Microsoft lowered the price of Blinx down to 30 bucks so I was able to pick up a used copy for $22. Very groovy.
Now Blinx is some thing I thought I would never see. It is a good Japanese made game on Xbox that was NOT made by Sega. Wow!
Now at first glance it looks like some lame ass kid game or a rip off of Sonic, Mario Crash or what ever but in the truth
Blinx the Time Sweeper is a damn fine game. Now the next question you are probably asking is "Now Jake I play Halo so I am used to extremely dope games, How does Blinx rate dope wise?" and I would have to report that preliminary testing have confirmed extreme dopatude of Blinx.
Now being made in Japan is very important to this game. It was designed by a company in Yokohama called Artoon and was financed and published by Microsoft Game Studios. Now one of the purposes of this game is to get the Japanese market excited about the Xbox. The Xbox in Japan is facing a really bad chicken and egg situation. No one will buy it because there are no Japanese made game for it and no one will make Japanese games for it because it isn't selling well in Japan.
But when I say Blinx is Japanese but he doesn't sit around sipping green tea and eating sushi. I mean it is a highly polished and lush game experience. The world of Blinx is cute and bright but really well done and full of eye candy. In fact the entire game reminds me of a Nvidia technical demo showing off the power of their chips. The lighting is details and dynamic, the textures are wonderful and bump mapped and the entire damn game looks like it was ray-traced animation by Pixar. Blinx is also not a pushover game. I can't just beat it in a cake walk and it is actually going to be a challenge to finish it. The story is classic platform game and even has a kidnapped princess that you have to rescue ala Mario. The game play involves Blinx a bipedal cat with a magical vacuum that can alter time and suck up objects and then spit them out.
As you play everything that happens in the game is recorded to the HD in a scratch file so you can do a time effect and run back the clock and perform Matrix like effects. I love how when you get hit the game actually rewinds like a VCR so you can avoid the bad guys, The music is good but I don't find myself humming it like Super Mario music. Also some dumb ass on an Amazon review assumed that Blinx speaks Japanese with subtitles but in fact they characters in this game speak a language of their own design like Klingon.
I can't wait to play the sequel that they are no doubt making right now. If games of this quality were out in Japan at the launch of the Xbox I doubt that Microsoft would be having the problems that they are having with the Japanese market.
Blinx is a kick ass console platform game that is not held back by sticking to the cliches and it combines visual effects that match and sometimes surpasses Super Mario Sunshine.
What an informative post! Found you through Dania. I enjoyed perusing your site and I linked you. Take care.
Why thank you! I love getting comments like this. I like reviewing and covering video games both new and old. A friend of mine is a syndicated news paper columnist who review video games but I started writing about them and reviewing them before I knew about his success. I like to review a lot of things and I think it is the reviews that separate my site from most other blogs.
That and the fact that you write about things other than the errata of your everyday existence. Far too many blogs are about how that girl Becky in 4th period algebra was a colossal bitch, or about how the author wants to marry/stalk Justin Timberlake/Christina Aguilera/Emo Phillips and keep them in a jar in their dorm room/mom's basement and grow clones from their greasy hair. Ech.
Yours at least tries to be entertaining and useful. That makes it a Good Blog.
But I do think that Becky in 4th period algebra IS a colossal bitch.