First Impressions: Come this fall, Blinx is going to make us all forget about a certain portly plumber and his blue hedgehog friend.
We’ve seen very little innovation in the platforming genre over the past few years. Sure, Nintendo is still constantly reinventing their Mario games, and SCEA is still bringing us some great platformers like Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank, but outside of that the genre is just about dead. That’s exactly what’s got everybody so excited over Blinx: The Time Sweeper, because it’s set to revolutionize the genre by introducing a concept that’s more original and imaginative than anything we’ve seen in years.
At first glance, Blinx looks no different than any other platforming game. You’re still collecting items, hopping on rocks, and fighting bosses, but in Time Sweeper, Blinx actually has the ability to control the flow of time. Once he has collected enough of certain types of crystals, he can use them to Rewind, Fast-forward, and Stop time, or even Record events and play them back at a later date. The game uses about 200 MB of the Xbox hard drive to record and store your actions, so such a feature wouldn’t even be possible on say, the PS2’s hefty 8 MB memory card. Blinx marks the first truly innovative use of the Xbox’s hard drive, and hopefully not the last.
Blinx is an alley cat that works as a janitor at the Time Factory, the place where time itself is manufactured. One day, a group of bandits kidnap a princess with plans to steal all the time crystals in the factory. Blinx, not content with his custodial duties at the Time Factory, sets off to rescue the princess and keep the crystals from falling into the wrong hands.
There are many applications for Blinx’s time-warping abilities. For instance, if you’re stuck on one side of a crumbled bridge, simply hit rewind and you can go back to a time when the bridge was still standing. Or perhaps you’re being swept down a stream and heading straight for a waterfall. Just hit the stop button and the current will come to a dead halt, allowing you to walk safely back onto the shore, all the while parting the water as you walk through it. Or let’s say a switch requires two people to hit it simultaneously. You can just record yourself hitting the button, then play back the recording so that you’ll have a “ghost Blinx” performing the action right by your side. The concept has been implemented quite well, and should bring an intriguing new aspect to the game with nearly limitless possibilities.
There are four different types of crystals in the game, and each corresponds to a different type of time manipulation. Blinx can only carry four crystals at a time, and at least three of them have to be the same type of crystal for him to use one of his abilities. If all four of them are the same, then he can use the ability twice. But because of these limitations, it’s possible that the game could restrict the time-warping abilities that can be used in an area by only allowing the player to obtain certain crystals.
Blinx is armed only with his trusty Time Sweeper 1000, which is basically a hyper-powered vacuum cleaner. It allows him to cling to walls and ceilings, suck items towards his body, and suck up objects to shoot at enemies. Blinx can also put his janitorial skills to use by cleaning up trash on the street for extra money. The money goes towards buying Time Sweepers with more sucking power and even elemental properties. It’s actually very similar in function to Luigi’s vacuum cleaner in the Gamecube title, Luigi’s Mansion.
