Gex

The Good
This is a sidescrolling 2D platformer with a mascot character. It was originally developed to be a flagship title for the 3DO. But as the console failed to gain a wide audience, it was ported to several other platforms, including PCs. This was among the first batch of Windows 95 games, and Microsoft used it in its marketing aswell.

The main character, Gex, is a TV-obsessed gecko lizard (complete with that rad '90s attitude). He gets pulled into a television realm for reasons by a badass-looking cyber villain, Rez, the overlord of the Media Dimension. Gex is voiced by stand up comedian Dana Gould, and he has quite a lot of wise-crack jokes to tell, most of them referencing movies and TV shows. Some people hate it, I happen to like it. Gex is quite proud of his tail an tongue. He can attack by tail-whipping, he can bounce on his tail, can catch fly powerups with his tongue. He also can climb every wall and ceiling like geckos do, the standout feature of the game.

The gameplay is like the usual 2D platforming fare, and from that it has a lot to offer. The game is fairly long and challenging! It of consists 5 worlds with themes of horror, cartoon, jungle, martial arts, and the futuristic but grimy Rezopolis. Each themed hub world has 2 to 5 levels and some hidden ones, all is accessible through TV sets. Each world has it's own set of enemies and hazards.

The graphics varies between hand drawn and 3D rendered elements. The game also uses sprite scaling effects, especially at the final boss (that was a cool boss battle). The intro and ending FMV videos look good for the time. The soundtrack is very '90s, sort of reminds me of sitcoms of the time, with some light distortion guitar thrown in occasionally. The musics are decent but not very memorable.

The Bad
There was a lot of jankiness I encountered in this game.

First off, you are forced to play the cemetery. Which as it is, not very appealing for a starting level and world. It gets pretty hard from the getgo. The game looks like it would allow to non-linearity, as you chose levels from a hub world. But levels and worlds get unlocked in a linear order, mostly one at a time. What a waste of opportunity.

Saving your progress can be done only with a password. Which is very restrictive, because if you quit and later continue, you loose all your extra lives and stuff. And the VHS-tapes that provide passwords are rare, so you have to play large chunks of the game between saves. I don't see why they could not implement saving to your hard drive in the PC version. Good news, once you know the locations of the secret bonus stages, it's easy to boost up yourself with extra lives in each play session.

The controls are not the best either. I think they have some input lag to them. Worse yet, the keyboard controls are stupid! While the game allows you to re-map your inputs, you cannot use any of the easily accessible modifier keys like Shift, Control, or Alt, like in any other PC game. Neither can not press or hold more than two keys simultaneously. This makes maneuvers like a run & jump very hard to do. You have to release the Run key slightly before pressing Jump. Let me remind you: Microsoft itself endorsed this game... I managed to finish the game like this, but wouldn't do it again with these controls. I cannot speak what is it like when you play with a controller attached instead of the keyboard. Let's suppose it is better than this.

In the sequel, I hated the space level where it was very easy to fall from the narrow platforms into the big void and die. This game has lots of places like that! Swamps, pools of blood and liquid noise. One missed jump, and you can start the entire level over... and over... and over again. Checkpoints are not too common.

I personally did not like the in-game graphics, as it is not very coherent. The sprites of Gex and Rez are more detailed 3D renders. The majority of the backgrounds are either hand drawn of manually pixelated. The enemies only consist a few colors and their animation are more laggy.

Sometimes the wisecracks that Gex tells get repeated way too often. Does not help that the voice clips sound bit-crushed. Specifically, I do not want to hear the "WELMAAAA" or "Jeez Scoob let's get back to the Mystery Van" quotes again.

The Bottom Line
A fairly decent, if average game. Even tough plagued by jankiness, I liked what it had to offer. This is the first time when I encountered a game where its 3D-ified sequel (still from the '90s) is better and more fleshed out than its 2D predecessor. Doesn't help that I played the entries in the Gex series out of order.