Blinx (Xbox) Artoon/Microsoft
By hook or by crook, Blinx wowed many attendees at E3 2002, selling folks on the promise of traditional platforming gameplay based on the unique premise of time control. As Blinx, players could control time in five different ways, doing things like rewinding back to before a death, or pausing moving spikes to allow passage. Given the Xbox's lack of traditional platform games, Blinx seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. And, with his unsettling, Xbox-green eyes, he might have even made a plausible mascot for the system.
Blinx is armed with a huge vacuum and can control time ... supposedly.
As it happens, the final product under delivered -- big time. Instead of the adventure-style character platformer most people expected, Blinx turned out to be an extremely simplistic action game wherein the main goal was merely to exterminate all the enemies in each level. While this tried-and-true formula has worked in the past, various parts of Blinx's implementation ranged from average to mediocre. Worst of all, the time control powers turned out to be nothing more than a gimmick, and an annoying one at that. When all was said and done, Blinx failed to live up to sales expectations and became the butt of countless jokes at some of the Internet's pricklier gaming forums. Talk of Blinx's mascot-hood is long gone, and word on a sequel is thin on the ground. Such is the fate of failed platform heroes -- here today, then gone in a blink.
Ben: I have to admit that I've been one of the more vocal critics of Blinx, but with good reason, I think. For one, few games have made me angrier. No, not through frustration or challenge (indeed, I made it to the last boss); Blinx angered me because it was so pointless. It was a tedious exercise in platforming that focused on gaming muscles best left alone.
Now, it's unfun to walk around levels using a shoddy targeting system to shoot trash at enemies, but positively infuriating when you have to contend with knucklehead game and level design at the same time. Consider the time powers. To use 'em you have to collect like-colored trinkets dropped by vanquished baddies, but don't get a wrong color mixed up in there -- if you do, you might be screwed and have to restart the level. And, when you do manage to get some powers stockpiled, you'll notice that the only one worth a damn is "pause." Heck, that's the paper-thin idea behind just about every boss battle in the game -- pause them and then shoot them. I hope you don't die in the process, though, or else you'll have to trek back to an earlier stage and max out your stockpile of pauses again. Please, tell me when this begins sounding fun.
Spoiler: It never is. I'm surprised that more critics and publications didn't realize this. We certainly didn't see it ending up in many "Best of 2002" features, did we?
ferricide: I knew from the first second that Blinx was unveiled that it was a case of hype over quality. I mean, the game is fine on its own merits, really. It's got some unique gameplay mechanics that aren't exactly perfectly executed, but it's an interesting little game. Somehow Microsoft decided it was a huge deal, though, and it got catapulted into a limelight that it never should have got anywhere near. What confuses me more is how Artoon, the developer, continually pushes out mediocre games despite being made up of ex-Sonic Team members. There's promise there, but it's never yet been realized. Whether or not we see a Blinx 2 (my guess is not) I'm still waiting for them to come up with something that makes people sit up and take notice for the right reasons.
Psylancer: When Microsoft showed Blinx at E3 2002, I thought the game had potential. Sure, the character was a stupid, goggle-wearing cat with a mystical vacuum cleaner, but the various time powers had the makings of a really cool and really original platform game. Blinx was going to be the mascot that led the Xbox into the hearts of millions of gamers, but it's kind of hard to do that when the game you star in sucks.
Blinx's time powers were way gimmicky and poorly implemented. Even though it's still in beta stages, Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: Sands of Time has already done a far better job with time manipulation. At the end of the day Microsoft was left with a novel gimmick that was feebly implemented into a crap game ... and poor Blinx was last seen begging for change in the woods of Redmond.
Blinx (Xbox) Artoon/Microsoft
