Yeah it's... allright. Halfway decent, but somewhat on the bland side
The story goes that the TomTom gang were attempting to steal the "Big Crystal" (real creative name huh?) when it shattered into fragments. Time energy froze over across the universe. The Time Sweepers are sent of an a mission to retrieve and obtain the fragments of the Big Crystal. Benito of the TomToms keeps having dreams of a girl called Mina who wants him to collect the crystal fragments, so he sends the TomToms off to collect them.
The gameplay is split between Time Sweepers and TomToms. You get to create your own cat and pig respectively. You can change patterns of the fur, fur colour, eye colour, body and limb size. You also customise their clothes choosing from a range of different patterns and colour combinations. You can redesign your characters at any time. This works very well as their are so many possible combinations.
Time Sweeper game play is the best. You don't play as Blinx at any point, you are always your custom cat. You are given a mission goal at the start of each level, which is normally just find enough of a specified item or destroy all of a certain object in the level. You fun around sucking up trash in your sweeper which you can shoot at time monsters. The gameplay has been improved in some respects. You now have a health bar as opposed to one hit kills. But it's just not as entertaining as it was in the other one.
Heres a cool part. Time Controls. You will pick up time crystals in the levels and these will give you the power to control time. You can pause the environment, slow the environment, rewind to fix collapsed bridges, fast forward to speed yourself up and finally record yourself doing one set of actions and these are replayed whilst you do another set of actions. The time controlls are the only way to solve the puzzles throughout the level. A new gimmick is that later on in the game you can do combo controls. So for example if you combine Pause and Fast Forward, your environment will pause whilst you run around at double speed. If you do Record and Slow, your actions will be recorded and played back whilst the environment goes by in slow motion.
The TomTom gameplay is different. You play as your custom pig. Your mission involves getting treasure. The gameplay is stealth based and you have to try and avoid all of the traps and Guard Sweepers out to stop you. Initially, your only weapon is a slingshot with sleeping powder darts to put Guard Sweepers to sleep temporarily. Later on you can get guns to actually hurt and knock them out. These are no way near as fun as the Time Sweeper stages
Instead of Time Controls, the TomToms have space controls and other gadgets. These include bananas to trip up and knock out Guard Sweepers and Decoys which create an illusory version of yourself which can be used to distract opponents. Other traps include Snare Traps, Space Bubbles, Void Traps and Black Holes which stop enemies. You also have a warp tunnel, which you can use to warp over obstacles that you can't jump over whilst carrying treasure.
For both Sweepers and TomToms you can buy powerups such as more health or the ability to store more Time/Space Controlls. You can also buy new Sweepers and Guns and upgrade them. Any weapons you buy are sent to you locker room so you can equip and upgrade them their rather than only being able to have one sweeper at a time in the original; if you wanted to use an older one, you had to buy it again. You can also play various minigames. Overall, the gameplay is rather allright, but rather bland. It is a decent game overall though.
Graphically the game is good with lost of good effects and bright characters and environments. Musically, there are some really good tracks in the game. If you read my original Blinx review, you will know that I complained about some control issues. These have been acknowlaged and fixed this time. So I have no issues with any technical side of the game.
So at the end of the day, at first glance Blinx 2 is a better made and better presented. But when you actually get down to it, Blinx 2 is quite bland and won't hold your attention for long. It is a decent game on the whole, and the new gimmicks such as combo controls are fun. I also admire the customization. If you liked the original, sure go try this one. It isn't a bad game, it's a decent game.
- Milesprower2k9 original reviews