Extremely extremely strange that Warner Bros got WayFoward to make a Metroidvania based off of the Tom Cruise Mummy movie in 2017 and it was GOOD. It's not amazing, it's short and sweet but like it all works well and I had a good time. Worst part is having to kill your past self to get your shit back. That wouldn't be a problem if you kept your health upgrades, but you DON'T so you can just get 2 shot by enemies late game while trying to get your shit back. It sucked. But still, it's short enough to where that doesn't matter. It's pretty good. I also got it for like 5 bucks along with 2 other games though so that may be swaying my opinion. Who's to say?

A non-mobile movie tie-in video game is a pretty uncommon sight these days, let alone one that's a critically well recieved Metroidvania from WayForward of Shantae fame. I love me some Metroidvanias, so I picked it up for $14 when it was on sale this Halloween. I finally sat down and finished it yesterday and it was a very alright game Xp . I finished it in just under 4 hours with no deaths.

One of the main draws of this game is the fairly unique death mechanic. Because you're not a named character and just some faceless agent, when you die you are DEAD, as far the story is concerned. A new agent has to come in and take your place, and the old dead agent is now a victim of the Mummy's curse and you'll need to take them down the next time you go through that area. Maybe I was just trying not to die a bit too much, but I didn't really think the game was particularly hard, as I managed to do a no-deaths run of the game my first time through despite never seeing any footage of it before playing it, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm far from the best at Metroidvanias despite how much I like them. The death mechanic is neat, but I can only really give a hearsay description of it having never experienced it myself Xp . However, on a related note, because you're a faceless procession of soldiers, the game doesn't have any named characters or actual characters of any description. The story is basically non-existant short of a very bare-bones "go kill evil Mummy" plot. It's serviceable, but it's another mark against this game in an era where there are so many good Metroidvanias out there with excellent narratives.

The game plays like a WayForward take on Metroid. You don't have a melee weapon like Shantae's hair (the only Shantae game I've played is the first one that was on DSiWare that I thought was pretty bad, for the record), but you have a rifle with unlimited ammo that you can fire in 8 directions. The only issue with this is that your rifle bullets are kinda weak but also very small projectiles, and given that the spaces you're in are quite cramped, the enemies are often fairly small and/or quick as well as decently tanky, and fighting enemies is a real pain quite often. The most difficult part of the game isn't the bosses, it's the really annoying (but fairly low number of) enemy types throughout the game. Like Metroid has missiles for more damage, you can find new guns to use that use ammo enemies drop, and those guns are generally way better than your infinite-ammo peashooter. The combat is alright, but I thought it was just okay considering all the other great 2D run-and-gun action games out there that have such less frustrating enemy design and placement.

The world design is a bit odd, but I think that has to do with how your character moves. The corridors you go down feel really claustrophobic, but not in an anxiety-inducing way, but more in a "these are annoying to navigate" kind of way. You're constantly hitting your head trying to jump around because of how tall your character is, and the placement of platforms in some of the larger rooms had me retreading them quite often to go back up and do it again because I bumped my head on the ceiling. You can find extra bandoleers (I guess your soldier just wears dozens of them eventually? XD) just like missile tanks and extra med kits just like energy tanks around the world to increase your max ammo (for all weapons) and health (by 99, exactly like Metroid), but this game has no hidden walls that I could find. If you can see a room to get into, you can get into it. You dont' need to spend time whacking at every wall you see hoping it'll be hiding a secret, which is kind of a nice change of pace in a Metroidvania for once. The level design becomes more managable once you get a few power ups, but even then its still quite frustrating because of the nature of those power ups (you never get a wall-jump or a double-jump, unfortunately :/ ).

The last thing I wanna mention is the Switch port of the game. This game runs pretty badly on Switch. It's a quite nice-looking pixel-art design, but all the moving backgrounds combined with the moving enemies on screen make the framerate stutter like CRAZY very often, which is a bit of a problem in an action game like this as you can imagine. It's never a problem with bosses, as screens don't usually scroll in most boss fights, but it makes the annoying enemy types that much more annoying when your button presses are lagging behind a stuttering framerate. Regardless, the fact that the enemy types are so annoying, the platforming can be so irritating, and there is actually NO WAY to heal your health other than picking up drops from enemies or picking up another med kit/E-Tank, means the difficult of the game feels more artificial than legitimate. The game WANTS you to die because it wants you to see the neat death mechanic, but it doesn't feel its doing it in regards to legitimate challenge so much as it is purposefully clumsy game design.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. The Mummy: Demastered isn't a bad game, but it's a very underwhelming game for the gaming ecosystem it exists in. As a 4-hour Metroidvania on the same system that sports Hollow Knight, it is a really tough sell at its normal MSRP of $20 when you factor in its clunky design, bad port job, and non-existent story. You can do a lot better with your $20 on Switch if you're looking for a Metroidvania or really a good indie game in general. This game is an interesting novelty as a good movie tie-in from 2017, but not a game that is a must-play by any standard other than that.

I’m sorry but I couldn’t with this one. I love Metroidvanias and WayForward, but this just has too many frustrating and outdated design decisions, even for 2017. I got soft locked in the final area thanks to the death system which clearly wasn’t tested, and didn’t come back.

First some good news, the soundtrack RIPS. Every track is a synthwave banger and alone gave me the juice to keep playing. Add one whole star for that.

Ok now that that’s out of the way, the death system is insane. If you’re heavily armed and die, you go back to the last save where, not only do you do a runback (which itself is fine), but you have to do it at essentially level 1 and the further you are, the more impossible it is.

NOT to mention, every area has a Medusa-head enemy. Every single one. And they do way too much damage for a character with one health bar. Oh and here’s a fun piece of trivia, if you play on PC with a monitor over 60Hz, the game is bugged and some enemies will move too fast. That goes for some of the Medusa head enemies too. Fun

Some other thoughts. Bosses are too damage spongey, and if you run out of ammo for the good guns, you’re forced to just use your basic, which is painful because there’s no way to get more ammo mid fight.

I also understand this is a game from 2017, but Hollow Knight came out the same year, and Save Points not fully restoring health is unacceptable. Have fun going in between rooms to try to get health orbs. And I mean a lot. Even the highest orb refills such a small amount, so just filling one bar can take way longer than it should.

So that’s where I ended it. My zombie is too far, underwater with piranha that move too fast and erratically for my peashooter that only moves in set angles, with the best weapon so far, the flamethrower rendered completely unusable. That’s after the mummy enemies that Usain Bolt from a sarcophagus with no reaction time, the bird Medusa heads, the brain jumping enemies that are also impossible without the flamethrower, and fuck this.

I'm something of a sucker for WayForward's output so I shouldn't be surprised I ended up like this as much as I did yet here we are. When it first came out, I heard good things about the game but put it off until I caught it on a random sale and decided now was the time to see what it was all about. I was definitely surprised. While I knew it was a metroidvania, I didn't realize just how much of one it was. Typically these sort of games tend stray towards one of the formula or the other but I found this to be rather interesting in how it tried to walk right down the middle what with the level design, enemies, and general aesthetic leaning more toward Castlevania while character progression was distinctly Metroid. I think they nailed it owning in no small part to the short play time that makes for a fairly tight experience.

Criticisms do exist to some degree such as Russel Crowe's head popping up way too often to give direction, the strange death mechanic that should be punishing but isn't at all, and there's definitely an argument to be had if I'd had found this nearly as interesting if it was its own IP instead of it catching my interest as one of the rare "diamond in the rough" licensed games.

Still, this was my second go and it was as fun as my first so it definitely does something right.

To put 2 stars to a WayForward is something that hurts a lot personally, because it is one of my favourite studios and enjoyed every game I played from them so far. Not to say I was confident about this being another banger.

But this one is really lacking: Game design is mediocre in general, bosses are super generic and it really looks like it was done by a secondary team in WF.

At least the OST is amazing, even if it's not composed by Virt.

A mediocre and ultimately basic metroidvania. The most original idea is killing your past zombified self to reclaim your weapons and power-ups... which I wouldn't know about since I beat the whole game without dying once. Scattering 50 collectibles around the map only for them to award you nothing is literally just padding. Having knockback be a thing you need a power-up to turn off is silly sauce, as it causes some of the vertical platforming to be a chore. Backtracking is a pain because the fast travel points are too few and far between. There's also some slowdown which is unacceptable, even for a Switch version. Lastly, the game doesn't autosave before the final boss, meaning if your last save was from an hour ago and you beat the final boss, it takes you to your last save after the credits. That's a whole point docked what the actual fuck were they thinking.

All that said, everything else is standard Metroid affair. Story is basic, enemies are fine, weapons are good, controls are mostly tight, music is forgettable, level design is competent, and the bosses are a little too tanky. This game is basically Super Metroid but with a different coat of paint and not as polished or expansive. Honestly, the most impressive thing about this game is that it exists at all. A licensed movie game from 2017 based on a movie no one remembers made by fucking WayForward. I guess that Universal Comcast money was just too good to pass up.

I think all the positive buzz I heard about this was mainly just due to the connection with WayForward & the fact we got another one of the rare "pretty good tie-in games", so I think my expectations may have been set too high. This isn't a bad game by any stretch, the art direction & soundtrack are really wonderfully done if not even remotely resembling the movie it's based off of, but there were lots of little annoyances that piled up on me to the point where I just wanted to play a better Metroidvania.

The biggest, most constant hurdle for me was the very slippery controls; it always felt like a stop/start way of moving throughout the game & like I would slide off of ledges I'm trying to jump on. Obviously, for a genre the involves quick movement & tight controls this started to become really grating. Add to this very precise windows for damage & I got more frustrated as I went along. It's still a relatively fun platformer, but there were enough little issues that I'm not sure when I'd come back to it.

The Mummy Demastered is excellent. It's almost a joke; the derivative being better than the product it's based upon.

Games based on movies tend to be awful, so much so, there are very few that stand out as great. The Mummy Demastered has no right to be as good as it is, being based on a heavily panned movie that flopped so badly that it killed the cinematic universe it tried to jumpstart.

The soundtrack is also full of bangers, with some nostalgia-feel songs that work well with the surprisingly plumbed environments which blend seamlessly. The graphics are great and blend Egyptian mythology perfectly into a contemporary British setting that worked around the limits of the movie. It genuinely feels like Ahmanet is invading, with London streets covered in sand. Mummies rise alongside contemporary zombies, templar knights and skeletons. Locusts make for great fodder enemies as well as a means to work in a persistent Egyptian theme, and bosses are based on Egyptian deities and myths.

The metroidvania elements blend perfectly with a rogue-lite system. Dying results in a new agent being sent out and having to recover upgrades from the zombified former player character. The later in the game things get, the more deadly the predecessor becomes. Upgrades feel like upgrades, with a variety of weapons, artifacts and subweapons. Finding a new weapon in a barricaded room feels so satisfying, especially when it comes to learning what works effectively on different enemies.

Do I have any gripes? Not particularly. The metroidvania elements are superb, but there aren't any hidden rooms in the standard sense. The sealed rooms are closer to Metroid's doors that require a missile or beam. An upgrade later destroys walls, but as a means of creating a convenient path with very few secrets to be found like this.

The relics felt a little tedious, as they are little more than a rising number found in random containers, with no real variety or lore tied to them (but, then again, the movie it was based upon was as deep as a soup spoon, so...)

I feel a little sad that the franchise is dead in the water and dragged down any hopes of a sequel to this game with it. I would've loved to have seen different mythologies being tackled and how this would effect gameplay.

The game is short, so it definitely does not outstay its welcome. But it's an excellent experience, especially with challenges like trying to get through the game with one agent.

Wholly recommended as a game to blast through in a few short days, and it's worth going back to after a few years.

Buen metroidvania que destila calidad por cada poro y poco tiene que ver con la película en la que está basado, en cuanto a desarrollo y en cuanto a calidad. Estamos ante un juego de corta duración (en unas 6 horas se puede hacer todo) donde el objetivo será acabar con Ahmanet, la momia que pretende destruir el mundo tras ser liberada por accidente. Muy inspirado en grandes del género como Axiom Verge (por tanto también en Metroid) y Castlevania, este título ofrece un buen diseño de niveles, variedad suficiente de armas (metralletas, lanzamisiles, arpón, laser...) y habilidades que iremos descubriendo a medida que exploremos su mapeado con el backtracking tan típico del género (dash, salto alto, agarrarnos en los techos, bucear...). Buen píxel art, mejor banda sonora y, en definitiva, un título muy recomendable para todo el que le guste el género. Ha sido una grata sorpresa.

I picked this up because it's a confluence of things I like - Universal Monster movies, WayForward, licensed games, GENZOMAN, Metroidvania - and because the central gimmick sounded super interesting: die, and your avatar becomes one of the mindless undead, whom you have to gun down to recover your upgrades.

It's... fine.

The visuals are fine; they convey a lot of depth and detail for generally boring environments. The enemies are fine; there's a mix of undead blahthingies with bats rats crows and spiders. The upgrades are fine; they introduce some fun movement options and absolutely nothing else. The gameplay is fine; shooting and ammo necessitates some strategy to navigating firefights but they're over and done with quickly enough. The gimmick is fine; having to hunt down the former player requires running through enemies while underleveled but the former player is pretty fragile. The player characters are fine; they're just generic military guys, but they also aren't even trying to pretend I should care about Tom Cruise's character, which is funny.

The game doesn't do anything offensive or anything, but it doesn't do anything inoffensive, either. For as cool as the game's high concept is, there's just so little of consequence to the experience that it ends up being entirely disposable. You might be drawn in by the game's cool surface-level ideas; you might be turned off by the game doing nothing with them. Personally, I can't feel anything but right down the middle with this entry.

That of course makes this far and away better than its source material, but that goes without saying.

A solid Metroidvania that loses SERIOUS points by having its shiniest collectibles do absolutely nothing in-game.

I scoured every inch of the map, making sure not to miss anything, because that's what I do in every Metroidvania I play. But completion didn't yield anything in this game besides a slightly altered jpeg before the credits roll. The ending itself was weak, and it all felt a bit hollow when it was over.

That being said, the controls are great, the weapons are a lot of fun, and the mechanic of having to kill your zombified corpse to get your stuff back is really engaging.