The Mummy Returns

THE BAD:
Repetative gameplay and quite short.

SUMMARY:
If you have to have something to do with The Mummy on your game console, then get this instead of the painful The Mummy for PSOne. The nice idea of being Imhotep is cool, plus his magic effects are quite stunning. Rick is the same as ever: just another guy with a gun. Get it to play as Imhotep.

THE BAD:
the baddest site

SUMMARY:
stupid site says 5000 people out of 5000.5 people the only reason why it is 5000.5 is because 1 person liked the site so we chopped him in half and ate the half of his body.

THE BAD:
Camera needs work, Too much exposition, Dilogue corny

SUMMARY:
This game is rated T for Teen, and it shows. I felt thruout the game that I was playing a game aimed right at kids. Aimed on their level. If I could have gotten my fifty bucks back, I'd've returned it. However, I played it all the way thru and if I had rented it, the only difference in my experience with it would be that I'd have had $44 to put towrds my next game. That is, had I not paid what I paid, as much as it wasn't a marvelous game, I would not have felt a need to take it back had I only rented it. The reason for that is that this game, while rather juvenile and sophomoric, was not as bad as the review posted here would have you believe.

I found the graphics to be quite good. I thought there were alot of nice touches in them. I liked the fact that the Anubis warriors and the soldier mummies in the museam looked so cool. The voices were well done, though I too would have liked the mouths to move, and for the dialogue not to be so instructional and Dick and Jane. The women in the game looked quite hot, I thought. And the tombs and temples and so forth were done very well. Vast, varied, and creepy / awesome (the traditional meaning) looking.

Some would have you believe the game was boring. I disagree. Was it action packed and amazingly exciting? Did it have me on the edge of my seat,and was it a thrill ride? No. But it was not boring. I found moving thru the jungle and the temples and so forth to be rather engaging and even challangeing. And I love third person, non turn based, game combat situations anyway. I love to kick, punch, slash (and in some games shoot), the crap out of stuff. There is plenty of that in this game. I must agree that the AI in the game needs work, but, it was decent all the same.

I did find the camera a bit annoying in that it was hard to see where you were going during play. I almost had to move in the style of a chess knight alot of the time to see what lay ahead in the direction that I wanted to go. And, I would also agree tha tthe exposition that occurs between levels, the voice and the scrolling paragraphs, used to cover vast parts of the story of the film without having to produce them graphically was a let down. They even did this at the end, thought they did add still shots of the graphic characters striking poses described in the paragraphs. But some of what got turned into expostition would have made for great game play, especially the parts with the derrigible. Cuting them out and reducing them to expostitory elements made the game seem a little too pat and it certainly shortened it. This game is rather short.

But, the great thing about this game is that you can play the whole game as two characters, Rick and Imhotep, which allows you to see some parts of the game from completely new perspectives and cover completely new ground at times. And playing Imhotep was very cool. He just looks cool and he can do hella cool stuff. He was alot of fun to play. And what I absolutely loved about this game is that, with the exceptiuon of one or two parts of the game, you can save your game anywhere you like, and when you come back, you are in the exact same spot! This is a function I would have killed to have on all the PS2 games I had played before TMR. You pretty much get that with Max Payne, but you have tyo wait for the game to decide to save. You can't choose where. You almost get it in Metal Gear Solid, but even there it starts you off after a saves at the last transition you made. So, being able to save wherever I wanted was great.

So,I would tell you that if you are short on cash, and can't afford a $50 new game, but are looing for something to play, try to pick up a used copy of this game or rent it. It will kill time and keep your attack button well oiled for you while you save your pennies for the next game without boring the crap out of you. It is a pretty decent game. I'd give it 6.5 out of 10.

THE BAD:
- Boring
- Weak graphics
- Awful control
- Dumb AI
- Embarrasing animation
- Very short

SUMMARY:
Question: How do you make a good video game based on a bad movie? Answer: You don't. Case in point, The Mummy Returns, the latest patch of fungus to invade the PS2. It's based on The Mummy Returns, which was based on The Mummy, which was based on the theory that we'll watch just about anything as long as it has lots of CGI. The game has the same kind of rip-off sensibility as the film and, like offal and odor, they go together just fine.

The Mummy Returns is similar to your standard, run-of-the-mill third person action game in that there are platform elements, puzzles, and the compulsory key quests. Where The Mummy Returns departs from the standard is how it seems to strive to be as boring as possible.

The game's only claim to fame is the fact that you can play as either Rick O'Connell (disheveled adventurer and resident goober with all the convincing ruggedness of a half melted dish of vanilla ice cream) or Imhotep (an albinistic pseudo-Egyptian reminiscent of a petulant Mr. Clean suffering from occasional eczema flare-ups). In fairness, the characters look like their movie counterparts, including the Scorpion King.

But no matter how you slice it, you are playing a lame character who can't do much and doesn't look good doing the things he can do. It may truly be the only game where your character's shadow looks like you're being pursued by a pair of disembodied penny loafers. Rick O'Connell's combo kicks, punches, and sword attacks are about as fluid and graceful as a Tai Chi Chuan routine performed by a drunken finger puppet.

After he's slapped them around like red-headed step children, Imhotep uses magic to suck the soul from his opponents a la Soul Reaver. This sounds way cooler than it is.

Basically, you know a game's in trouble when the only good thing you can think of to say about the combat is the fact that you can still carry a torch while fighting. You can't hit anybody with it, but you can at least see whose ass is getting kicked.

If The Mummy Returns' true aim is to numb players into a mindless stupor, it is aided in this endeavor by it's Stygian darkness. Corridors and passageways are dark, endless and indistinguishable as you wander around, navigating these interiors with a camera which is cardinally oriented to your feet. It is impossible to see what stands in front of you just a few yards away. The look button, which you would think could be of some assistance, has problems of its own and will only offer a 45 degree window of vision and is helpful only in the most general sense (i.e. determining whether you are facing the direction you think you are or to see who is standing in front of you).

When you get lost, you can refer to a very pretty assortment of three dimensional maps that would leave even Magellan stymied. Your location on the map is marked by a glowing icon with no indication of the direction that you are facing. Rotating the map only serves to disorient further. Frankly, the map is about as effective for navigation as a d'Anjou pear.

One of the worst features of this game is the incorporation of the "*bleep*" button, a single button that performs nearly all of the platform movements like climbing, jumping, etc. While this button scheme is a blessing for those players out there who have accidentally gotten four of the five digits on their right hand lopped off in a tragic mishap, it is a nightmare of frustration for those of us who still possess five fingers and an opposable thumb. Not only does it place massive limitations on what your character can actually do, it means that you must accomplish jumps over deadly traps with a button which will act as a combat "block" until you are at the very edge of something jumpable, in which case it will change to a "jump" button at the very last moment. This sort of thing will cause you to die a lot in the same place, and that's never a good thing.

You encounter a fair amount of enemies throughout The Mummy Returns. Expect to see every denizen of negative energy that populated the movie; the game follows the movie fairly faithfully. However, the computer AI is as weak as H. Ross Perot after a couple deep knee bends. Opponents will sometimes stand still, seemingly unconcerned about being perforated with bullets, or they will run right past you and keep going. Stupid enemies just add to the game's brevity and redundancy.

The game doesn't even have an opening cinema to recommend it, which is pretty pathetic for a vehicle based on a film filled with computer animation. What we do get is a long-winded monologue and a smattering of sad looking computer generated lead-in scenes voiced by a bunch of people who were not in the movie. Characters don't move their mouths when they talk and they bob their heads around like Thunderbird puppets. The lack of any extras completes the effect - this game plays like an afterthought.

Recommending this game for a rental would be giving it too much credit. It's not fun and does no credit to its big screen sibling. Save your money for something less painful, like a bikini wax or unanaesthetized dental surgery.

THE BAD:
easy fighting i HATE the cats and scorpions

SUMMARY:
u r a loser