Retrospective: Blinx: The Time Sweeper

By John Walker Published 23 January, 2011

Waste of time.

There's a law of writing about games that is never broken. If you ever say any game is the first to do anything, somebody in the comments will sniffily point out that you're wrong, citing something that came out on the Amstrad or similar in eighties, and questioning whether you should be allowed to review games.

"This is the first time gaming has seen a sentient mountain ride a unicorn to defend the concept of lateness," you find yourself confidently typing. "Well, actually," someone retorts, "I think you'll find that Super Mounticorn LX did that on the Tatung Einstein in 1984."

Never did this happen more often than after Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. When Jordan Mechner's reinvention of the series came out in 2003, there was nary a mention of the game that wasn't accompanied by, "Well, actually, I think you'll find Blinx did it first." The idea for the Prince's time-manipulation abilities came to one of the game's producers while they were in the shower, but according to the internet the seed for such things must have come from the third-person adventures of a time-travelling cat.

I'd never played Blinx. I had quite a few people tell me off for not knowing about it in 2003, but their snooty-nosed ways only put me off finding out (especially when it was Kieron Gillen). Recently, I decided it was time.

1

Oh, please fall to your death, you sanctimonious, polo-necked little smug-goblin.

Wow, Blinx is awful.

Its awfulness is multifaceted, too. Strip away the concept, the gimmicks and the presentation, and just look at the platform game, and at its core it's a dreadful, broken piece of old plop.

The premise is pleasingly bonkers. You've got a race of anthropomorphic cat people (always a good start), who spend their days visiting planets at various points in time to prevent their being taken over by monsters. Monsters that grow from dropped time crystals. Crystals they must collect. They make their money by, um, "selling time to other worlds". But oh dear me no, planet B1Q64 is in a terrible state. It's falling apart, populated with monsters, and all the time cats are being brought home. Except for brave Blinx, who decides to single-handedly save the disappointingly named planet.

So it's up to you to clear each level of its occupying beasties, gather as much gold as you can find, and then leave. And that's it. There's nothing more to the story. No sense of progression through a narrative. The closest you get to anything feeling like it's changing are the upgrades you can buy from the betwixt-level shops.

2

It's Alice In Wonderland levels of creepy.

It's clearly laid out as a series of disconnected challenges. The game is divided into thematic chunks of groups of three levels and a boss, each designed to be tackled repeatedly in the hunt for hidden tokens and best times. And instead of multiple weapons and ammunition, Blinx has something called a Time Sweeper. This looks a bit like a metal detector and a vacuum cleaner had a baby, letting him hoover up "trash" in the world, then fire it back at the Time Monsters to attack them. And it works this well: none.

It's a nice idea - a weapon that relies on finding world objects to use as ammo. Imagine if you could aim it. But you can't! There's no way to choose at what you'll fire. Instead you just point Blinx toward something and hope he won't decide to shoot something else behind him. I wish I was exaggerating. At the game's whim, Blinx will not shoot the enemy that's about to kill him, but instead an inanimate object diagonally behind his shoulder. Perhaps he'll decide to attack the unaware enemy at a right-angle to where he's facing, so the monster an inch away from his face can get on with killing him. Gosh, it's so much fun!

The platforming is ghastly, made worse by a malevolent camera that seems to have been designed to point in the opposite direction to anything you need to see. Midway through attacking an enemy it will literally swing around 180 degrees to face nothing at all. Jumping across gaps is pure luck. And re-angling the camera for yourself is a giant pain, since the controls to do so are set to the wrong direction, with no option to switch them over. It's like when a platform game reverses your controls, but for the entire game.

Getting killed is common, too. Most games, when starting a level, will offer the character their health. But not Blinx. If he's at death's door, he stays at death's door until you either buy some more health at great expense or manage to collect the time crystals necessary to get an extra heart. Otherwise you just restart the level with nothing, again and again. Which brings me smoothly into discussing the game's most wantonly stupid feature: those time crystals.

Blinx has a number of time controls at his disposal. He can pause, slow, rewind, fast-forward and record. The first two are self explanatory. Rewind lets you reverse time where an object has fallen, perhaps temporarily rebuilding a bridge. Fast-forward gives you a brief protective shield, and lets you complete a part of a level in less time, if you're chasing such things. Record lets you play for a few seconds and then rewind to the point where you started, and where the recorded version of Blinx will repeat the action as you get on with something else.

3

After playing it, I'm now on the green blobs' side.

None of those is a bad thing! Gosh - can you imagine how much fun a platform game would be with such powers? Except Blinx seems to go out of its way to ensure you won't.

To acquire the ability to do one of these things, you must first gather at least three correspondingly colour-coded time crystals. You have four slots, so either get four of the same for two of the power, or fill the fourth slot with a disposed random. Pick up three different crystals, or two and two, and you've wasted the lot. In fact, pick up three different ones and you have to waste a fourth to clear the slots.

While occasionally the game will drop necessary crystals for a particular task near its location, that's no guarantee you'll be able to use them. Picking crystals up occurs when you walk over them, and since they splash out all over the place when you kill an enemy, it's impossible not to gather those you're not after accidentally. Because health is included in this muddle, in the form of another heart-shaped RETRY Crystal, you're inevitably searching for those and then screaming in frustration as you walk over the completely pointless bountiful supply of purple RECs.

4

To think, he nearly became the mascot of the original Xbox.

Then it turns out you needed those RECs to open the nearby door, but you lost them because two of them clogged up your attempt to get a RETRY, so now you have to backtrack to find more bloody REC crystals. And if there aren't any? You have to restart the entire level. Although, if you're backtracking, the chances are you'll be restarting anyway, because for absolutely no reason whatsoever, the damned thing only gives you 10 minutes for each level. Exceed that and you're dumped back at the start, forced to repeat everything yet again. Oh, it's so miserable.

It looks lovely, as it happens. But there's no intelligence here. The monsters are frequently the exact same colour as the backgrounds, so you don't know they're there until they've killed you. And the enemy design is often inspired. It's hard not to enjoy the sight of a land-flopping giant green fish with outer space in its mouth. Until the game arses up and gets you killed, and you have to fight it for a third time and you hate it hate it hate it.

So that's Blinx then. A game that truly deserves to be forgotten forever, thus giving Prince of Persia the position as being the first action-adventure with time manipulation that it deserves.

Let forth the slew of comments pointing out the action-adventures that included time manipulation before Blinx.

Picture of John.

About John Walker

Read more articles from John by visiting the John Walker archive page.

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Comments (70) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • altitude2k #1 1 year ago

    A nice (and accurate) stab at the pretentiousness and snobbery of some in the gaming community, at the beginning of that article. Well played, sir.

  • RodHull #2 1 year ago

    Observing Microsoft trying to nurture a platforming mascot for the original Xbox was as painful as watching your dad dance. They had plenty of misses in Blinx and (shudder) Tork, but occasionally they struck gold. The vastly underrated Voodoo Vince springs to mind.

  • theonlyix #3 1 year ago

    wow..... That so called review was awful.... I remember playing both blinx 1 and later 2 and had a blast. sthe music still ringing in my head, unwilling to go away. Blinx was a great game for it's time, the second only added coop that was meaningful, something many missed in the original. However, back then graphics was the xbox major sellingpoint and blinx sure didn't use the hardware
    to it's fullest.
    however, seeing a snot nosed reviewer review and thrash a 9 year old game
    today is just sad. Hell, why don't you do a review on space invaders and bash
    on it for not being online coop from the start.... Blinx is a fairly hard game, but it had it's audience and I for one would love to see a sequel...

  • wizlon #4 1 year ago

    Damn you, damn you for reminding me that I actually tried to play this mess of a game. I had forgot about it, but now you've reminded me I can't stop thinking about how poor it actually was. Great retrospective... i think.

  • DreadedWalrus #5 1 year ago

    Hell, why don't you do a review on space invaders and bash on it for not being online coop from the start

    But... He's reviewing this game on its own terms! He's not criticising it for something it's not, which is what criticising Space Invaders for not including co-op would be. Look, we all have our favourite games, some of which many other people would find rubbish (for example I really, really enjoyed Bladestorm, which is one of my most-played games this generation, yet has a Metacritic score of 58), but that doesn't mean that people who disagree with me are objectively wrong, or deserve to be insulted.
    Edited by DreadedWalrus at 23/01/11 @ 09:38

  • Stompy #6 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 23:13:35 17-04-2012

  • botherer #7 1 year ago

    In fairness, DreadedWalrus, I DO deserve to be insulted.

    And the "snot nosed" is basically an accurate description of my virus-ridden body.

    (And I did forget to criticise Blinx for not including aliens descending from the top of the screen.)

  • TheApologist #8 1 year ago

    @Botherer
    Don't be mean to yourself! Or is Kieron Gillen posting under your name again, John?

    Edited by TheApologist at 23/01/11 @ 10:35

  • thisisatempaccount #9 1 year ago

    Well, I humbly submit that in a moment of lapse the reviewer has neglected to mention Felicitous ChronoDream Phantasy: Where Has the Feeling of a Lover Descended?!, the seminal (and, indeed, original) 1986 title featuring time manipulation mechanics on the Bandai TenderHeart 286.

    The cartridge, as any right-thinking and properly-qualified games critic will recall, contained a dozen release candidates of the game stretching back over the three fraught years of development by the haunted staff of the Toshiba Anthropomorphic Mascots and Electronic Marketing Initiatives division, who had no experience of game development whatsoever and were deliberately kept in continuous fear for their jobs by men with whips and loudspeakers.

    The 'time manipulation' mechanic actually allowed you to segue into any of the candidate builds of the game at will, allowing for ingenious puzzle solutions such as switching into a version of the game where an indestructible boss had yet to be implemented, or another where player health was just a non-functioning place-holder graphic.

    Of course these powers were counterbalanced by the fact that most of the builds could and would crash at any time. It is still unknown to this day whether there is a continuous thread throughout them that allows a player to negotiate the game and see the ending sequence (which is naturally also just a place-holder graphic, in an amusing twist of irony).

    Quintin Smith once met the man who had come closest to finishing Felicitous ChronoDream Fantasy, the man who had in fact dedicated his entire life to the pursuit of that goal, but beat him to death outside a filthy back alley bar in Shanghai, consequent to an argument they had had about Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.

    But I'm certain Mr. Walker knew all of this already. Surely his omission can be put down to a slip of the mind, and not gross professional negligence.

  • hoster #10 1 year ago

    The worst kind of design-by-committee mascot. I hated this game.

  • kentmonkey #11 1 year ago

    "Let forth the slew of comments pointing out the action-adventures that included time manipulation before Blinx."

    Technically, taking the term "time manipulation" in it's simplest form, I guess 'Time Zone' on the Apple II (released in '82) was the first game to do this, as you were provided with a time machine to travel to different time periods. Although that may not qualify as an action-adventure.

    I've just wiped some snot from my nose.

    Edited by kentmonkey at 23/01/11 @ 11:17

  • Veracity #12 1 year ago

    in the 80's, Shirley?

  • NonShinyGoose #13 1 year ago

    Didn't this get 9.3 from the Official Xbox Magazine?

    I rest my case (against official magazines).

  • peteb #14 1 year ago

    I thought the music was nice at least. From the same dude as NiGHTS if I remember rightly.

  • theonlyix #15 1 year ago

    @deadwalrus

    Well, he is critizing it with todays standards in mind, that *should* never be done with an old game like this - however, the people old enough to have played the games when they came still know what impact they had at the time.... I started with the intellivision, and have been a gamer for most of my life and i can say that many of todays reviewers (like people born in the eighties and later) have less knowlegde of the old games, but most just praise them high like they ever played them.... that is just sad. It is impossible to give an old game a fair review in retrospective as there are just to many influences on the reviewers today from the games and game industry, and i firmly believe that the only reason to a review like this is to "prove" someone wrong or just to to piss of people....

  • lucky_jim #16 1 year ago

    Heh I "won" a two-week stint on OXM in a competition by writing a review of this. It was interesting to see how a magazine gets put together, but it put me off the idea of working for one!

    I enjoyed the game for a while, but I remember hitting a brick wall of teeth-gnashing frustration before too long. Never could work out why it was such a pig to control, it was more like playing as a drunk hippo than a cat.

  • AgentCool #17 1 year ago

    The problem with this game - aside from its charisma-vacuum of a lead character and generally terrible platforming - was that the time-bending mechanic didn't really allow for free-will thus defeating the point of it. What's the difference between a pre-scripted sequence where you record yourself jumping on a switch and then you walk through the door it opens and a pre-scripted sequence where an accompanying character jumps on a switch and then you walk through the door it opens?

    If anything the ultra-awesome time-recording version is lazier game design because you don't have to help the accompanying character get through the door once you're through it - he just disappears into the ether.

    If only there had been a way to fast-forward through the entire game.

  • Monkey_Puncher #18 1 year ago

    I'm amazed to see that there are actually a few Blinx apologists in existence.

    I wonder if there's a few Ty the Tazmanian Devil apologists around as well?

  • allydelally #19 1 year ago

    It's not exactly a review is it? The nice thing about the retrospectives is to see how some of these games stand up today and exactly HOW our expectations have changed. When games do hold their own it says a lot for the mechanics and game design, just as the same can be said for music or movies that are 'timeless'.

  • Drum #20 1 year ago

    Actual non-made up games that used time rewinding/manipulation before Blinx:
    Chouji Meikyuu Legion (arcade, 1987)
    It's a fun vertical shooter with a 'rewind' function in place of a smart bomb. Unfortunately it never left Japan, but it's playable in MAME (though the emulation isn't the best). Undeservedly obscure, though the rewind function doesn't last long at all.
    Also, The Killing Gameshow/Fatal Rewind (Amiga/Atari ST/Megadrive, 1990) recorded your progress through a level and when you died it played it back - you could jump in at any time and play from there.
    Also also, Astro Blaster (arcade, 1981) allowed you to slow down time, giving us the first use of bullet time in a game. Really fun Space Invaders-style shooter. Omega Fighter (arcade, 1989) used it to even better effect.
    All of these games are better than Blinx.
    I mention these not to be a tremendous ass, but purely in the interest of disseminating knowledge. You're welcome! :)

  • byakuya83 #21 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 10:03:41 30-03-2012

  • Cappy #22 1 year ago

    We are in the HMV on Oxford street, it's 2002 (this is time travelling), unlike the console gaming sections of most retailers, HMV on Oxford street has a lot of demo units upstairs, at least three of each platform as I recall.

    A school uniformed mass of vociferous, overexcited children are latched like limpets to the demo units. I peer over their heads squinting at the screens, a Gamecube is serving up Rogue Squadron.

    Ah, but there is something that I can play. A demo unit that numerous children drift over to but hurriedly leave, so this is an Xbox, and this is Blinx The Time Sweeper. The human mind has a wonderful protective capacity, trauma can be tucked away, I barely remember anything, a cat with eyes of disease green pustulent ooze equipped with a hoover, then the protective mental shutters come down. I am quietly observed retreating from the demo pod by previous Blinx escapees, there is a sense of kinship. We've visited the same hell.

    First class child repellent and bloody awful game on day one and any other subsequent day that followed.

  • gimo80 #23 1 year ago

    I actually LOVED this game back in the day, however it was crippled by difficulty spikes, an abominable camera and uninspired level design. The novelty of pausing time in water always seemed to amuse me, giving you the ability to create a pathway in what looked like a sea of jello. To be honest, that was the only particularly salvageable moment considering how derivative the rest of the game was. Looks like time was less than kind to Blinx.

    And the sequel was pretty redundant too.

  • Inquisitor #24 1 year ago

    That was a strange era for the Xbox wasn't it. I remember them floundering blindly around with various exclusives, vaguely trying to create one stand out game in every genre. They really did put rather a lot of effort into platformers. Yes, there were plenty of laughable attempts, ala Blinx, but it was also pretty exciting being an Xbox owner then. No doubt the quality has increased ten fold and third party support is second to none but it was interesting watching them try to launch new IPs or even take existing ones (Oddworld, Sega franchises, ToeJam etc) and try and give them a home on the console.
    Edited by Inquisitor at 23/01/11 @ 13:02

  • RedSparrows #25 1 year ago

    A 3D platformer with time mechanics and


    no wait, just a 3D platformer on 360 please. I'd get a Wii for the superlative Mario Galaxy twins, but I ain't got the monies!

  • AdamAsunder #26 1 year ago

    I got this day 1, after the official xbox magazine had hyped it as the second coming.

    Imagine my face when I actually played it. I thought I was missing something, surely it was just my poor taste and this game really was genius.

    Played about 3 levels, traded it and stopped reading OXM.

  • kentmonkey #27 1 year ago

    lucky_jim wrote: "Heh I "won" a two-week stint on OXM in a competition by writing a review of this."

    I'm fairly certain this is how writers for OXM and IGN currently get employed. It's the only explanation really.

  • trooperdx3117 #28 1 year ago

    @theonlyix

    Good god man how is he criticising it by todays standards? He points the clear flaws of the game including a terrible camera, broken combat, poor and vapid level design. This isnt a game that doesnt stand up to todays standards, its a game that never stood up to anytimes standards

  • PearOfAnguish #29 1 year ago

    "Well, he is critizing it with todays standards in mind"

    You're a bit thick, aren't you? How is he 'critizing it with todays standards in mind'? The article is pointing out major flaws in the game's design which render it an unpleasant experience.

    Or are you saying that crap games were more acceptable 9 years ago?

  • AdamAsunder #30 1 year ago

    The only Official mag that I ever really liked was the Saturn one. It really felt like you were part of a small collective rooting for the underdog. It was really well written by passionate journos and it had some of the best cover discs ever. I never thought I'd ever be able to get my hands on Christmas Nights and then they had it on their cover. The first disc of Panzer Dragoon Saga was amazing, to this day I regret never being able to get the full game.

    Isn't Richard Leadbetter now working for Digital Foundry?

  • darkmorgado #31 1 year ago

    Truly awful game. Design-by-committee mascot, hoovering up collectibles as if gaming had never moved past the OCD stage of platformers in 1999.

    I remember all the hype for the game, then the consensus that it barely achieved mediocrity when all the reviews started flooding in. I remember playing it for about 45 minutes before deciding it was possibly the worst platform/adventure I had played in many years.

    @theonlyix

    You say it's unfair to judge it against modern standards (which is stupid anyway)? Ok. Compare it to Mario64, a game 7 years older than it. Compare it against Banjo Kazzoie. Compare it against Ape Escape on the PSX. Hell, compare it to Gex3D!

    Against all of those comparisons, against games that preceeded Blinx by years, it's complete shite. It got nothing right and relied on it's pretty stylised graphics to try and generate hype.

  • linea #32 1 year ago

    You could review it by the standards of 1996 and it would still be a poor game. Super Mario 64 made none of the mistakes mentioned in the article! Which is (partially) why it's a timeless classic and Blinx.... isn't


    Edit: oops. Looks like darkmorgado got there before me. Damn this phone keypad!
    Edited by linea at 23/01/11 @ 14:42

  • pinchofsalt #33 1 year ago

    Blinx was alright. That article just sounded like a 'I'm crap at this therefore it is rubbish' rant.

  • Collymilad #34 1 year ago

    "To think, he nearly became the mascot of the original Xbox"

    Bullet. Dodged.

    I played the demo of this game back in the day, all I remember is that it looked good and felt quite clunky - nothing else about it stood out at all.

  • tomjoadsghost #35 1 year ago

    In all fairness Blink's time travel mechanic *did* invent the 'its only possible because of the internal hard drive' excuse that worked so well for media molecules explanations as to why LBP was only possible on Ps3.

    quick quiz: what do prince of persia on ps2 and gamecube have in common with LBP on PSP?

  • coolbritannia #36 1 year ago

    Blinx was always rubbish, this is firmly in the same bin as Brute Force for shit design in games. Further proof that without Halo, we'd all be stuck with PS3's right now.

  • BigJonno #37 1 year ago

    I think it's absolutely amazing how John has written many of these retrospectives for EG, often praising games that are far older than Blinx. Surely his complete lack of expertise and insistence on judging old games by modern standards should have caused him to launch into one hate-filled rant after another.

    Thanks to theonlyix for pointing out Walker's general rubbishness, although I find it slightly odd that someone apparently so ancient and worldly-wise considers a last generation game too old to be held up to today's standards. Does this mean that all the great Xbox, PS2 and GC games are crap now?

    Bloody hell, it's hard to maintain that level of sarcasm. I think I've used up a whole week's worth in one go.

  • Bombonera #38 1 year ago

    I never played Blinx, but I remember that the level of hype surrounding it was greater than any other Xbox game, except for maybe Halo 2.

  • coolbritannia #39 1 year ago

    Hype for Blinx? I missed that, all i saw was a demo disc in OXM that was enough to tell me it was shite.

  • rock27gr #40 1 year ago

    @tomjoadsghost

    What is it then?

  • DrMGinius #41 1 year ago

    @Monkey_Puncher "I wonder if there's a few Ty the Tazmanian Devil apologists around as well? "

    I guess it was supposed to be a tazmanian tiger or something like that, but what I saw is a horrible creature with two mouths, one for each side of it's head.

  • SystemOvercast #42 1 year ago

    I only remember Blinx vaguely. But I remember The Prince of Persia and that tells me something. I do remember that Blinx had a very good sound track.
    Edited by SystemOvercast at 23/01/11 @ 18:11

  • Bander #43 1 year ago

    Naoto Oshima directed both Blinx and Sonic CD, as well as being the designer of the Sonic and NiGHTS characters. Which makes it all the more unusual how Blinx turned out so bad, and the cat so ugly. Not only is Sonic CD the best cutesy time-travelling platforming game ever (not that there's many of those), but more importantly it's one of the best Sonic games.

  • Stomp224 #44 1 year ago

    @AdamAsunder
    Another Saturn Magazine fan here. I fondly remember the reviews of insignificant games ballon from 1 page to full-magazine features, an ever-increasing amount of import reviews and some of the best, most entertaining writing I had ever read in my life.

    Highlights included the unification of Saturndom against Adam Ay. The mag is also responsible for the greatest quote ever: "Your argument falls apart faster than a leper in a wind tunnel"

    /wipes tear from eye

    Good times.

  • gelf #45 1 year ago

    @AdamAsunder and Stomp224 I agree. The official saturn mag was great, you had to knock a few points off review scores sometimes but in terms of features for a poorly supported console it was excellent, probably why it survived as long as it did into the saturns life. And yes giving away the first disk of PDS was and is the greatest coverdisk ever.

  • Toothball #46 1 year ago

    An amusing re-review. Wouldn't mind seeing a similar one for Headhunter on the Dreamcast. That was another one that got talked up a lot when it was released, but I found to be entertainingly broken several years down the line.

  • tomjoadsghost #47 1 year ago

    Headhunter isnt nearly as soft a target as blinx is, sure its got its problems but there was some really good stuff there too.

    I still toy with the idea of giving redemption a shot.

  • EMarkM #48 1 year ago

    Blinx was slightly uglier than Oscar on the Amiga CD32...

  • The-Bodybuilder #49 1 year ago

    NO ONE DARES TO SPEAK ILL OF HEADHUNTER.
    IMO, headhunter had the potential to be one of the best action adventure games at the time. Shame it wa;
    1. Restricted by technology (the open LA city was just begging to be explored
    2. B-Movie story.
    It still did some awesome stuff though, like the Paul Verhoeven futuristic setting and real life news reporting ala robocop.

    I forced myself through redemption. Pretty average game (with a very poor new character) and a regression of the first in terms of production. The final boss was pretty interesting though.

  • HASJ #50 1 year ago

    @theonlyix Well, Super Mario World is 20 years old and is still regarded as one of the best games ever. Go figure...

  • Acrid #51 1 year ago

    Shit... I had this, forgot all about it, it was awful, I gave it my best but it truly is a shit game.
    Well Retrospected Mr Walker.

  • espibara #52 1 year ago

    Ok all things considered blinx was shite character BUT the game wasn't that bad nice graphics and brilliant music.

    The whole mascot thing was a desperate ploy by Microsoft as the xbox was floundering at this stage and was getting its ass whipped by the PS2. As a result Blinx was overhyped by Microsoft which ultimately hurt the game as it was 7/10 at best.

  • darkmorgado #53 1 year ago

    7/10 is bloody generous.

  • theonlyix #54 1 year ago

    Lol @ all you who say "X is older and a better game"....


    Have you played it through, you might have valid stuff to say, but most of you just say you played it because you are sad people who sit around forums every day and form opinons on stuff you just really dont know anything about.
    I found Blinx to be a really good game with some really good music that stuck, and gameplay that (perhaps) was a bit to hard for the plattform generation (M64 peeps)

    Haters gonna hate....

  • Darren #55 1 year ago

    I really enjoyed the first Blinx personally. Despite the lead character being a cat (I'm not a cat lover), I felt the game had a lot of charm, helped by the jolly music and colourful, warped visuals. The time travel concept was also intriguing. Sure it was flawed and occasionally frustrating due to the time limit but I never could understand why people hated it so much; I thought it was a lot of fun.

  • theonlyix #56 1 year ago

    @darren Haters gonna hate....

  • handsonhips101 #57 1 year ago

    its a pants game, I'm constantly reminded of it as my friend rob has kept it in his car for the last three years.
    His car has never been cleaned inside, in the doorbin, passenger side is; Burnout 2, sonic heroes (another awful game) and this dross. The paper cover is wilted from damp, the disc scratched to hell. Why it remains in his car I don't know, we often discuss its lack of merit.

    @ coolbritannia; "Blinx was always rubbish, this is firmly in the same bin as Brute Force for shit design in games. Further proof that without Halo, we'd all be stuck with PS3's right now"

    Really? Can you really troll this into another anti ps3 tirade? You just can't help it. I think you love the ps3 and would perform cunnilingus on its bd-rom slot if nobody was watching.

    @AdamAsunder;

    I collected every issue, wish I still had them, Christmas nights, pd saga and sega flash demos. Wicked, I remember Richard got his name in the duke nukem credits.
    We all played deathtank (super cool game)
    We all waited with baited breath for vf3 and scud race, which didn't come.
    We all tried to kid ourselves that wipEout 2097 was as good as the ps version. It wasn't.
    We all got excited when burning rangers had real transparencies.
    We all claimed sega rallys four tracks bettered Colin mcrae and vrally anyday.
    Being a Saturn owner was hard!

  • DwarfyP #58 1 year ago

    Blinx was an awesome game.

    "Its awfulness is multifaceted, too. Strip away the concept, the gimmicks and the presentation, and just look at the platform game, and at its core it's a dreadful, broken piece of old plop."

    Yeah cos removing everything that makes the game fun is a brilliant idea... Sheeesh.
    Remove the gun play, graphics, sound and maps from CoD and its just CODE. ZOMG!!!

  • Gojiratron #59 1 year ago

    I was never interested in Blinx but a friend of mine had it and quite liked it. He was usually stoned out of his box though which may have been a factor ;)

    Definitely one of the worst video game characters ever.

    The only Official mag that I ever really liked was the Saturn one. It really felt like you were part of a small collective rooting for the underdog. It was really well written by passionate journos and it had some of the best cover discs ever. I never thought I'd ever be able to get my hands on Christmas Nights and then they had it on their cover. The first disc of Panzer Dragoon Saga was amazing, to this day I regret never being able to get the full game.

    Isn't Richard Leadbetter now working for Digital Foundry?

    Best. Magazine. Ever. :)

    Yeah Rich is there. Also, Gary Cutlack's still got UK:Resistance going (amongst other things).
    Edited by Gojiratron at 24/01/11 @ 09:54

  • botherer #60 1 year ago

    @theonlyix Your logic in deciding everyone else is lying because they disagree with you is a peculiar one. If you consider it more, is does seem like you may be over-reaching.

    As you may have spotted in the title, this was a retrospective of a 9 year old game. I was looking back at it in 2011. As I say in the article, I did not play it at the time, and as such writing what you seem to want - a review of it as if it were still 2002 - would be impossible, let alone a pointless waste of time.

    It's always frustrating when a publication you read criticises a game that you like. It can feel like a betrayal. But the best response isn't always to write furious rants accusing people of things and strange rants about space invaders. As you'll see from the comment ranks, it causes people to mark your comment down. That's not an organised conspiracy - it's because your reaction is inappropriate.

    Having recently written a retro celebrating the wonderful Ratchet & Clank, I think you'll see that I'm not madman who hates games because they're old. I dislike games when they rubbish. And Blinx is rubbish. You enjoyed it, and everyone has a game or two in their memory banks that they enjoyed which everyone else hated. I loved Gex at the time! But that doesn't mean that Blinx wasn't extremely badly made, as I evidence at length in the article.

    I recommend you replay the game today, and then let me know what you thought of it. I bet you'd be a little surprised.
    Edited by botherer at 24/01/11 @ 10:03

  • botherer #61 1 year ago

    @DwarfyP You miss the point, there. I'm saying that at its core, beneath all the other features, the basic platforming doesn't work. And then I point out how all the stuff on top doesn't work either.
    Edited by botherer at 24/01/11 @ 10:04

  • krudster #62 1 year ago

    Rubbish then, rubbish now. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/r_blinx_x

  • JonFE #63 1 year ago

    @botherer:

    Would you mind sending me your Blinx copy (which you apparently hated), because I've lost my original one (which I loved to pieces)?

    ;-)
    Edited by JonFE at 24/01/11 @ 11:17

  • gelf #64 1 year ago

    We all tried to kid ourselves that wipEout 2097 was as good as the ps version. It wasn't.
    Yes back in the days Rich would be defending imperfect conversions rather then ripping them to shreds on Digital Foundry. Compared to some of the Saturn ports back then todays issues with PS3 ports are nothing.

    We all claimed sega rallys four tracks bettered Colin mcrae and vrally anyday.

    In that case we where always right.
    Edited by gelf at 24/01/11 @ 12:30

  • VTurk #65 1 year ago

    what a pointless review. a game that got good review 9 years ago and you slate now. i am starting to think this reviewer is not a gamer.

  • Stompy #66 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 23:13:35 17-04-2012

  • trooperdx3117 #67 1 year ago

    @Stompy you know it only got 6/10 on Eurogamer years ago so thats not exactly a great review really...........

  • d00dl #68 1 year ago

    Whaaat??? I don't remember it being more awful than any other platform game of 2001/2? I remember it being quite fun. I got it along with DOA 3, Quantum Redshift, the Sega GT/JSRF with my Xbox from Toys'R'Us. I'm sure I remember enjoying it (enough to finish it). Maybe I'm recalling through rose tinted glasses. Time to track down a disc of Blinx!

  • Toothball #69 1 year ago

    @The Bodybuilder

    Oh I enjoyed Headhunter all the way through. The news bulletins were funny, and the last line is a classic and one I'd like more people to have experienced. But I kept running into problems with the mechanics and AI exploits that broke the flow of the game, which I was reminded of from the issues with Blinx. Despite that I still talk about it fondly, which is why I'd enjoy a re-review to see whether it was just me.

  • captain-future #70 1 year ago

    oh my, this game was really shyte.