Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy

Sphinx plays out like a lost chapter of Ancient Egyptian mythology. A great evil is eminating from the Castle Uruk, so the wizard Ihmotep sends his two most skilled apprentices, Sphinx and Horus, to retrieve the Sword of Osiris to combat this evil. Elsewhere, Prince Tutankahman has been mummified by his demon possessed brother and his girlfriend Neferatiti begs Sphinx to save him. So our adventure begins.

While Sphinx is for all intents and purposes the "main character", you'll spend just as much time playing as the mummy. Play a level with Sphinx, play a level with the mummy. And while the two characters have completely different skill sets, in the early going both of their levels are very puzzle heavy. In fact, the mummy's levels don't even give him a life bar (which makes sense seeing as how he's undead), and he can try as times as need be to complete the puzzles. The game actually makes it impossible for the mummy to get a "game over" screen. It's actually very nice to see a platforming game that revolves mostly around puzzle solving as opposed to stomping an endless stream of enemies. Yes, as you get deeper into the game, the amount of combat increases. But puzzle solving is always the top priority.

And what clever puzzles they are. Feeding a giant sea creature so he'll spit you like a cannon to higher ledges. Then covering yourself with goo to walk through fire. Later you'll capture animals that explode or breathe fire to create a makeshift bomb or burn down a door. Or later still you'll need to access a cabinet that the maid is blocking, so you have to smash a pot to make her move to clean up the mess. The game also builds a lot of puzzles around the mummy being unable to feel pain. At various points you will have to smash him to squeeze through prison bars, set him on fire to light a torch (while jumping past pools of water) and electrocute him to power an electrical door.

With all of this emphasis on puzzle solving over fighting, it's great to know that the controls of the game are always spot on. And to help keep up with the constantly shifting skills required for the game, a small button map (a la Zelda) sits in the top right corner. This way you always know which button does what and I think more games should employ this kind of guide. Not so nice is the camera, by now it should be expected that the camera of a 3D platformer will get stuck in the corner or on a wall. Even though it's expected doesn't make it any less frustrating when it keeps happening in every single third person game.

After a hard day of puzzle solving, naturally the game will flip back to the mythology of the story. And it does this in the form of cut scenes. Cut scenes with absolutely no sound. They go on forever with characters flailing their arms in every which way and inane text dialogue looping on the bottom of the screen. And they can't be skipped. So if you die right after a long cut scene before you reach a save point, you have to suffer through it again and again. Say what you will about the overuse of cut scenes in a game, but if you're going to include them, do them right.

It's a shame the sound effects are so poor (or in most cases non-existent) because the Egyptian music is just perfect, I love it. Old styles of songs you'd expect to find in old movies recapturing the days of Cleopatra and the Pharaohs and it becomes a part of the whole experience here. An amazing job on the background music and another amazing job on the Egyptian world Sphinx and the mummy inhabit as well. From the sand to the water to the rising buildings that in real life would be called wonders of the world, Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy looks fantastic. There's absolutely no slowdown and even in the game's smaller moments, like when the mummy is exploring Castle Uruk, it still looks amazing.

While not a major title in any way, Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy will provide plenty of enjoyment for those willing to give it a look. While the game can occasionally drag when there's little or no guidance on where to go next and you have to basically stumble into the next level, when it gets back on track with the puzzles and the combat, it's all good. And for those that need a little more to their game's than a straight linear quest, there are a ton of side quests and mini-games to keep anyone busy for a good long while.