The difficulty's been toned down a little, so you'll only slam your joypad on the floor instead of breaking it in half.

User Rating: 8.1 | Maximo vs Army of Zin PS2
By Shleco | Review Date:
If you thought you were good at games the original Maximo gave you a swift, deft kick in the groin to teach you a lesson. Waves of enemies and tonnes of platforms to leap across made it one hellish adventure. Essentially it was ‘back-to-basics’, a slice of old-skool gameplay which laughed in the face of the piss-poor nonsense churned out by talentless developers. I loved it, even though I couldn't beat it. Army of Zin is easier and a little bit more fluffy around the edges, a kitten to Ghost of Glory’s Panther. Except this kitten still has legions of adversaries after your boxer shorts and frustratingly difficult jumps to complete (what?). So it’s a bit easier but still harder than Mike Tyson on steroids (and he had a ‘kitten’ too, didn’t he?). But this difficulty seems to be now honed at the platforming sections rather than scrapping with the tin army. At one point in the game there was a jump so hard that we thought it would be impossible to get past, as it seemed the other platform we had to leap to was too far away. However, timing and technique are everything and once we had it sussed everything else seemed to click into place quite nicely. Obviously this sense of achievement is her-uge, though those frustrating moments still crop up but, tellingly, you won’t mind replaying the section until you do it too much to bear. Your enemies, Army of Zin (annoyingly without a ‘The’), are quite devious opponents. There are a lot of them and they’re not too mindless, with each mech having an array of attacks at their disposal. Some of their counterattacks are bloody vicious and initially catch you off your guard but soon you become more of a dab hand with your blocking technique. Annoyingly, they also defend your attacks and while the AI is relatively smart, combos tend to turn them into scrap quickly. It all gets a bit repetitive. However, such accusations of repetitive gameplay can’t be thrown at Army of Zin. For instance, it does not rely too heavily on the bane of the genre of insisting that you have to collect item X to place at Y to access Z and obtain the rest of the bleeding alphabet. Besides picking up souls and koins to aid your quest, this is a straight platforming experience, for which we are thankful. It all has a purpose, rather than being there for the sake of it. Nope, it’s just the mass cull of robots and do-or-die jumps that does it for us. The welcome pace of change comes in with the interaction with villagers, where you can talk to them for hints and by saving them from certain death you’ll be handsomely rewarded. Equally the presentation of the game has the Shake and Vac effect (puts the freshness back), with environments packed with detail and character. Everything is smoothly animated - you see bubbling toxic waters, fire flickering... it all matters. It’s inspirational and varied, from the extent of detail on the enemies to the levels, ranging from cornstalk mazes to sinister churches. Another impressive part of Maximo 2 are the boss battles. They certainly look the part but they’re also not as dull and uninspired as other games where you just walk up and hammer the buttons. Here you think and lap it up, actually enjoying the (sometimes substantial) challenge and another change in the pace. It all adds to the charm of the game, which most don’t have (notably it seems to be the American developers that have a problem with this). We’re not totally happy with the game. It lacks the sparky punch of the original which hit the PS2 two years ago and you feel that Capcom could have gone further with the series than make a few token changes - new weapons, boxer shorts... Undoubtedly the biggest disappointment is your old friend Grim (as in Reaper). We heard he’d have a bigger part in the game but in reality it is a mere cameo, offering invincibility to Max for a few seconds. And that’s it. Think for a second how awesome it would have been if you could have played as Grim for a few levels or perhaps there could have been a two-player co-op mode. It could have worked due to the hack and slash nature of the game and Zin sometimes seems like a missed opportunity in this respect. If you’ve played Maximo you know exactly what you’ll get if you buy this, albeit it’s been toned down a little, so you’ll only slam your joypad on the floor rather than throwing it and the console out of the window. We are a bit disappointed but Army of Zin is still brilliant, fusing old-skool cool with exhilarating exploration and a more difficult challenge than watching daytime TV. We’d go for it but our fuses aren’t as short as Verne Troyer. Is yours?

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