I was not planning on buying Earthworm
Jim HD. It's a cool idea, but I'm not big on replaying games that
I've already played a lot of, and I played a lot of Earthworm Jim
back in my Sega Genesis days. But then I saw it on sale for $.99 and
I thought I would quickly play through it one more time for the fun
of it.
Earthworm Jim is a classic platformer
from back in the day. The characters and stuff were designed by Doug
Tennapel, who also does a lot of art for my favorite band of all
time, Five Iron Frenzy. He also does a lot of his own comics and
stuff. It's pretty darn goofy. You play as an earthworm inside a suit
of high-tech armor, and it just gets weirder from there. There's
giant hamsters, an evil cat that rules a hellish planet, an evil crow
that is after you, a bungie-jumping fight against a snot man, a
chicken in a robot walker, and a dude who barfs fish at you, just to
give you a small sampling of the game's weird inhabitants.
All these characters and locales look
amazing. Sprites age pretty gracefully in general, but all these
sprites have been redone in high definition. They look terrific. In
general, I like the look of old sprites a lot, but I would love to
see more new games use these types of HD sprites. They look awesome and have
smooth, beautiful animation.
In case you've never played it before,
EWJ is hard. I have no idea how I was able to beat it as a kid.
Playing hard games like this is what has made me the gamer I am
today. What torture this must have been for me as a kid. It's like my
version of the Cruel Tutelage Master Pai Mei. While replaying
this version (on the classic difficulty of course, although there are
easier difficulties to pick from) I blazed through the first handful
of levels, thinking to myself how easy they were and how stupid I
must have been as a kid. But as I got into the later levels, I
realized that I just had those early ones memorized from back in the
day and that the difficulty ramps up steadily. The later levels get
quite difficult.
In fact, I had to use the level select
feature to finish the game, which was disappointing. I hadn't really
signed on for a hardcore re-living of my childhood before saving was
common, so I was glad to get to see all the levels and characters in
HD since you can choose to start at the beginning of any level you
have reached in this version. I had almost forgotten about Professor
Monkey for a Head, and his partner, Monkey Professor for a Head
The trophies in this game are
hardcore. There's one for beating the game on one life on original
difficulty, and one for beating the game in under 50 minutes. Both
are crazy hard, and I have no interest in trying to earn them. I wish
there was one for beating the game without continuing or in one
sitting without level select. That would be very challenging yet
doable, and would re-create my experience on the Genesis.
The controls are: move with the d-pad
or analog stick, jump with cross, whip (as in pull the worm that is
you out of your suit and use it as a whip on enemies or to swing from
hooks) with circle, and shoot your gun with either R2 or square. You
can use R1 to switch between the rare plasma shot and your regular
rapid-fire gun (I don't think you could do this in the Genesis
version, but I could be wrong). You can also hold cross to rotate
your head and glide down slowly like a helicopter.
Gameplay consists of running around going up and down as well as left and right through big levels,
shooting and whipping enemies while finding ammo and health, and
going through obstacles. There's a pretty big variety of obstacles
and enemies. You will be dodging falling stalactites in one stage and
then avoiding nigh-invincible muscle-bound cats in another. Then
you'll be carried through a cage and have cells (or something)
launched at you from all directions or drive a submarine through
rocky caverns with a limited supply of air. There are pretty cool
boss fights too. I love the fight with Bob the Killer Goldfish, and
the fight with Evil the Cat. I won't spoil either here, but both are
really clever. There's also a fight with a snowman, a transforming
junk monster, and of course, the final encounter with the evil Queen
Pulsating Bloated Festering Sweaty Pus-filled Malformed Slug for a
Butt, whose caterpillar-butt is so big, it is part of the last level
and a boss encounter unto itself.
There are also some non-standard
levels. Quite a few times you will race Psy-Crow through space on
your trusty pocket rocket, collecting power-ups to go faster and
dodging asteroids to stay ahead of him. Loosing means fighting him in
a mini boss battle. There's also the aforementioned bungie-jump
battle against the snot guy. And the classic level where you have to
protect your friend Peter Puppy (or he will transform and viciously
attack you). It's quite fun. You'll being doing a million different
things in EWJ. Kind of reminds me of Jak 3 actually.
Something has changed about the sounds
or music or voices in this version. I can't place it now that I've
played this version so much, but it was very noticeable when I first
fired it up and played for awhile. I can see why they might have
wanted to re-do some sounds since they were re-doing the graphics,
but it's a little jarring and I think they should have left the sound
alone. Although, like I said, after playing for awhile I no longer
notice.
There is also some new stuff, like
multi-player co-op challenge levels, which I didn't try out. There's
also online leaderboards for how fast levels are completed. There are
also three new levels, which make me think it would have been cool if
this team had just made a new game instead of an HD remake. These
levels are pretty fun, and have interesting bosses. The final boss,
however is insanely hard. I'm ashamed to say I didn't stick with it
long enough to beat this final boss in the bonus levels. I'm going to
say it's cause I didn't want to play this game for a long time like I
said early and hope that you can forgive me. Also, you will recognize
who this boss is. Tantalizing, huh?
Earthworm Jim is a total classic, and
it holds up well. If you've never played it, this is a fine version
to play, although the old sprites are awesome too if you can find a
Genesis or SNES laying around. This version has
level select if you're feeling cheap, but also has super-hardcore
trophies if you're feeling tough. For me, it was purely a novelty to
re-play all the levels in HD. I enjoyed running through it quickly to
see everything again and to see the new sprites, but I didn't stay
long. I'm going to give this version great game, tier 2. Just know
going in that this isn't a modern game at all, and play either to
have fun and see the sights using level select, or try for those
tough trophies if you're feeling really old school.
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