Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy

I enjoyed the game itself, but was disappointed with a few areas of it. The biggest disappoint was with the lack of voice overs. What were they thinking with that? Another expectation that didn't live up to the commercials was Sphinx and the Mummy never interact with each other. In fact, they don't even have any lines in the whole game!

The biggest annoyance in the game was the bugs. I was 8 hours into the game and I was playing one of the Mummy's stages, and I was suppose to walk past a Watching Eye and enter the door behind it. What confused me was there was 2 doors to walk through! There was one with one Watching Eye, and another with four Watching Eyes. I couldn't get past the one watching Eye since it had cages near it and I wasn't fast enough with the Invisible stone. So I walked past the four Watching Eyes with no probelm. You know what this did? It skipped me all the way towards the end of the game. I even went through one dungeon and beat a boss with 4 Ankh pieces! After you defeat the boss you get a crown and you're suppose to return it to Aurbius, but he didn't ask you to get it, so he won't accept it. You're stuck in limbo until you restart. I ended up wasting 2 hours on trying to figure out how to get out of limbo, but it was impossible, I was stuck. This annoyed me so much I emailed THQ in frustration. No reply.

There was another huge bug in the game I read about if you save in a certain spot, and turn your game off and restart it, a door will shut behind you and you can't progress. I also heard this bug will corrupt or delete your memory card. Stuff like this is NOT acceptable.

If these bugs were fixed and the game had voice overs, I would of enjoyed it more. Other than all of these probelms, I still had fun with the game.



----------Battle System----------
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is pretty close to be considered a Zelda clone. The puzzle solving is similar, the item system is similar, the way you unlock new areas is simiar, there's a trading system, but there's far to much platforming to be done to be considered a Zelda clone. You can jump on your own, and fight without locking on, the camrea is free unlike previous Zelda games. Other than that, it's pretty close.

In the game you play as both Sphinx and the Mummy. In the majority of it all, you mostly play as Sphinx. Sphinx uses all the weapons, interacts with all the people, finds all the new areas, completes all the duegons, fights all the bosses. When you play as the Mummy, he can't be killed. You have to use this short burst of immortality to your advantage to complete puzzles. That's all the Mummy is good for is puzzle solving and platforming. He doesn't fight at all.

You only play as the Mummy about 6 or 7 times in the game, if you count the begining when you play as Prince Tut. Prince Tut's soul is stored in Canopk Vases. When Sphinx finds a Canopk Vase he automatically gives it to Bask-et, a living Basket that can transport to the Mummy and revives him with it. After the Mummy finds the items inside the castle, he will pass out and Bask-et will swap the items Mummy found with Sphinx. I wish they would give you the option WHEN to use the Canopk Vase, so you can finish up any sidequests you might be in the middle of.

Sphinx's HP is repisented in Ankh pieces, this is very similar to Zelda's heart pieces. Each piece can break down into 4 parts. You start off with 3 full Ankh pieces, and you'll gain a new one each time you defeat a boss. Part of the sidequests is finding small Ankh pieces. If you collect 4 of them, you can pay a Jamacian type lady to cast a spell on them and make a full Ankh piece. You can get up-to twelve pieces overall.

There's alot more items and sidequests in this game than Star Fox Adventures, but not quite as much as Zelda: Windwaker. Sphinx can use a zipline, a sheild, sword, iron gloves (to move big rocks), and a double jump ability. He can also use a blowpipe (in first person mode) and find new darts for it. Sphinx can also capture to monsters in the game and use them as bombs or fire to burn wooden crates or barriers. The Mummy just has a Dark stone that turns him invisble, but he can catch himself on fire, eletrocuted, split into 3, turned into a shadow or bat or flattened like paper to solve the many puzzles in his game.

The money system in the game is exactly the same as Star Fox Adventures. You use scarab as your currency, you can find them hidden in jars and crates or light fixtures. You can't buy much though, just six monsters to complete your capturing sidequest at the start, the towards the end once you get a bag upgrade you can buy upgrades for your dart gun and capture beetles. The Mummy finds a special currency on his tale, with Onyx Scarabs, these are 'rare' and can be used in only one store.



----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Sphinx a demigod, and apprentice for the magician Imhotep who sets Sphinx on a quest to find the root of the evil in the city of Uruk. You also play as Prince Tutankhamen aka The Cursed Mummy. The Prince was cursed by his brother who needed his soul to usurper the throne of his kingdom. During the Ritual his soul was broken and scattered across the world, and with Sphinx help he can revive him.

The Mummy's side of the story was pretty clever. I thought how he would steal all the jewels and items from a heavy guarded castle. Otherwise I thought the story was decent at best.

The game was almost void any humor at all. If you remember the commercials, they're pretty comical, this game is not. Sphinx and the Mummy don't even have any lines, they're both silent heros like Link. The Mummy is a bit clumsy, but they barely tap into that.



----------Graphics----------
The characters look great, except for Sphinx who has leaves for hair, superhero face paint, a cut off belly shirt and a monkey's tail. The rest of the characters like Set, Mummy and the sub characters you'll meet along the way look awesome. All the characters show a ton of personality, you can tell the developers put a ton of time into making these guys.

Since the game is set in Egypt, or an Egypt like state, the game's colors are pretty dull. Just alot of greys and browns. The water effects in the game are the worst I've seen since Saturn / PS1 heyday.

There's not very many monsters in the game that you end up fighting, possibly less than Star Fox Adventures. There a limited supply of bosses as well, although they're alot better than what Star Fox Adventures had.

There's a ton of bugs in this game. I would often see the white outlines appear on platforms, and sometimes the pixels would fluctuate. I had alot of slow downs during some bosses, but it would mostly happen before a loading zone to a point where it feels like the game is skipping. There's one HUGE bug I encountered that wasted 10 hours of my game and another even bigger one I read about that erases your memory card.

The camera can be moved 360 degrees around and up and down with the C-Stick, but if there's something behind you, the camera will jam. The bad camera screwed me up various times within the game.

At anytime in the game you can access a "Bonus" featurette. It only gives you a short 3-5 minute behind the scenes documentary. They don't discuss much and the picture is small and a bit grainy.


----------Sound----------
There is NO voice overs at all. Just about every character with a bit of dialog has some sort of vocal trait like a cough, grunt, groan, laugh, etc, but there's no voice overs to be found. It's a shame because the character show so much personality and their mouths move like they intended voice overs, but nope. This was such a huge disappointment for me. Mummy showed a ton of personality in the commercials, yet he doesn't even have any dialog to be voiced out! Ridicilous.

The music was pretty good. There was a few clever moments in the game where you swing your sword and the music would spike as you connect with a monster. There's a lazy hippie bird in the game that askes for cash, and when you get in his area they play some slow trippy situar music.


----------World Map----------
There's no world map in the game. The world is pretty large, slightly bigger than Ocarina of Time, although there might of been more dungeons in Zelda though. You can travel on foot, pay for a ferry, or warp using various amulets. The farther you get in the game, the most secrets and short cuts you can unlock. There's only one real town in the game, although there's plenty of houses and tents you can find scattered across Helipolis (the biggest 'area' in the game). In the Abydos town you can play some minigames, people to chat with, trading games, buy monsters and various other stuff you would do in an adventure game like this. There's a ton of sidequests in the game, and they're pretty easy to figure out. They should keep your attention for a few more hours.


----------Time to Complete Game (first run through, last save before final boss)----------
13:13:28

It was a bit short, and there was no bonus for completeing it. The ending was extremely disappointing.

The game wasn't overtly difficult, I actually breezed by the main quest pretty quickly, but I took my time to get all the sidequests completed. It might look a bit childish, but I can't picture a kid getting through some of these puzzles.