Gex: Enter the Gecko

Developer: Crystal Dynamics

Publisher: Midway

Genre: 3D Action/Adventure

Players: 1

Difficulty: Medium

Rating: K-A

Memory Card: 1 Block

Analog Compatible: Yes

 

Gex is a smart ass, couch potato of a gecko who's first game originally appeared on the 3DO (that's right, the 3DO). Gex soon made his way onto the somewhat young PlayStation and enjoyed pretty good success. Now he has found his way into the 3D genre like most games have in his second game, Gex: Enter the Gecko.

 

Gex's world's are totally 3D free-roaming, while the original's were 2D. Gex starts out in the media dimension with TV's representing levels. Only a few are open at the beginning of the game, but the more remotes you earn by completing the levels the more open TV's there will be. You can also open gates to other parts of the media dimension by getting a certain amount of remotes. There are also secret bonus levels where you must grab a certain amount of items in a certain amount of time.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the PlayStation's graphics are just as good, if not better than the N64's. Gex himself is made of thousands of polygons, so he looks smooth and his movements are very fluid. He even mouths out the words that he speaks. The environmental graphics range from the bright and colorful cartoon levels to the dreary and creepy graphics of Scream TV. All kinds of graphical tricks are used, like transparancies. One small problem with the huge 3D worlds is that the game can't let you see very far to save framerate, so instead of using the N64's infamous "fog" effects, they just let the polygons fade in and out as you get closer and farther away.

 

The sound is executed extremely well and you can really see the effort put into it. The music is great. It's hilarious how they used framiliar music from huge movies and TV shows such as Star Wars and COPS, but they changed it just a little bit to keep from getting sued. The sound effects are also top notch. Dana Gould appears once again as Gex's voice, and he lent a whopping 500 plus one-liners to the game. The one-liners are very funny and fit in well with the situations that Gex finds himself in. Sometimes Gex will say the same phrase twice in a row, but it doesn't happen often.

 

The control is sort of a sore spot in Gex: Enter the Gecko. Controlling 3D games is almost always tricky, and Gex is no exception. First of all, you can controll the camera angle when it gets into a position that you don't like, but you can find yourself both running and trying to change the camera to the correct position, and that can be real tricky. The digital pad works fairly well, I don't have an analog pad yet so I can't really tell you how well that works, but I would imagine it would be much better. Gex isn't as responsive to the digital pad as you'd hope he'd be, so you can find yourself missing jumps quite often.

 

Gex is overall a fun game, the levels are creative and very entertaining. Earning all of the remotes can be fun too. If you are a fan of the platform genre, you can't go wrong with Gex: Enter the Gecko. But if you only sort of like platform games, renting it and using the all remotes cheat is just fine.

 

It's fun trying to get more remotes so you can open new levels, but just like any platform game, once you've played all of the levels, your enjoyment of the game is pretty much gone. But that's not to say that Gex: Enter the Gecko is a short game, it just doesn't offer much replay value.

 

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