Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space
- October 04, 2004 13:38 PM PST
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Dang, wish my kitty would vacuum and dodge bullets.
Artoon has significantly overhauled the Blinx game engine for Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space, which should lead to a faster, smoother, and more enjoyable gaming experience. It?s impossible to describe the amount of improvements without mentioning the original Blinx. Blinx: The Time Sweeper, while innovative because of its time control gameplay, was a horribly executed title. It had almost no plot development and had a terribly unbalanced game engine. The game forced you to replay levels dozens of times to acquire money for expensive equipment upgrades, and the game had a fatally flawed time crystal inventory system. You had to collect crystals in a specific combination to acquire time controls to progress through stages. Unfortunately, players barely had any control over what crystals they picked up, which lead to bad crystal combos and wasted crystals. Furthermore, if you wasted all available crystals in the stage you had to restart the level. Add a 10-minute time limit and bad camera controls, and players would find themselves gouging their own eyes out with the analog sticks.Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space extends the premise of the original game while adding a horde of much needed improvements. You?ll play as Time Sweepers (cats like in the original Blinx) or as members of the Tom Tom Gang (thieving pigs). As a Time Sweeper, your missions are action/platform oriented, as you utilize an improved Time Crystal System from the first game?no more bad combos and wasted crystals. As a Tom Tom Gang member, your missions revolve around sneaking around "Solid Snake style," using spatial weapons such as warp tunnels and black hole grenades to help complete objectives. Whether you pick a cat or pig, you?ll be able to fully customize their characters in a variety of aesthetic categories.
Developer Artoon has also added a host of major additions to the game engine including a melee attack, the ability to switch to first-person view, a target lock-on, and reactive time controls (think bullet-time with doe-eyed kitties). The hands-on sported vastly improved gameplay and graphics. Levels were less linear and freer roaming, peppered with power-ups and puzzles.
The Time Sweeper level featured a tropical island setting, reminiscent of many Sonic the Hedgehog stages, where you had to retrieve batteries for your Gyrocopter that you fly to another island. There, you had to battle a giant stone golem with a time crystal embedded in its chest. The level featured several submerged pressure sensitive panel puzzles where you have to pause time in a limited period and then walk over the panels to clear the water over them.
The Tom Tom Gang level featured your "Solid Pig" infiltrating a Time Sweeper island fortress to smuggle out some contraband. Obstacles included laser grids, roving guard patrols, cameras, locked doors, and some double-jump, hang-from-the-ledge platforming. While the stealth mission was initially difficult, once we knew how to utilize the arsenal of spatial weapons at your disposal, it seemed a cinch to pass?why fight and endure insane platform jumping when you can obliterate guards with black hole grenades and bypass jumps with warp portals? Our hands-on also featured the two-player co-op aspect of Blinx 2 where players can opt to play through the single player levels with a partner. The level difficulty is increased to compensate for the extra player, with more enemies and harder puzzles that have to be solved simultaneously. Not featured in the hands-on was the offline four-player competitive play where all time and spatial weapons will be available for players to use against each other.
Problems, however, did arise using the Time Sweepers ability to select specific ammo from the inventory for your vacuum weapon. If these issues can be fixed, Blinx may be able to redeem himself from his abysmal first outing.
