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High hopes, low resolts...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: October 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

As promising as this title was in pictures, and little movies as well as concept, the end result is a frustrating adventure that you won't want to finish. This game is not as easy as the cute cat might make you feel. The puzzles and the strategy involved with the time vacuum, make Luigy very scared. The problem is that with all these difficult puzzles, some of the difficulty stems from all the back trailing. You will have to constantly go back to previously visited places to obtain new items. This gets old very fast and brings the game down. The time travel concept is a great concept, with sub par delivery. I agree with IGN in stating that this looks more like a tech demo for the HD than a game. Playing this game reminds me of over rated games like GUNVALKERY, Wreckless, Raw and Blood wake. A lot of hype but little delivery.

At leat Nintendo won't be the only once with a game that involves a vacuum and a lot of sucking.

Frustration...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Our household has 3 people and 2 XBoxes and we go through a large number of games in many genres. We were all in agreement quite fast that this game is too much. The music and visuals are great but the FRUSTRATION factor heavily outweighs the enjoyment. There is simply too much going on at the same time and it detracts from your enjoyment of the game.

Mario is better than Blinx! Gamecube is better than Xbox!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 15
Date: November 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I hate this game! This is the worst platformer ever. Super Mario Sunshine is way better. Xbox sucks!!!! 4-D. Yeah right. It just copied Super Mario Sunshine. Have you noticed that the thing that dorky cat carries is kind of a combo between Luigi's vacuum, and Mario's FLUDD. Who wants a lame time controlling thing! FLUDD is way cooler. Sorry Xbox geeks, but Blinx is just not worth your money.

not worth it at all

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: November 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The videos for this game made it look amazing. But you have to play the game to see how horid it is. The game seems like a game for little kids but it is not,its way too hard. It is extremely agrivating and is just boaring doing the same thing over and over again. It has bad gameplay too. All you do is walk around and shoot trash at stupid globs that look exactly like eachother. The bosses are big globs too but bigger. If you want a platform game get Crash. This game should have been awsome, Blinx could be an awesome mascot but the game stinks. XBOX needs more platformers, atleast sonic heroes is coming out.

i hate it and it was a waste of money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 20
Date: November 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

this game is just stupid and a complete waste of money and time the monsters look like big fat babiish jellybeans
i hated every thing about this game DO NOT BUY IT as an overall rating i have to say it is a big fat 0

Rent it first!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: November 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

What can I say? I've looked forward to this platformer since the first I read of it. Thank God, I rented it first...personally, I can think of one word to describe this game; annoying! The color scheme, the voice characterization, the game play (felt like I was back in 6th grade...being graded on level performance? I'd have preferred, and at least laughed, at a sarcastic critique), the cluttered interface due to the vcr buttons, were all annoying. I was actually beginning to root for the monsters to kill me.
This is all too bad, because the concept of utilizing Xbox's hardrive to facilitate some rather unique game play was one of the key points of this console.
In fairness to the game developers, I'll assume the game improves as it moves along, however, if the first few levels are, again, annoying, then perhaps many gamers won't bother to venture further.

this game suxws

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: December 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

this game is ok at first then it suxs after a while because it gets tooooo hard to beat the levels. Also each level is basically the same because it has the same monsterss in it just more of them.

Worst game ever made!!!!!!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: July 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is so stupid. I mean whats so fun ubout a retarded cat with a vacuam cleaner that kills imaginary blobs. One of the things that you can buy at the store is a red sweater that the only thing it does is replaces is your blue sweater that you start out with.This game is rated for mild violence but it has no violence in it at all.This game is also waaaaaaaaaay to easy.

the worst game ever

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: August 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I hate this game its the worst game I've ever played.

A sloppy, emotionless title with few redeeming factors

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

As the opening cutscene introduces you to Blinx the cat, the supporting cast and the particulars of his upcoming adventures, I found myself trying to wrap my brain around the basic premise of the story. The idea is that a secret, off-world clan of humanoid cat creatures, armed with souped up vacuum cleaners, are responsible for the development and dispersal of time itself to every known plane of existence on the map. It seems that time, when compressed tightly enough to be transported by said cats, takes the form of one of five different brightly-colored shapes. If these crystals are left out on the open for too long without being properly introduced to the flow of things, they turn into monsters. I could go on, because the game certainly doesn't stop there, but I think you get the point.

I like to think that there's a fairly thick line drawn between cartoony fantasy and super-detailed realism. Generally, a lot of the physics and environmental details are taken for granted in a realistic game, because they're almost exclusively set in a photorealistic, lifelike location. Cartoons, on the other hand, generally don't worry themselves with the particulars and are primarily concerned with delivering a good time. How much fun would the Wile E. Coyote cartoons be if every time the lead character suffered a grisly fate, it strictly obeyed the laws of gravity and aerodynamics? Blinx tries to straddle that thick line by delivering a story that's overly detail-centric in an environment that's right out of a kid's show. The result is a tale that comes off as way, WAY out of left field and almost completely abstract. It focuses on things that would be better left to the viewer's imagination and ignores the importance of a good underlying story along the way.

Beneath the needless discussions of why there are monsters in the world, how time compression works and how cats are actually responsible for all that we hold dear, the actual plot is almost laughably straightforward and generic. There's a princess, evil pigs have kidnapped her, and it's up to you and you only to rescue her and save her world. That's it, no side-stories, no reasoning, no subplots - just a straightforward rush from Point A to Point B. And here I thought the phrase "save the princess" was universally recognized as an ages-old cliche.

Now, I don't want it to sound like I'm railing on this game just because it's got a few more nitpicky details than its peers and it reuses an old phrase from way back in the platformer handbook as its sole driving factor. It's also completely lacking in character development, general storytelling and ongoing inspiration. None of the characters in Blinx really establish themselves as individuals, including the lead character himself. You don't hate the pig on the spaceship because he's trying to destroy the world, you hate him because every time he shows up he tries to steal your money. I honestly forgot there was a princess at the end of the game after level three, because she's never mentioned between the game's start and its finish. I mean, the very first Super Mario Brothers at least reminded you that the princess was in another castle at the end of every boss fight.

I don't honestly think the game was really designed to be enjoyable so much as it was geared to be overly challenging. The first level and a half are set up in the standard "get to know you" format, with the simplest of enemies, the most routine of stage layouts and plenty of opportunities to mess around with your tools. Shortly thereafter, you're thrown to the wolves. For the most part, the level designs are very short, with more of an emphasis on cheap hits than on complexity and true challenge. I noticed a lot of overlap in the stage layouts, whether it's retracing your steps time and time again or walking along a catwalk (har har) above the beginning of the stage and invariably plummeting back to the start point. You'll almost always know what needs to be done, but actually accomplishing that act is the real trick. I just can't overemphasize how unbearably cheap most of this game really is. If there's a bottomless pit nearby, (and chances are very good that there is) Blinx will find a way to force himself into it, regardless of what you're hitting on the control pad. If there's an enemy two feet in front of you and you hit the attack button, he'll aim at a random switch on the other side of the room, rather than the imminent threat.

That's not to say that the entirety of The Time Sweeper is totally without merit, because it does bring a few fresh ideas to the table, but for the most part those insights are hampered by their surroundings. The ability to control time, for instance, was at the time a really fresh, interesting new play mechanic and still stands out today, despite the limited field of imitators that have since emerged. You can rewind a few seconds to catch an enemy unaware or rebuild a crumbling bridge, pause the action and take advantage of the frozen time, knock the level into slow motion, etc. All the while, Blinx is moving around in real time. It's a great idea, but the implementation is painfully short and underutilized. Why can't I use two controls at the same time? Why don't more aspects of the stage encourage the player to experiment with and solve problems with these powers? Why doesn't the ridiculous ten minute stage time limit pause, speed up or rewind when I use my time powers? Why is their duration so brief, and why can't I hold more than a dozen uses at a time? I mean, this could've really been a fantastic experience if the time control aspect had been beefed up a little further and treated as more than just an auxiliary function of an otherwise run-of-the-mill platformer.

The controls, too, are an undeveloped, undertested nightmare. Blinx himself is often sluggish to respond, especially when implementing his time controls. He has difficulty making a precise turn, whether on midair or on solid ground. He stops to briefly celebrate when gaining an item, which leaves him open to constant enemy attacks. He routinely moves in the direction of certain death, as though pulled by a magnetic field, whether you've instructed him to do so or not. He'll occasionally refuse to perform a double jump, particularly when attempting a difficult, precise leap across a gaping chasm.

I think it's these controls that most make Blinx so mind-squashingly aggravating. At a glance, you'd imagine they'd be fairly difficult to screw up. You've got a jump button, a suction / fire button, a time control button and an analog stick to control movement. Plus, there had already been a long, established line of three-dimensional platformers on the market in the years before the title's release, paving the way to an ideal control experience. Super Mario 64 had its issues, sure, but nothing like this, and it was the trailblazer for the entire genre's jump to the world of 3D. It's like they had a map leading them right to the treasure and decided to forge their own path anyway.

I can't even say I'm impressed by the graphics showcased throughout The Time Sweeper, either. With the exception of the lead character himsef, these are some incredibly cheesy, preschoolish character designs - they feel unfinished and hurried, less purposeful than you'd imagine (especially in contrast with Blinx himself). Particularly insulting is the large population of simple blobs that roam around the levels, trying in vain to bump into you and cause a fatal injury. Here's a finely detailed main character, with such close attention paid to his wardrobe that even the gloss of his shoes was obviously debated time and time again, and he's pitted against a set of monsters that could've sprung to life directly out of the pages of a four-year-old's sketchbook.

Despite featuring a spoken dialog track, there's no English voice acting. I couldn't pinpoint the language, but my wife seems to think it's either French or some close variation of it. It certainly didn't sound Japanese. While this does add a touch of personality to the title, and it's not every day that you get a chance to hear a cat shouting something in the language of love, it all seemed really odd and out of place coming out of my television. Everyone's vocal personalities are so black-and-white, too, that I feel like a great chance to establish some much-needed individuality amongst the cast was lost once again here. The bad guys all have the same deep, gravelly, transparently evil tone, while the good guys are all bright, cheery, squeaky and high-pitched like the monkeys in Super Monkey Ball. It's like a parody of the games that had come before, but I won't give the developers enough credit to assume that they were doing it on purpose.

Overall, Blinx is really just a few promising concepts thrown together in one package, strapped to the shell of a far-below-average third person platformer and unleashed upon an unsuspecting public. At the time of its release, it was still in need of a lot of polishing, some serious scrutiny behind closed doors and a re-evaluation of just how far some of these concepts and half-hearted character designs could be conceivably stretched without losing any quality. On top of that, I really don't know which audience they were targeting with it. The game is ridiculously difficult, which betrays the childlike demeanor that surrounds it and leads me to believe it was meant for the serious gamers out there, but so bright, kid-friendly and annoyingly cutesy that I can't imagine anyone in that demographic rushing out to the stores on release day. The number of spontaneous controller hurls shot through the roof during my time with Blinx, reaching near-Marvel vs. Capcom 2 levels with its unashamed, excruciatingly cheap hits, especially in later levels. I have no idea how I acquired the willpower to finish level eight.

The game is adequately lengthy, and offers some replay value, with hidden cat medals in each stage eventually unlocking production sketches, promotional materials and the like. Once you start hunting for floating cat heads in those super-tough later levels, though, you'll remember why you were so happy to be finished with them in the first place. Unless you feel like pulling your hair out in clumps (I shaved my head after the experience as a part of the cleansing process) and enjoy self-mutilation, I'd recommend you stay far away.

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