{"id":78709,"date":"2019-01-28T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/nintendo-switch\/sphinx_and_the_cursed_mummy"},"modified":"2019-01-28T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T13:00:00","slug":"review-sphinx-and-the-cursed-mummy-a-bit-musty-due-to-age-but-still-worth-a-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/01\/28\/review-sphinx-and-the-cursed-mummy-a-bit-musty-due-to-age-but-still-worth-a-look\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Sphinx And The Cursed Mummy &#8211; A Bit Musty Due To Age, But Still Worth A Look"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/2d7ff2e94ac4e\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/2d7ff2e94ac4e\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div id=\"\">\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy Review - Screenshot 1 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94781\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94781\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy Review - Screenshot 1 of 3\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>No one really remembers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/sphinx_and_the_cursed_mummy\"><strong>Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy<\/strong><\/a>, which makes it rather odd property to raise from dead. Originally released on the GameCube back in the early 2000s, it came out during the renaissance for action platformers, with the likes of <strong>Ratchet &amp; Clank<\/strong>, <strong>Sly Cooper<\/strong> and <strong>Jak &amp; Daxter<\/strong> cementing PS2 as the place to be. Add in the fact it was an original IP from a now-defunct developer that mostly worked on ports of other games or licensed tie-ins, and Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, despite its quality, slowly sank through the sands of time and memory.<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s just the thing. Developer Eurocom may have earned a name for itself by working on <strong>Harry Potter<\/strong> games or <strong>James Bond<\/strong> entries that ranged from decent to abysmal, but for a short time, it produced something genuinely great. Thankfully, THQ Nordic picked up the rights to this forgotten gem and now it\u2019s been given a lick of HD paint and adjusted to fit the widescreen ratios of modern gaming. It\u2019s still got some of its original faults \u2013 this isn\u2019t a full remaster, after all \u2013 but it doesn\u2019t take long to realise why Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is such an underrated addition to a populous genre.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy Review - Screenshot 2 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94784\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94784\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy Review - Screenshot 2 of 3\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>As its title so cryptically conceals, you\u2019ll be spending most of your time playing as Sphinx, a free-spirited demigod and&#8230; well, a <em>mummy<\/em>. When our deified hero is warned that the evil god Set is planning to plunge the world into darkness, he heads to the realm of mortals to foil his plans. Elsewhere, Prince Tutankhamen (yes, <em>that<\/em> Tutankhamen) has stumbled on a secret conspiracy headed up his older brother, Akhenaten, and is captured and forced into a black magic ritual. Sphinx arrives and interrupts the dodgy ceremony, but not before poor old Tut is turned into an undead monster and transported to Sphinx\u2019s realm.<\/p>\n<p>With his thin body and long strides, Sphinx moves and controls a lot like Jak from the Jak &amp; Daxter games, only with a little less bounce. You\u2019ll start off with only a single jump and no means of protecting yourself (bar throwing rocks), but you\u2019ll soon collect trinkets and tools as you go, including the rather useful Blade of Osiris, as well as the ability to double jump and brandish a handy shield. Rather than resigning Tut to being a carry-around sidekick (a la Daxter or Clank), the game gives the titular cursed mummy his own unique sections.<\/p>\n<p>While Sphinx takes up a majority of the game with his emphasis on exploration, combat and platforming, Tut is more focused on stealth and puzzle solving. Since he\u2019s technically dead, our mummified hero can take far more damage than Sphinx and can utilise special routes (such as sarcophagi that transport you to secret locations). The puzzles are still pretty obtuse, but in an age where everything is signposted and over-tutorialised, this is a characteristic from yesteryear that serves as a real positive for Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy&#8217;s overall adventure. Matched with the impressive restoration applied to its visuals and you\u2019re getting an action-platforming classic that suits Switch\u2019s plethora of remastered hits to a tee.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy Review - Screenshot 3 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94780\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94780\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy Review - Screenshot 3 of 3\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>As is the case with many other HD remasters, Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy isn\u2019t perfect and brings with it its own set of legacy issues. A dodgy camera \u2013 the bane of almost every 3D platformer \u2013 rears its ugly head here as well, too often getting stuck in the scenery or taking too long to right itself when transitioning from one level in an area to another. It can make platforming a little tricky at times, but considering how good Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy looks thanks to its HD lick of paint (it was a pretty decent looking game the first time around) and the smoothness of its performance on Switch, it\u2019s a problem you\u2019ll learn to live with if the genre means enough to you.<\/p>\n<p>The gaping distances between save points \u2013 another wonderful tactic from the &#8216;old platformer playbook&#8217; \u2013 haven\u2019t been addressed either. Not that we expected them to be, but without any form of autosave to rely on, it\u2019s easy to lose 20-30 minutes of progress when you mistime a jump and plunge into lava, or get blown to smithereens by an exploding, two-legged goblin. It was a problem the first time around, and in an age of autosave saturation, newcomers might find this manual malarkey a bitter pill to swallow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>While its platforming mechanics are still a tad unpredictable at times \u2013 and the huge gaps between save points still rankle \u2013 Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy\u2019s quality nonetheless shines through. Weaving melee combat, environmental puzzles and plenty of platforms with a fun and interesting take on Egyptian mythology, it\u2019s an action-platformer that really holds up well, despite the years on its clock. Its camera might still be a bit rubbish, but with a new lick of HD paint, this is a hidden gem that deserves a little time in the limelight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No one really remembers Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, which makes it rather odd property to raise from dead. Originally released on the GameCube back in the early 2000s, it came out during the renaissance for action platformers, with the likes of Ratchet &amp; Clank, Sly Cooper and Jak &amp; Daxter cementing PS2 as the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}