The camera is dogged by every problem that 3D cameras had during this generation AND honks at you like a pervert whenever it refuses to cooperate. Agonizing. This rigidity does enable inspired uses of perspective from time to time, but they're not frequent enough to be worth it.

It would be one thing if the jokes were merely bad; instead, they are bad, repeated ad nauseam, and don't even make sense half the time. "This is like an all-nighter at Richard Simmons' house," Gex quips while in the technology world. What? That is not even a joke; that's saying "Richard Simmons" and hoping someone will laugh. I mostly played this to see if it tapped into its cultural moment in a way that justified its solid sales, but it truly is just a Super Mario 64 clone that feels like it was conceived and orchestrated by someone in the beginning stages of a dissociative disorder. Imagine meeting an unironic Gex fan in the wild. Chilling.

Obviously never reaches the creative or technological highs of Super Mario 64, but it's a pretty nifty clone with good graphics for the system and tight controls - not including the initially novel but ultimately infuriating camera that will send you to your untimely doom more times than one. And just in case you misinterpreted that, I didn't mean that it's just a janky camera system that might get you killed - no, it absolutely will get you killed from time to time and that's just a fact one must live with when picking this game up. I think most of its major problems for me can be tied directly to that, otherwise though this is pretty swift and occasionally funny with its incessant barrage of dated but sturdy pop culture references ("In a land before time, when Saturday Night Live was funny..." aged like a fine wine, along with plenty of others - the Austin Powers impressions grate, though). Samurai Night Fever, This Old Cave, and Honey I Shrunk the Gecko are the standout levels + BGMs imo. Not too shabby, way better than the first one.

Yeah idk about this one chief. I like the concept of gex and while some people find the character annoying (and i can kinda see where they are coming from with that), I personally think the lil gecko is really charming. However, what isn't charming is playing this game. It is structured like mario 64 where you collect a main mcguffin in order to progress to more and more levels, which is pretty solid design to start, and the level designs are solid enough. The real problem just comes in the camera. This game just does NOT have a cooperative camera at all, as it constantly moves around and gets stuck on level geometry and just overall doesn't show what it really should be showing. Couple that with the reasonably low framerate on playstation and you get a game that kinda gave me a headache while I was playing it. This is also the only platformer I have played where I genuinely had a hard time telling depth in the screen, so take what you will with that as well. The level themes are also all rather uninspired and generic, with both no reasonable landmarks in the levels plus the short draw distance which make the levels surprisingly easy to get lost in. All in all, the game has a solid foundation and charming characters, but the actual gameplay can be downright painful.