Rumor has it, if you try to talk to Dana Gould about Gex he'll put the Gex Hex on you and you'll wake up in the TV world, condemned to an eternity of making shitty pop culture quips. "That's for 12 years of Full House!" you'll shout as you jump weightlessly between platforms, collecting remotes that you hope will grant you freedom from this hell. Unfortunately, the lousy camera in Frankensteinfeld's castle causes you to fall into a pit for the third time, "File this under 'ouch'!"
Enter the Gecko is a "meme game," something it owes entirely to Gex's obnoxious quips. There is no singular element otherwise that is worth remembering. The platforming doesn't feel great, the camera is bad, Gex's movements feel awful, but they're also not bad in a way that is remarkable or especially egregious when compared to the countless other 3D platformers of the late 1990s. There is nothing special about it, other than the fact you get to hear Dana Gould belt out lines like "I'm flaming--in the manly way..." and "Terminator? Phone call for a Mr. Terminator."
It's a bit of a shame too, because the original Gex was a pretty decent 2D platformer, but by 1998 those kinds of games just didn't sell like they used to, the third dimension was in. It is a bit funny too how overly complicated Gex's character model is. It uses a skeletal system with "more bones than a real gecko," and all this to make the character exist in the most bland 3D platformer imaginable, but it does at least make it more immersive when Gex offers up one of his many hysterical one-liners, like "If I had a life, I'd be glad to get back to it!"
I was convinced to add Enter the Gecko and its sequel Deep Cover Gecko as bucket list replacements for Tomb Raider II and III, because there was just no damn way I was playing more of that. If there's one nice thing I can say about both of these games it's that I think I made the right choice in caving to peer pressure.
Enter the Gecko is a "meme game," something it owes entirely to Gex's obnoxious quips. There is no singular element otherwise that is worth remembering. The platforming doesn't feel great, the camera is bad, Gex's movements feel awful, but they're also not bad in a way that is remarkable or especially egregious when compared to the countless other 3D platformers of the late 1990s. There is nothing special about it, other than the fact you get to hear Dana Gould belt out lines like "I'm flaming--in the manly way..." and "Terminator? Phone call for a Mr. Terminator."
It's a bit of a shame too, because the original Gex was a pretty decent 2D platformer, but by 1998 those kinds of games just didn't sell like they used to, the third dimension was in. It is a bit funny too how overly complicated Gex's character model is. It uses a skeletal system with "more bones than a real gecko," and all this to make the character exist in the most bland 3D platformer imaginable, but it does at least make it more immersive when Gex offers up one of his many hysterical one-liners, like "If I had a life, I'd be glad to get back to it!"
I was convinced to add Enter the Gecko and its sequel Deep Cover Gecko as bucket list replacements for Tomb Raider II and III, because there was just no damn way I was playing more of that. If there's one nice thing I can say about both of these games it's that I think I made the right choice in caving to peer pressure.