The GEX Trilogy Is Finally Here, And I'm Already Wishing It Stayed Buried In The Past

I grew up with Gex. My parents weren’t always around and my older siblings had either long moved out or were giant stoners, so time and time again I’d lose myself in whatever was put in front of me. One day, after perusing a car boot sale with my Dad, that was a copy of Gex: Enter The Gecko for the original 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation.

I played this and its sequel to death, but in the two decades that have since followed, never did I expect them to surface again. Yet here I am, sitting down to play 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Limited Run’s Gex Trilogy, which features all three games in the trilogy, alongside a deluge of additional material r෴anging from trailers, artwork, commercials, and more. It’s a comprehensive collection that anyone with an interest in the misguided platforming icon’s history should jump into. But as a game worth🧸 playing, it unfortunately falls short. Either that, or it was never any good to begin with.

Gex Is A Charming Time Capsule Of Outdated Pop Culture References

The very concept of Gex is delightfully archaic. He is a talking lizard whose arch nemesis is an evil robot called Rez who takes control of The Media Dimension, a weird reality made to essentially house every single television show ever ♋created. Each channel is a level, running the gamut from cartoons to horror to super sentai in which Crystal Dynamics stretches both its mechanical and graphical muscles. Each new stage is a celebration of cliché in which you’re tasked with picking up random collectibles and completing set objectives to earn remotes.

You will then use these to unlock new stages and boss battles before finally drawing✃ closer to the final showdown with Rez. At the time, it was a fun and effective platformer, even if it'd never had a chance to stand toe-to-toe with Spyro or Crash Bandicoot. Part of this weird charm was Gex himself, a smart-mouthed gecko who, when he isn’t saving the world, can be found sitting in his living room binging television like there’s no tomorrow. It’s why every line of dialogue he speaks is a reference to something that was slightly topical three entire decades ago, meaning new players are either going to be very confused or very annoyed.

The player runs through a field of flowers in the Gex Trilogy.

Did you know that Gex was voiced by a different actor depending on whether you had the US or EU ve𝐆rsion of the game? The delivery is so different that he feels like a different characte💖r.

The gameplay itself is serviceable. While the or🐼iginal Gex is a 2D platformer that has you doing far more crawling along walls and swatting enemies with your tail, transitioning to 3D is when the titular gecko truly found hi𝄹s feet. Deep Cover Gecko and Enter The Gecko both allow you to explore varied environments by jumping, bouncing, crawling, or even flying around with an anthropomorphized gundam. Exploring each new environment was a lot of fun, even if being made to restart each level from scratch whenever you collected a remote always sucked.

Limited Run Could Have Shown Him The Quirky Gecko More Respect

Gex runs through a christmas level in Gex: Enter The Gecko.

From that perspective, all three of these games are passable platformers that nostalgia will do most of the heavy lifting for, but it’s a shame this updated collection does next to nothing about the visuals or controls. It’s a basic package with a number of worthwhile bonus features, but it 🌞feels like, ever since its reveal, we were promised something more. What you have here are three classic titles being emulated in the most basic fashion, despite Limited Run clai🍃ming its ‘Carbon Engine’ was capable of making them more enjoyable and approachable than ever.

All the common problems that plagued 3D platformers of the late 90s are present here, and they taint your enjoyment now just as much as they did back then. I wanted something more like the recently released 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Croc Remastered, which allowed you to flick between new and old visuals at the touch of a button while also offering many of the similar bonus materials seen here. It could have been the best of both worlds, but instead it delivers on one front while failing to offer a worthwhile gameplay 🔴experience. Updated controls, smoother visuals, or any sign it’s not just emulating three very old games and calling it a day would have been wonderful.

But right now, the Gex Trilogy falls short, and I’m not sure any amount of updates will fix the lac♔klustre effort on display here. The bonus materials are worth the price of admission for a video game historian complete with a healthy dose of morbid curꦅiosity, but otherwise this is not the return I was hoping for. Gex could have been due a serious critical re-evaluation, but instead he’s doomed to remain in the clutches of mediocrity.