I initially tried this out from a suggestion, but from all the other games coming up and not being on the best state of mind I struggled to keep my attention until later I varied up my streaming list to keep things interesting.

Because of this I intend to come back to this later and give it a real try.

Gameplay + Streaming

I appreciate this game a lot because it tries hard to cut above its weight and throws everything at the wall to see what sticks. Has details that are completely unnecessary or remnants of old development time, loaded with bizarre sights and sounds, and is just an incredibly dark game as a whole.

It doesn't nail everything it does, and finds itself having a mixed bag in its difficulty for it. But hey, it's got more love and effort than you'd believe. Worth a look and worth digging into the development of this game, fascinating stuff!

This game is Super Mario 64 for the PS2/Xbox. It adds a completely unnecessary element of dark story but then doesn't follow up on it for any of the game except for one middle cutscene and the end. The movement and level design are very reminiscient of SM64 and are dull versions of that. I think worlds 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 were pretty good, 4 was okay, and 5, 8, 9 were pretty bad. The game was going to be a 5/10 for me but then I fought the final boss which was some of the most frustration I've ever felt when playing a game even after my friend, and bad game requester, VivianConquest, looked up the GameFAQs guide to tell me the best strats. If it wasn't a required bit of the game then I wouldn't care, but being the final boss and being that bad left a very sour taste in my mouth for this game.

My contrarian ass is always on the lookout for another miscarriage of Gamer Justice, failed assessments of misunderstood secret gems of olde - it's my role as tastemaker ambassador in chief to purify the well and let the world drink full with a hidden mineral spring of mastapieces. Vexx looks like if Hugo the Troll listened to Lacuna Coil, why did I think this would be any good. The best compliment I can give this game is that it's "fascinatingly ugly", another misguided 00's attempt to cross Soul Reaver with Banjo Kazooie. Just dispassionately flopping onto the collectathon genre with a sauceless platter of 14 worlds and 100 orbs and 6 skulls and 81 hearts, it's kinda funny it's kinda sad.

Vexx attempts to capture the vibrant spirit of classic 3D platformers, featuring ambitious level design and expansive worlds to explore. Its unique mechanic of collecting hearts to power up the menacing War Talons adds intriguing combat potential. Unfortunately, Vexx is held back by a frustratingly inconsistent camera system, awkward controls, and a difficulty that often feels unfair rather than challenging. While there's some hidden potential for platforming fans, Vexx largely remains a relic of its era.

started at like 9 pm ish, writing this at 2:52 am 5/13/2023

ive only started this game today, got to 12 hearts i think, but holy fuck

this game really does feel like an sm64 if it was made on the next generation

the game honestly really does look like an ultraspecced n64 game to me, but i honestly like it for that

lot of the textures, low framerate and mostly blocky levels do remind me a lot of n64 games, but it does have way bigger levels with some more involved setpieces, way farther draw distance (even if there is still some pop in), and so on

even if jakndaxter and ratchet n clank were both able to have higher fidelity in basically every way (more detailed models and higher res textures)and also run at 60 fps, i still really do appreciate how this game looks for what it is

i fucking love how the moveset is also literally mario's moveset in sm64 even with all the little quirks like a melee attack in the air that stalls your movement for a little (useful in platforming), long jump, walljumping being done the same way, or even putting your back against the wall if you hold your stick against a wall for whatever reason. i just wish he had maybe the coolest sm64 move, the dive!

this is so goddamn cool i did not expect it to be this good and i cant wait to play more

There are a lot of things I could say about this game. The story is nonexistent, the camera constantly gets caught on things other than your character with inconsistent motion, the powerups are simultaneously clunky and incredibly underutilized and the voice acting sucks, but it's got some nice creativity in places; I like the giant's house level, there's a good amount of effort into filling each room with some new fun puzzle, and there's a couple satisfying platforming gauntlets with a good amount of challenge.

Really, it's the final boss that's the kick in the teeth. While a lot of the platforming elements are difficult, but manageable with enough grasp on the controls, every aspect that makes this final boss hard feels like fake difficulty. I genuinely would've given this game a 4 or 5 if the final boss wasn't so shit.

It's a multi-phase fight, with no checkpoints in between phases. Phase 1 is a mook storm where the method to succeed is spamming one attack over and over for three minutes, hopefully not sustaining any more damage. The mooks blend into the floor so it can be hard to see them as you're trying to spam this one attack. Then the boss turns into a giant spider. An absurdly fast giant spider that can jump all over the place and engage in inconsistent patterns. The spider can even animation cancel if you fudge a tiny hitbox window to reset its pattern. Even when hitting the spider, it does a massive lunge attack where the dodge for it was incredibly inconsistent. You have a maximum of three hits, and dying here sends you back to the mook spawning phase to go through all of that again just to try another shot at the spider form. It genuinely feels like he wasn't playtested because of how overclocked his animations seem.

That this alone made my opinion go from mehness to shittiness really goes to show the impact of a final boss, and how major a factor it can be in final determination of quality.