May is a bit of a slow month for new releases that interest me so I thought it might be cool to look back at some games that were either remakes or reimagined takes on classic franchises. Like a lot of my ideas this was thanks to Jason playing Maximo on UPF. I remember enjoying this game although it seemed quite tough like the game it was based on. Turns out my impression of it was kinda wrong going by how easily I breezed through it the last few days. But it is certainly a new take on the Ghost n Goblins series even though they didn’t want to use the name for some reason. Enough with this little setup since this is supposed to be a review so let’s get into the storyline of Maximo.
Our brave knight named Maximo decided to go out to train to be a better knight by seeing the world. Leaving his trusted adviser in control of his kingdom which turned out to be a bad choice since he had evil intentions. Upon returning to his kingdom he is admittedly killed via magic and is only able to return by making a deal with the grim reaper to get his souls back. From this point the game kicks into main gist of the gameplay.
Which is entirely based on competing 30 different levels. Each level is divided into 5 different worlds that each have a theme. Starting off in the graveyard and eventually ending in raiding the converted castle. Every level consists of a set of challenges that must be overcome. Which is split into two different types. Either the player has to deal with one of the many types of skeleton enemies or it expects some expert 3D platforming. From what I could tell the forward triangle attack is the easy way to deal with every fight. Sure some enemies have different gimmicks you need to find out but once you know how beat them it doesn’t require much effort to fight most enemies. As for the platforming it is good in most cases because of all the air control Maximo has. But the camera can be a hindrance in judging if you can make a jump sometimes.
The one thing I wasn’t expecting was that it was a fairly easy game. In the past it seemed very hard since early on you won’t have much money to buy items to make your life easier. The deeper I got into the game it became easier to recover compared to the start. Since the level of difficulty remains the same the game is pretty easy by the time the credits roll. Which is only a problem if you have trouble with the platforming. I was constantly worried that I would miss jumps but it never became a issue.
Even today this game holds up surprisingly well. In a lot of ways it is laid out in a way the perfectly emulates classic side scrolling games in 3D. With a bit more focus on exploring side areas for extra power ups. So I think it successfully does what they were trying to create at the time. Plus it holds up in a similar way as those classic games thanks to that mindset from my perspective. If simple combat mixed with a bit of exploration based platforming sounds interesting to you then this game is worth checking out.