The curse of the mummy is dreadful.
I think the game is supposed to follow the plot of the movie of the same name, but I wouldn't know. What I do know is that the game offers two campaigns, in one you play as Rick and in the other one you play as Imhotep, the evil resurrected mummy, and they do get their own levels, dialogue and even powers. Rick's stages are more adventurous while Imhotep's are a bit more focused on combat, at least from what I played since I didn't care to finish the game again as Imhotep.
Jumping is so awkward, you need to run towards an edge and pray that the square button input turns into 'jump' otherwise you'll drop to your death. Why not have Square act as jump all the time? Or if it depended on an edge, why not make it automatic, like in Zelda? I don't know. And sometimes, when landing, Rick will perform a vault that will probably get you killed if you jumped onto a small platform. Why? Who came up with this? While your joystick has a right analog stick, there's no camera control, just press L2 to reposition the camera behind you. When you shoot your guns, Rick will aim automatically, which works decently enough, but melee combat feels very slippery and haphazard, sometimes it feels like Rick or Imhotep actually want to punch or kick in the opposite direction of the enemy you are trying to kill. Oh, and some enemies LOVE to run away when you are trying to kill them, only to make combat last longer, waste your time and annoy you further. And enemies? They respawn constantly. Why? Seriously, why? Who came up with this?
Level design is absolutely terrible, stages feel like mazes, there are no checkpoints and it's easy to just die. Almost as if to make up for it you can save anywhere.... provided you are not taking in or out your weapons or in the middle of a jump or attack. I found out about this the hard way, so let me tell you about my very first experience with the game.
Rick's first stage is an absolute nightmare, to the point that every stage afterwards is undeniably easier. No other stage has as many hidden walls, deadly traps, bottomless pits over small platforms you have to awkwardly platform through with this game's awful jump mechanics or as many gimmicks as this one. Heck, there's one part in which you have to use dynamite to blow up pillars, but you can barely aim your shots so you'll probably take damage from the explosion, and then trying to get onto the broken pillars can be a hassle, since if you miss your jump or accidentally walk off the thing... instant death. Alright, so I paused the game many times and not a single time did the 'Save' option appeared, so I guessed it would only let you save once you beat a level. This is how I discovered there were no checkpoints, every time I died, and I died a ton of times, it meant back to the start of the level.
I was so frustrated I looked up reviews, nobody mentioned the high difficulty or how to save the game. I looked in my instruction booklet, and it said nothing about when I could save the game. 'Maybe I'm just bad' I thought, maybe I was used to easier games and other people didn't find it Crash Bandicoot 1's levels of unfair. So I tried Imhotep. I cleared the first stage and.... the game didn't ask me if I wanted to save. So as soon as the level started I pressed start and... no save option. 'Maybe it autosaves', so I quit, went to load game and.... no save file existed. I was angry, and decided I wasn't gonna play it anymore, it was trash and it was unfairly hard because of how awful the controls were. So I looked up reviews again, and somebody mentioned being able to save anywhere. Two days later I gave it a try and... the Save option was there. As I played I discovered the actions that would make it so that the Save option didn't appear, it seems that the first time I played the game I was super unlucky so I was always trying to save when I was taking out items or punching the air or something. Yeah, when you can save anywhere the game is a cakewalk, except for the final boss.
Sure, I had a bad first experience with the game, but I swear to god I gave it a proper chance after I figured out how the Save Option worked. But even then, the game is devoid of any fun, it just isn't good in any way, shape or form. If anything, props to the guy that voices Rick, as he pulled of a fantastic Brendan Fraser impression. But then again, I'm matching him to how I remember Brendan Fraser sounding! Plus, I'll give it some credit for having two campaigns, one following a what-if story in which the villain wins, which is admittedly pretty neat.
2.5
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