But guess what, Crave? It's not! Smellraiser (one of the first levels), for example, uses the exact same elements as its PS-X counterpart, only jumbled a bit. The ghosts with red lanterns is back, as are the long staircases. Unfortunately, these elements were fitted into this game, to preserve the game's style. It sounds noble enough, but these things are not translated well into the two-dimensional world of GameBoy Color. The game is choppy and bores players to tears. Solution: Change the fundamentals of the game, along with the characters and levels, and market it under another title, as a rip-off of some popular game. All the other companies would do that. It would make this game ten times better, because innocent gamers wouldn't buy it because of the good times associated with the PS-X version. You would think that Crave would be decent enough for that. But no. Thus, people are being suckered into thinking that this is a good game.

The graphics are good for the GameBoy Color, but I can't appreciate them after seeing the superior graphics from the better version. Some of the music is the same, too. Still, it reminds me of the old one which is much more addictive and fun than this trash. The controls are condensed, as all previous options could not be inserted into the GameBoy's control system. But that is no problem.

The problem is how boring this game is. Was Crave trying to get revenge on gamers for some old grudge by releasing this torturous game? I just don't get it.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 01/28/01, Updated 01/28/01