Well, I completed Gex; Gex: Enter the Gecko; and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko from the Gex Trilogy release, and after some consideration I decided to count them as Shocktober games. For one, a huge chunk of all 3 games are taken up by the Horror Channel (or horror-adjacent 3's Egypt and ghost cowboy-filled Western Channels), probably at least 1/5 the content if not 1/3. For another, in Gex 2 and 3 Gex is wearing costumes themed to the channel, so it's in the Halloween spirit.
I never played Gex 1 before now, and it fucking sucks. It's an absolutely wretched experience, between the gotcha deaths; slippery controls; the long, labyrinthine levels (with no indication of where to go, naturally); and the hidden bonus stages you HAVE to perfectly complete in order to unlock the final world. This game is basically unplayble without save states and rewind, which this collection has. It is kinda neat that Gex can stick to walls and ceilings both in the foreground and back, but it's just not enough to make this game remotely enjoyable to play. Dana Gould is also probably his most annoying in the entire series in this entry. How? How in the world did this spawn a franchise?
Gex 2 was a game I played a ton of back on the N64, and it's still a pretty enjoyable game now. By far the game's biggest issues are a stubborn camera (typical of the era) and repetition. There are 6 themes spread out across 13 levels, each level having up to 5 remotes to find (3 of which will send you out of the level), and that's not counting the bonus levels. You just see way too much similar content, but what is here is still fun.
And no, this release is based on the PS version, so you don't get the N64-exclusive levels, though they are present in the collection in video form so they weren't forgotten.
I never played Gex 3 back in the day, and playing it now I'm torn on whether I like it more than Gex 2, as it does some things better and some worse. On the bright side, there are 11 levels, and they're each a unique theme. No theme gets re-used, outside of the bonus stages. The game also adopts a bit of the Banjo-Kazooie hub world structure, with levels accessed from themed areas instead of just generic TVs in a generic hub.
On the downside, the levels are surprisingly long for what they are, and while hidden remotes are gone this time the collectible remotes have gotten more annoying than they should be. You could just blast through levels in Gex 2 if you knew where you were going, but Gex 3 is a very plodding game by comparison. Instead of collecting just a set number of collectables (but not all of them) for a remote, there are 100 fly coins in each level and you have to find them all. This includes coins dropped by enemies, and there is no wiggle room. They're basically the notes from Banjo now, because everyone loved collecting those. -_-
If you're going for all the remotes, it just makes the game a slog. I ended up just giving up at one point after the particularly awful Mythology level (which is different than the N64 version that came later) and just skipping the final 4 levels, going straight to the final boss.
Overall, Gex 2 and 3 aren't the most amazing games, but I had a decent enough time with them.
Currently playing through Silent Hill f, which is...different. I'm not sure yet whether I like it.
Topic: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR (Read 3839 times)
