Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, the latest offering from THQ, seemed like the perfect game for me. An admitted Egyptology buff ever since kindergarten, the idea of a romp through the mysterious world of pyramids, tombs, gods and monsters was like manna from heaven. Unfortunately, once I paid the price and brought my prize home, I was greeted by a nice-looking basket of frustration.
First, the story. Sphinx is the story of two heroes: the eponymous Sphinx – a leonine demigod-in-training, and the equally eponymous Cursed Mummy. On a mission given to him by his mentor, the wizard Imhotep, Sphinx and his rival Horus set out to recover the mystical Sword of Osiris. The intrigue mushrooms from there as Sphinx stumbles across a dark ceremony that crosses his path with that of the boy-king Tutankhamen, who would later become a mummy. A cursed mummy. The story is told more or less in snatches, almost as a reward of relevance for slogging through the preceding level. Of course, this is as game one plays more for the visuals than for the storyline.
Sphinx features colourful, vibrant textures, smooth animation, and wonderfully expressive character models. Since the game takes place in an Egyptian setting, expect to see a great deal of sun-bleached sandstone, as well as tombs, and a little bit of alabaster. Though the story doesn’t lend itself to having a variety of locales, most of the levels look almost exactly the same. I did notice a bit of texture-fade as I fiddled with the camera – a minor flaw that seems almost inexcusably amateurish. The water also looks very flat and is definitely not up to the calibre shown by, say, Mario Sunshine or Waverace. As for the characters, they are all fairly well animated – especially our heroes. Sphinx moves like a lion – he springs and leaps as he sidles and climbs, and he seems very light on his feet. The mummy, on the other hand, moves very fluidly (go figure – a dried-out corpse moving fluidly but, as they say, those are the breaks), with the loose limbs of a young Steve Martin. In all, the graphics are fairly uninspired, which is indicative of its port status.
The soundtrack is your basic mixed bag. There are a number of evocative tunes in the background, though it’s all the average warbly flute music we’ve come to associate with Egypt. There is no voice acting, which can be a blessing or a curse. Really, I feel that some really good voice acting might well have helped the story sequences, although given the performance of the rest of the game, the words were probably best left unspoken. What we’re left with, of course, are a bunch of looped audio tracks akin to those we’ve seen in almost any given Nintendo 64 game (though, specifically, I’m reminded of Banjo Kazooie). Some of these are almost obscenely annoying, such as one point in which Sphinx comes across a weeping anthromorphized jackal – by the time I had hurriedly skimmed and skipped past the dialogue, I was ready to hurl my Wavebird through my television screen.
As in any three-dimensional platformer, the camera is a constant companion. Naturally, with in any platformer, you have the onus of hang-ups, awkward positions, and poor performance. I’ll cite one example: in one part, it is necessary to defeat an axe-swinging goat monster. To do so, you must wait until he performs a massive overhead swing, and then strike at his unprotected back. Now, this leviathan can do serious damage to you, if he connects, so imagine my annoyance when the camera got hung up on a pillar and, lo and behold, I missed my attack and got subsequently eviscerated for my folly.
The game comes in two less-than-equal portions: For about two thirds of the game, you play as Sphinx. His levels are your basic platform fare – jump over some chasms, solve some jumping, key-finding, and switch-hitting puzzles, and maybe kill a monster or two. Besides that, there are the requisite three-dimensional platformer mini-games, which consist of some fairly boring match games, Simon Says, and timed races through various obstacle courses. “What’s the problem?” you may ask, “Zelda did the same thing.” Yes, that’s true, Virginia, but the differences are twofold: first, Zelda broke up the monotony with some brilliant variations on the theme. Sphinx is “all switches, all the time” – to tell the truth, the switches all look the same, too. Secondly, Zelda had a decent combat system.
Ah, combat: the bread, butter, and follow-up cookie of Sphinx’s levels. When you’re not trying to find a switch to pull, you’re looking for someone to kill. Most games that involve hand-to-hand combat include some form of lock-on. Not so with Sphinx. In order to successfully lock blades with the game’s myriad of annoying foes, you must move both Sphinx AND fiddle with the unwieldy camera in order to find your antagonist so you can lay down a judicious beating. Sphinx has four attacks with which to dispense glowing-sword justice – a chain combo attack, a vicious backhand, an overhead aerial sword-swing, and an aerial ground-slam. Later on in his adventure, Sphinx picks up the ability to summon a glowing shield of energy that can block anything – well, almost anything. Sure, it can stop swords, axes, flaming fists, and lethal death rays, but the Shield of Osiris was obviously not designed to ward off leaping Chihuahuas (mummy Chihuahuas), since they pass right through it.
The Mummy’s levels are a bit more interesting, filled with cerebral puzzles to go with the requisite jumping. Since he’s, well, dead, the Mummy can mutilate himself in all sorts of fun ways in order to solve puzzles. Electrocution can power electric motors in the dungeon, self-immolation has all sorts of obvious uses; the Mummy can crush himself flat to fit through barred doors, or, at one point, slice himself into triplets in order to solve a fairly elaborate puzzle. These involve a bit of strategy, a bit of abstract thought, and a good dose of humour, in addition to the platform-jumping and switch-hitting, and are the only real saving grace to this game.
I should point out that I encountered a game-killing glitch about four hours into the game. After the second level playing as the Mummy, I ended up getting pummelled as Sphinx. After eliciting to continue, I found myself back in the Mummy level I’d just completed, but my progress was barred by a blocked door that I couldn’t open, no matter what I tried. This, of course, forced me to re-start the entire game. I suppose this can be avoided by saving immediately every time you switch between the characters. Although I don’t see why players should be punished like that for not following the cardinal rule of gaming: Save early, save often.
Sphinx is a game that plays a lot older than it looks. We’ve been playing games almost exactly like this (though not nearly as pretty) ever since the PlayStation/Nintendo 64 days. While the graphics and audio are just above average, compared to its contemporaries, Sphinx is a rather anachronistic play experience that falls short when seen next to some of the more brilliant and innovative platformers (e.g. Jak II) around today. It’s certainly worth a look, but definitely not worth full retail price. As Shakespeare might once have said: “Thou shouldst rent a game that is awash in mediocrity, rather than spend thy coin upon an inferior product”.
