Extremely original gameplay and a compelling storyline somewhat ruined by the great god CA$H.

User Rating: 8.6 | Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy PS2
By Behlazur | Review Date:
WARNING : Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is a masterpiece. Ignore all negative reviews and but it now. No, wait! Read this before... Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is set in a pseudo-egyptian universe filled with imaginative characters and unique enemies and monsters. You are the demi-god Sphinx and are set on a quest for the Blade of Osiris along with your "friend" Horus, another apprentice of Imhotep. After getting rid of the pretentious Horus, you get your hands on the legendary Blade of Osiris. But then a cataclysm occurs and sends you to a mysterious area. The first thing that you'll notice right at the beginning of the opening cinematic sequence, there is no voice acting AT ALL! While this really sucks (A LOT!), you'll get used to it and won't be so much annoyed with it after about an hour of playing. And when you know that this game is published by THQ, a pretty rich company, you can only think that they should have put more $$$ on Sphinx to get some good voice actors, or at least some weak ones like those in Silent Hill 4, it would have been better... :) The gameplay in Sphinx is very original, but you won't notice it in the first hour or so. In fact, the very beginning of Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is pretty boring. Since you don't have any weapon, you can't fight the few enemies that litter the lava-filled realm you start in. This place, Uruk, really wasn't a good place to start the game, because of the presence of lava. You'll have to get used to Sphinx's way to jump, and because of the annoying camera, it'll be even longer than in most other platformers to know where, when and for how long to jump. But when you finally get your hands on that Blade of Osiris, it will start to get interesting. There won't be much fighting in the early stages of the game, but the combat is one of the best parts of the game nonetheless. Not long after getting the sword, you'll be teleported to a "Mysterious Location". But before taking control of Sphinx again, you'll meet, or rather control, Tutankhamen, a prince, somewhere in Egypt. This is an exploring-only level, as will all Tut levels be. You'll have to collect many amulets before being captured and turned into a mummy by the evil Set and his sorcerer in an unknown place. Now try to guess where Sphinx landed... The graphics in Sphinx are simply jaw-dropping. I guess the developers at Eurocom spent much more time on the graphics, since they didn't have any voice acting to integrate (that sucks so much I had to mention it twice). The character models are awesome, the environments are very detailed, making Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy the second best-looking PS2 game, right behind Jak II in my opinion. (And the third one is Silent Hill 3) But I'm not finished with the gameplay! After a few more levels as Sphinx, your leader Imhotep manages to revive Tutankhamen, but even with this illusion of life, he's still dead, so he can use his invincibility to his advantage by setting himself on fire to burn wooden structures, electrocuting himself to activate electric devices (in ancient Egypt??? Weird...), flattening himself like a pancake to pass through fences easily, and a few other torture methods... :) That's great sadistic fun... About halfway through the game, Sphinx also learns how to capture monsters, to sell them for golden scarabs or use them in combat. He'll also learn a few more skills, like somersaulting, fast swimming, using a blowpipe, and some other moves. There are many, many, many mini-games to play, like gauntlets, memory games, sequences games, shooting galleries, luck games... BUT THERE ARE NO VOICES!

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