2017's The Mummy was the attempt to kickstart a new movie multiverse, one that was to feature all the classic Universal movie monsters. It's fair to say it wasn't a success, with me stating in my 5/10 review "...all too often it came across as generic and a little bit dull". One good thing that the film spawned however was a video game, The Mummy Demastered. This was so called as rather than go for a high budget modern look, this instead styles itself on sprite based 2D metroidvanias of the nineties.
The game has a similar plot to the movie, but here, rather than playing as Tom Cruise's character, you are instead in the boots of a nameless soldier. This takes place mainly underground around London, where the resurrected ancient Egyptian, Ahmanet is planning to cause untold misery by summoning Set, the Egyptian God of Death. That really is it for the simple story, with your progression linked to wherever Ahmanet has travelled to next. Each encounter with the mummified woman sees her summoning a typically room filling boss, before she teleports away.
This felt like an old school Metroidvania, something that would have been fine normally. Having just came off of the grand Blasphemous II, this felt a little archaic and generic to delight too much. One neat idea is that should your character die, you will respawn as a completely new soldier, with your first task to hunt down the zombified remains of the previous soldier, in order to takes his weapons and upgrades. This gave things a slight Soulsborne type feel.
This is more old school in that you don't earn any kind of XP as you play, enemies respawn should you leave the room they are in. There are various power-ups to help you access new areas, most useful is a rope that allows you to travel between areas, you also get the ability to run, jump super high, climb across ceilings, and my favourite, a dash move that lets you zoom off in any direction. There are health and ammo power-ups that give you more of each, but the game favours increased ammo over any other form of assistance. As expected this is one huge level, perhaps around a quarter smaller than Blasphemous II's map, and with areas that blur into one at many parts. There are caves, sewers, forests, and a sand covered city, with one late area, a giant Gothic clock tower that would not felt out of place in a Castlevania. There are fast travel points and save rooms, but even with those the game is cumbersome to get around thanks to the enemies.
Some of the smaller enemy types are fine, but in general the default enemies are bullet sponges, with even a bone throwing skeleton requiring lots of ammo to kill. The monster selection isn't that inspired, with spiders, rats and insects being the ones you will encounter most. By default you have a machine gun, with many more powerful weapons to find. Aside from the machine gun these other guns all require limited ammo to use, and so I saved them for boss fights. The bosses themselves are a highlight in terms of design, a huge scarab, a fight against a giant crocodile beast who is constantly chasing you through a level, and an undead magician were all fun. The problem is how much of a bullet sponge they all are. Bosses went on for far longer than it felt they should have done, with it being a battle of attrition to eventually kill them. Partly this was due to my path through the game. Up until three quarters of the way through I only had access to three different guns. After some exploration of old areas to find secrets I suddenly had lots more far more powerful weapons. Favourite of these was the plasma rifle and the quad rocket launcher, these made the final boss a cakewalk.
I think if I had played this first, The Mummy Demastered would have appealed a lot more. Coming off a more modern version of a Metroidvania I couldn't help but feel this felt a little too old fashioned, while the barebones unexciting story left a lot to be desired. This does capture the feel of a Metroid game in places, with this feeling more like that due to the gun combat, than a Castlevania, even if enemy design-wise, this has more in common with that. At just over four hours (with me having achieved 96% map clearance, this was perfectly adequate, if also uninspired.
SCORE:
No comments:
Post a Comment