Review: Gex
I played the PlayStation 1 GEX games a bunch as a pre-teen, so much so, I would have considered myself a fan of the series. I remember owning an A3 sized GEX 3 poster that I nabbed as a freebie from a magazine and having it up on my wall for years. Over twenty years on, and I have not played the games since they came out. I have heard terrible things over the years, all making me question my taste in gaming as a child, so going back to them now, I figured I was going to dislike them, much to my child-forms dismay. I played this first one via the recent Limited Run HD collection on the Switch, which was recently on sale for the reasonable asking price of £10 / $13. I believe the first game in this collection was based on the Panasonic 3DO version — which I had never played before.
I booted into the game afraid of what memories I was about to ruin - however, I was pleasantly surprised!
Right off the bat, I felt the visuals impressed. They look better than they did in my mind's eye, and both the controls and level design hold up. The 2D pixel map art is gorgeous, and some of the enemy animations impressed me. Difficulty is challenging but it never feels impossible. There are extra lives and power-ups everywhere, so it was easy enough to keep making progress. While I found myself sometimes getting hit by off screen foes, GEX feels like a game that wants you to see it through to its end. The gameplay loop suffers slightly with how it kicks you back out to the map screen on death, slowing down progress. Having to wait for the map screen to load, then head back into the level, felt a chore. It would have benefit more from a “quick resume” like feature, resuming play from the level and avoiding the map screen entirely. Thankfully, this Switch HD Collection version allows for quick saves and rewinds during gameplay, so all of this can be avoided if so desired. The HD collection version of this first title did seem a little strange, as the password system and menu options are missing entirely. Both the rewind and quick save system after every level is an improvement, but still - it felt strange to remove the options from the original. It is not a 1:1 remake of the game I remember, which is not what I expected.
Here we go then. It’s tail time. The elephant in the room is Gex's quips. I liked the oneliners back in the day, but not anymore. GEX, voiced in this version of the game by Dana Gould, is so annoying. Being generous, it is impressive how these voice clips play during so many different contexts within the stages themselves - with specific lines being called if you are underwater, hanging on a wall, etc - but they often repeat, and they are just not funny. These must have driven my parents mad back in the mid 90s, and like my parents back then, I began to lose my sanity hearing them today. Sorry, Gould-heads, these are just not for me!
Despite his grating dialogue, I powered through GEX and had a lot of fun revisiting old memories. Over the years I have often heard people compare GEX with the likes of Bubsy the Bobcat, as two equally crap failed platforming mascots. I feel if you were to compare the first titles in both series side by side, there is a gulf in quality between the two games. Bubsy plays awfully, with bad controls, unfair difficulty, and grating voice acting. GEX plays competently, with solid visuals, decent controls, and grating voice acting. I guess the mute button was invented for a reason!
GEX being hailed as “best in show on 3DO” doesn't say a lot about that systems library. It is good, but it is not great. I think there are better 16-bit platforming games out there, let alone 32-bit ones. Still, I was expecting a painful time revisiting the wise-cracking green goofs first adventure, and I enjoyed my time with it. It is a shame the same could not be said for the second game - GEX’s first foray into the world of 3D gaming - which I started after beating this and swiftly dropped. Oh well - c'est la vie!
As well as on classic systems, GEX is currently playable via the GEX Trilogy, which is available digitally and physically on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S | X. This review was based on the Nintendo Switch version of that collection, played on a Nintendo Switch 2.
Lupin says: “Hey, I remember turning into a lizard, once. I’m certain it involved jumping
up into a tree and climbing around on all fours. Come to think of it, was that me, or ol’ pops?”
