The Mummy Review

Models look absolutely pathetic. Both the opponents and the main character models are animated terribly. These poor animations make O'Connell to look like someone trying to run with a beehive in his pants. Besides his funny walk, the main model has an extremely low polygon count and therefore appears very robotic-like. The enemy seems awfully textured and feebly animated; fair enough the mummies do not need to do any brake dancing, but I would still like to see more moves and more polygons to liven up the otherwise dreary atmosphere. Using some of your weapons causes nice explosion effects, still nothing spectacular. I could also mention the occasional water and lava effects that appear every now and then. Nonetheless, this doesn't liven the environment one bit. The atmosphere slightly changes when you participate in the on-the-rails sections. Unfortunately, this doesn't introduce anything new or interesting; in fact these parts are even more obsolete than the rest of the game. There are two alternatives: the 2D boss-section during which the screen scrolls sidelong, and the second alternative where the camera is positioned in a chase view. The outdated 2D scrolling bit doesn't look impressive and has the same problem with control delay. In the other chase-camera-view section, you will mostly have to outrun some sort of a nemesis, which is in desperate pursuit of you; this is visually the most annoying part.

Camera positioning in the game is a general downside. It is difficult to catch a glimpse of the action on screen regardless of whether you use the cursor keys or the mouse to pan your camera side-ways. The camera will present no trouble only when you're playing the 2D scrolling sections. To be precise, the camera responds with almost the same delay as the character.

If we consider Rebellion's reputation and the quality of games like Alien vs. Predator, we can safely say that this is a surprisingly huge disappointment. If we try to compare to with Indiana or Tomb Raider in any way, the impression surely gets worse, basically because both of these games had at least certain plausible upsides. Namely, Lara Croft has normal human-like body moves and she can perform almost everything from running to somersaulting and in Indiana Jones we witnessed some stunningly designed levels that were vast and in many ways challenging. The Mummy has neither one of these necessary features for games of this type.

Yet, a few good things can be said about The Mummy. One is the excellent soundtrack, which had been taken directly from the movie. The other pleasing thing is the fairly decent range of weapons you get to use throughout the game. Next to the traditional two pistols which O'Connell carries with him from the beginning, you can find more destructive weaponry, like dynamite sticks and the much respected machine-gun (which you get to use in the last couple of levels). However, accessing these items can be difficult at times. The inventory possess the right-left cycle through system where you cannot go to the right (?!?); so if you are surrounded by enemies you won't have enough time to go through your entire inventory in order to get your desired weapon.

How have I completed this game in such a short while and what inspired me to play it in the first place? I guess I'll never now. I didn't see the movie, so I definitely wasn't inspired that way. Perhaps I enjoyed the constant action; on the other hand the enemies are too monotonous and recurring to hold your interest. The game dynamics have been improved with a symphonic-orchestra kind of background movie music; unfortunately, the themes cycle and will very soon start to annoy you. Anyway, to summarize, I seriously advise against buying this game, particularly if you've enjoyed the movie. So for all you Mummy fans out there, and for anyone of human species, don't play this one; you don't need the aggravation.