I remember hearing about Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy years ago in a gaming magazine. It sounded like such an awesome idea for a game and innovative to boot. However, by the time it came out, I had forgotten all about it and never picked it up. But when I saw it in a local video game store for a bargain price, I had to pick it up. While it isn’t the greatest game, it most certainly is a memorable experience. Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is the story of two totally different, but equally interesting characters. There is Sphinx, the brash and cocky warrior in training, and Tutankhamen, the young and incredibly clumsy prince of one of the lands. Both of these brave souls are going to have to use all of their wits and respective skills to overcome the forces of evil that are plaguing this Egyptian-styled world. There isn’t much else to be said about this story that isn’t a huge spoiler, but suffice it to say that this story has enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. Controlling each of your characters is actually very easy and seems fairly derivative of the Legend of Zelda games. You have your jump button, your attack button (or hide button in the case of the Mummy) and an action button used to activate levers and open doors. The Y button and the L and R triggers can have one of several items assigned to them so that they can be used on the fly however you choose to customize your controls. This comes in handy with the variety of items you get, from a powerful shield to protect yourself, a blowgun with a variety of uses and the Capture Beetles. These items are used in an almost Pokemon like fashion to capture enemies for a variety of purposes. Two of these creatures can actually be used to open up your path through the game by setting fire to, or blowing up, obstructions. Many abilities you will have are not open from the beginning, requiring that you get an item of some sort to actually activate it. The controls are actually fairly responsive and you will very rarely ever find yourself dying due to sluggish controls. It can be a bit annoying as your characters need a bit of wind up to jump far enough to make it across many of the harder jumps. This is more of a minor nuisance than anything else. The graphics are very good considering that the game is several years old. I found myself on more than one occasion staring at the environments with a huge grin on my face, genuinely enjoying the scenery and the world that has been created for this game. The majority of the characters and enemies are animated incredibly well and the game plays smoothly with very few complaints in the graphics department. The sound is equally as entertaining and there are many little sound effects that are designed to amuse you and draw you into the game world. It’s very clear that much thought was put into the graphical and sound design for this game and it is very much appreciated. However, all is not hunkey dorey with this game. There is a lot of combat in this game when you are controlling Sphinx and it is actually very hard to manage at times. Even though Sphinx has a simple three hit combo that can handle most enemies, without any form of target lock it gets frustratingly hard to hit enemies when they are moving around too much. You will usually end up chasing around a creature, trying desperately to hit it. This could be a bit more excused if not for the next complaint: the boss fights. In many platformer games, the boss fights are almost never head on fights requiring some strategy to defeat them. However, this game takes it to an annoying extreme. None of the bosses can be fought head up, requiring some sort of trick to get to their weak spot so that you can hurt them. You are also never shown any hint as to what you have to do to kill them, leaving you to either blunder through it or look it up on a website like I did. Amusingly enough, only the final boss is really obvious enough to figure out without much difficulty. I thought that was very odd. Even though this game clearly had a lot of promise, it definitely feels like it was rushed through the gate as many plot points are never resolved. However, as it stands, this game is still a good buy. It is a fun little game that will entertain you for hours so long as you can handle some frustrating platforming areas and a few really annoying boss battles without pulling out your hair. This game isn’t for everyone but it’s a shame more people never picked this game up, they are really missing out.
Pros: Fun platforming with Sphinx, Incredibly amusing and innovative puzzles with the Mummy, interesting storyline and a very cool setting.
Cons: The combat system is too loose and hard to manage, boss fights tend to leave you in the dark as to how to beat them, the game feels rushed as many story points are left hanging, and many of the areas are more trial than error than they are challenging.
Score: 7/10
Recommendation: With its bargain bin price, you can’t go wrong buying this game.
Other Helpful Reviews for Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is a great game, which has multi genre Gameplay that is very well put together and works great. Predominantly it is an action game, but has adventure elements to it. Also the game mixes in som... Read Full Review
There's alot of things you can do in this game as you once in a while switch off.From Sphinx, to Mummy, or Mummy, to Sphinx. I wish Mummy would get a weapon, than the game would be much easier. Than again, Mummy's world ... Read Full Review
