NEXT REVIEW SCRIPT
BLINX: THE TIME SWEEPER
HELP ME PERFECT IT
Blinx the Time Sweeper is a masterpiece. Blinx the Time Sweeper is a waste of fucking time.
The first 4D action game ever. The 4th dimension is time. Yeah, 4D like the PS3.
Blinx could've been Microsoft's mascot to join Nintendo's Mario, Sega's Sonic, and Sony's Crash but no.
He just had to fall in the mud puddle right away with Sonic and Crash but unlike those two, he never even got the chance to set foot in the spot light.
Okay. Let's get the boring stuff out of the way first.
This anthropomorphic cat works at the Time Factory; A facility outside time itself that creates, distributes, and maintains universal time flow.
When time glitches occur, Time Sweepers like Blinx need to suck them up before they become monsters.
But then Tom-Toms, an evil pig gang, steal so much time in dimension B1Q64, Time Sweepers stop the supply of time to it, indefinitely suspending it and its inhabitants for the sake of the universe.
But when Blinx finds out a princess is trapped in that dimension, he dives into it before it closes to rescue her.
Why? Well apparently he's in love with her. So now we've got Sonic and Elise, Donkey Kong and Pauline, and Blinx and this princess. You know, I think our dimension has a lot more problems than B1Q64.
A pussy should only want pussy pussy, damn it!
At first, the game seems okay. Graphics are beautiful, control is decent, music is nice and sounds like Nights into Dreams which is cool, and controlling time is very innovative. Blinx is a very likable character and this game has a very nice personality of its own. It definitely could've been another Super Mario Bros. but no.
Now before we expose this purr-fect catastrophe, let's talk about the gameplay. This pussy sucks and blows with his TS-1000 vacuum cleaner. Objective is to suck up garbage to shoot down all enemies then go to the end within ten minutes for every stage. That's basically it.
Now let's crack this bitch wide open.
To get to the enemies, you have to jump platforms and control time around you by rewinding, fast-forwarding, pausing, slowing, and recording like a VCR, but frustratingly bad level design never puts any of them to good use. Like, for recording, instead to having to complete two sections of platforming at the same time, all you can really do with it is simultaneously open two gates and fly off teeter-totters. Some platforming areas are clever, though. Now that was cool!
You have to collect three of the same crystals for one time control or four for two without collecting any others. Because of this, there's a lot of backtracking when you run out. Most are laying on the ground and appear after killing enemies but because they don't re-spawn, sometimes you have to restart the entire level because there's no more crystals for a certain time control you need to use to progress. This wouldn't be a problem if there were checkpoints but no; Once you're dead, you'll have to start all the way back at the very beginning.
Some crystals are so close together, you may accidentally pick up a wrong one or sometimes a wrong one will land on you, preventing you from getting four of a kind. This is very annoying. Fuck!
When a time control ends, the game freezes for ten hours; Also very annoying and you can't stop a recording; You have to wait.
But damn, the crystals and gold are so gorgeous, I just wanna pick them all up right away. No, don't go away! Aw man.
Cheap enemies, awkward to dodge, come out of nowhere and are such a pain in the fucking ass to hit. Fuck!
Automatic aiming is flawed. It's imprecise and keeps magnetizing away from the target to bombs, garbage, or other enemies around you; Especially when shooting bombs, that will also arc over rather than go straight or stop by your feet because of uneven ground. Locking on would've been nice.
Ammo is maximized at five and that would be okay if you didn't have to constantly back track even more because there's none where you are.
There's also a very annoying time limit that is illogically not affected by pausing, slowing, or fast forwarding and if time is up, you'll have to redo the entire level all over again. Time extensions would've been nice. Oh crap, time is running out and there's one enemy left but I've run out of garbage. Now I have to go back to suck some up. Damn it! He morphed. Finally! Come on, come on! Blinx, you son of a bitch, I did it.
There's a lot of slow down and camera's a disaster; It keeps getting stuck and it either hides you when you're close to walls, or the enemies.
Tag line is "Who needs nine lives when you can control time?" Because having a maximum of only three retries is so much better than nine lives. Yeah, retries, another time control; Basically, you always only have one life, but a retry will rewind before you die. You can increase the maximum later on but still, the only thing better than nine lives, let alone one, is more. Oh, and just one hit, you die, but even if you had infinite retries, this game still becomes annoyingly difficult.
Boss music annoyingly loops every 2 seconds like gnomes scratching chalkboards in your ears, and what kind of cat can't even climb?
Who is the air cat? Not Blinx.
Even worse, you'll have to replay levels for medallions and gold to buy more powerful vacuums you'll need later. However, you can only have one vacuum at a time and if you ever want to go back to a previous one which may be better against certain enemies, you have to buy it again. Because you can't even sell them, that only means one thing; He throws them away. Bastard. Also, if you enter a level, pick up some gold, then exit, you'll lose it all unless you finish that level; Another pain in the ass.
The biggest problem is that it's fucking dull. Backtracking is a bitch, you move too slow, do the same things over and over again, it's all trial and error, and you're always lost. It's a wasted opportunity that feels like a chore.
Okay, the arrows point this way, but it's a dead end. You know, as cool as all the time control buttons are, my favorite is the eject button.
Time is like a treasure so don't waste it on this fucking game.
Now onto Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space. World's first 5D game. 5th dimension is space. How many fucking dimensions are there? Well apparently there's eleven including zero. Maybe one day they'll make a Blinx 8; World's first 11D game. Let's just hope that never happens.
Do you want me to turn the game off?
First of all, why did they stretch Blinx? He looks worse. Video game characters are like Peter Pan. They don't need to grow up. But wait... Where is Blinx? Oh, there he is. Can you play as him? Well no, you can't. Why have a Blinx game if you can't even play as Blinx? Sure, you can customize your own cat, but I want Blinx damn it, even though he is longer. He also doesn't play any vital role in the plot.
Anyway, the Time Sweepers need to collect the fragments of a giant crystal that recently shattered before the Tom Toms to prevent a temporal apocalypse. Story and gameplay is split between both sides.
You start the game as a Time Sweeper, playing through pointless tutorials. I mean, really... Platformers don't need tutorials. You'll learn much faster by yourself or by reading the damn manual. 10 years later, it's onto the gameplay. It sucks. It's more boring than the original. Sure, they fixed a few things like including a health bar, checkpoints, ability to lock on targets, multiplayer, and better control, and thankfully you run faster, but gone is the charm of the original. There's simply no personality and now the music sucks ass.
Wow, that's the worst unlocking by twisting a key in a keyhole animation I've ever seen but damn, moving water like jello after stopping time is the coolest.
Okay, a pig and a human? When will the madness end? Now we play as a Tom Tom through more pointless tutorials. 5 years later, it's onto the gameplay and it's worse.
It's like a bad Metal Gear Solid clone that's more generic than a desert. Getting lost is easy because of horrid level design, you go around killing cats with terribly inaccurate weapons, and then there's all these help messages that ruin the puzzles. I really, really don't like playing as a Tom Tom. Sure, playing as a bad guy might seem cool at first, but the novelty wears off right away.
Now it's a battle between four Tom Toms and four Time Sweepers. Of course, my stupid allies die immediately. Now why can't I kill these assholes? Nothing works. I have no idea what I'm doing right now. Items are scattered all over the ground. It's a mess. Notice how bad these graphics are. What happened?
Okay... What is this? Are you kidding me? Two skies? They don't even fade into each other. It looks horrible but look, the edges ripple in the water so I guess that makes it okay. Now you might assume that these are two parallel dimensions; One at night and one at day. But according to the original, you can only enter another dimension through their gate. Otherwise closing the gate wouldn't make a dimension unaccessable. I don't believe this. I just don't believe this. What a piece of fucking shit. Moving on.
Being a game for everyone, it's kind of violent too, wouldn't you say? Killing innocent cats. Yeah, they're the good guys. But wait... I can't even kill them. Damn, they're so annoying. They constantly and simultaneously repeat the same three lines.
Okay, you know what? I can't kill them nor at this point even care to kill them. The game sucks. The end.
