GuyPercinn
1 review liked by GuyPercinn
Whenever Maximo swings his sword, it can either rebound off of hard surfaces or get stuck in wooden ones as he has to take a second to wiggle it out again. It begs the question: why’s this niche 3D platformer from when the PS2 was still new, about a cartoon Roman fighting the skeletons from Army of Darkness, making me think more about when and where I swing a sword than most games wholly predicated on smacking things with a sword released in the decades since?
This emphasis on positioning’s essential to what makes Maximo such a great translation of Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins into 3D. As early on as its second set of levels, which introduces barriers of thorny vines you can only safely cut down from a certain range, it becomes apparent that the difference between life and death’s often something as seemingly negligible as knowing that Maximo remains stationary if you slash once but takes a step forward if you slash twice. Even small interactions like that distinguish themselves from equivalent moments in other platformers because you can’t rely on your depth perception as much, given that Maximo’s camera is at a Dutch angle, sprinkling in perpetual spatial discomfort just in case the trademark difficulty inherited from its sister series wasn’t already giving you the business. It sounds dissimilar to how slight inclines or dips in the road often spell doom for Arthur, as does stuff like luring enemies out into open areas to minimise the risk of Maximo’s sword getting caught on something, but these things are really just a different execution of the same key principles – making virtually every second of getting from point A to B an exercise in problem-solving and demanding an intimate level of familiarity with your character.
To go along with its extra dimension, Maximo adds an extra layer of decision-making to the above in the form of its randomised ability system. It’s drowning in bonus moves you can obtain as random drops from defeated enemies or chests, which range from making your ground pound’s shockwaves do damage or unveil hidden treasure to turning your shield throw into a lingering hazard by holding down the button and transforming into an invincible skeleton who dishes out OHKO contact damage, among enough others that I was still finding new ones in the final levels. There are two catches to this, though, the first of which being that you can only have up to 12 abilities at a time. It seems more likely that this limitation was created intentionally rather than a result of technological restrictions, given that it might detract from the difficulty if you’d access to them all at once and forcing the player to adapt through RNG elements is G‘n’G 101. Even if the latter’s the case, though, the game still deserves credit for how they’re designed in such a way that none are unambiguously superior to the rest and all are heavily subject to the player’s circumstances. I regularly decided to forego abilities (or locked treasure chests which might’ve contained some) in certain stages where I might’ve coveted them in others, which speaks both to that quality and the wealth of variety present in its level design too.
The second thing to consider is that all abilities you haven’t selected as permanent are lost upon dying (which happens, a lot). Losing them, a life and your maximum health limit definitely makes you feel about as helpless as I felt in the car accident I had the morning prior to writing this, the frosty field I stood in for an hour afterwards incidentally giving me a greater appreciation for Red Dead Redemption 2’s shrinking horse bollock technology, the random nature of these drops counterweights frustration in that there’s inherently always a chance you’ll end up with abilities more appropriate for the situation at hand than those you had initially. As much was my experience with the final set of levels, in which an abundance of enemies whom you have to repeatedly stun with ground pounds were made significantly easier to deal with after I’d died and subsequently got one that increased my shockwave’s radius. Dynamic or what? If that sounds exploitable then worry not, because losing all your lives results in having to pay the medium’s most charismatic interpretation of Death an increasingly high amount of special coins each time it occurs (and which each take collecting 50 other items to obtain). They were one step ahead of us, gamers.
Charismatic’s a good summation of the whole package, and not just thanks to the cartoony art direction which is realised fully enough to be used as a selling point on the back of its PAL box. As indicated by the tagline at the top, the love of all things old school was one of the core sentiments behind Maximo, such that its director David Siller (whose role in the creation of Crash is keenly felt) went as far as illustrating the design of each of its levels on pen and paper like some kind of scribe. Enough time’s passed since its release that Maximo itself, and contemporary reception of it, now feels representative of that on some level; as standardisation's entrenched over time, you have to wonder if current audiences would be as open to a game so boldly off-kilter that its camera isn’t even screwed on straight.
It all makes for some short, sweet, replayable arcadey goodness wrapped up in the same wonderfully slapstick spookiness that makes Medievil such a visual delight. Start your year off right: the next time you come across some old game on here with a (bizarrely, as per) subpar average rating and a number of plays fun-sized enough to suggest it wasn’t a big deal in its day, please take a chance on it regardless, because you just might walk away with a new favourite.
This emphasis on positioning’s essential to what makes Maximo such a great translation of Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins into 3D. As early on as its second set of levels, which introduces barriers of thorny vines you can only safely cut down from a certain range, it becomes apparent that the difference between life and death’s often something as seemingly negligible as knowing that Maximo remains stationary if you slash once but takes a step forward if you slash twice. Even small interactions like that distinguish themselves from equivalent moments in other platformers because you can’t rely on your depth perception as much, given that Maximo’s camera is at a Dutch angle, sprinkling in perpetual spatial discomfort just in case the trademark difficulty inherited from its sister series wasn’t already giving you the business. It sounds dissimilar to how slight inclines or dips in the road often spell doom for Arthur, as does stuff like luring enemies out into open areas to minimise the risk of Maximo’s sword getting caught on something, but these things are really just a different execution of the same key principles – making virtually every second of getting from point A to B an exercise in problem-solving and demanding an intimate level of familiarity with your character.
To go along with its extra dimension, Maximo adds an extra layer of decision-making to the above in the form of its randomised ability system. It’s drowning in bonus moves you can obtain as random drops from defeated enemies or chests, which range from making your ground pound’s shockwaves do damage or unveil hidden treasure to turning your shield throw into a lingering hazard by holding down the button and transforming into an invincible skeleton who dishes out OHKO contact damage, among enough others that I was still finding new ones in the final levels. There are two catches to this, though, the first of which being that you can only have up to 12 abilities at a time. It seems more likely that this limitation was created intentionally rather than a result of technological restrictions, given that it might detract from the difficulty if you’d access to them all at once and forcing the player to adapt through RNG elements is G‘n’G 101. Even if the latter’s the case, though, the game still deserves credit for how they’re designed in such a way that none are unambiguously superior to the rest and all are heavily subject to the player’s circumstances. I regularly decided to forego abilities (or locked treasure chests which might’ve contained some) in certain stages where I might’ve coveted them in others, which speaks both to that quality and the wealth of variety present in its level design too.
The second thing to consider is that all abilities you haven’t selected as permanent are lost upon dying (which happens, a lot). Losing them, a life and your maximum health limit definitely makes you feel about as helpless as I felt in the car accident I had the morning prior to writing this, the frosty field I stood in for an hour afterwards incidentally giving me a greater appreciation for Red Dead Redemption 2’s shrinking horse bollock technology, the random nature of these drops counterweights frustration in that there’s inherently always a chance you’ll end up with abilities more appropriate for the situation at hand than those you had initially. As much was my experience with the final set of levels, in which an abundance of enemies whom you have to repeatedly stun with ground pounds were made significantly easier to deal with after I’d died and subsequently got one that increased my shockwave’s radius. Dynamic or what? If that sounds exploitable then worry not, because losing all your lives results in having to pay the medium’s most charismatic interpretation of Death an increasingly high amount of special coins each time it occurs (and which each take collecting 50 other items to obtain). They were one step ahead of us, gamers.
Charismatic’s a good summation of the whole package, and not just thanks to the cartoony art direction which is realised fully enough to be used as a selling point on the back of its PAL box. As indicated by the tagline at the top, the love of all things old school was one of the core sentiments behind Maximo, such that its director David Siller (whose role in the creation of Crash is keenly felt) went as far as illustrating the design of each of its levels on pen and paper like some kind of scribe. Enough time’s passed since its release that Maximo itself, and contemporary reception of it, now feels representative of that on some level; as standardisation's entrenched over time, you have to wonder if current audiences would be as open to a game so boldly off-kilter that its camera isn’t even screwed on straight.
It all makes for some short, sweet, replayable arcadey goodness wrapped up in the same wonderfully slapstick spookiness that makes Medievil such a visual delight. Start your year off right: the next time you come across some old game on here with a (bizarrely, as per) subpar average rating and a number of plays fun-sized enough to suggest it wasn’t a big deal in its day, please take a chance on it regardless, because you just might walk away with a new favourite.