Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space - A Better Use Of Time

As with the original Blinx: The Time Sweeper, Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space is a game I had been aware of in childhood, albeit with the inability to play it until recently. I knew about the existence of this game after happening to see it in a store (likely a Circuit City or Best Buy or something, I don’t remember), with no idea what the context of the box art was (I didn’t think to look on the reverse side of the box). However, Blinx was still somewhat fresh in my head at the time, and I still wished I had the chance to see what the sequel was like. Now that I have an original Xbox to play it on, I decided to give Blinx 2 a try after finding out what the full experience of the original ended up being. While I am truly impressed with how much has changed between games, it still could have been improved in at least one or two areas before release.

While on another gem-stealing spree, the Tom Tom Gang blow up a wall and come across a big crystal (later revealed to actually be called the Big Crystal), which Benito, the leader of the Tom Tom Gang, runs up to grab while his cohorts try in vain to stop him. As Benito grabs it, he ends up cracking the Big Crystal as it floats away, to his confusion. Meanwhile at the Time Factory, an army of Tom Tom Gang members (all glowing green) invades the Factory and causes destruction. As this happens, Blinx intervenes with various time powers to help his fellow Time Sweepers fend off the Tom Tom Gang, getting a scar in the process. Suspecting something has happened to the Big Crystal, the CEO of the Time Factory orders Blinx to go to another world and try to figure out what’s going on. As Blinx reluctantly follows orders, he is happy to see that other Sweepers decided to join in. Meanwhile, Benito has begun having dreams about a girl named Mina, who tells him he needs to restore the Big Crystal, a task Benito thinks will allow him to see her in person. After waking up, he soon finds out about the Tom Tom Gang invasion on the Time Factory, which Benito never ordered, believing it to be the work of imposters. In response, he has members of the Tom Tom Gang set out to investigate and help try to figure out what’s going on.

The story of Blinx 2 generally has some more meat to it than the previous game, which I commend, since it helps give the player more of a purpose than “restore a world in 10-minute intervals while also trying to stop the Tom Tom Gang”. The universe the games take place in is actually fleshed out a bit more in this game as well, giving the player a sense that the stakes are higher this time around as we learn the backstory of the Time Factory and the significance of the Big Crystal to the fabric of time. We also learn more about what the Tom Tom Gang is actually like, making every important member more 3-dimensional rather than the somewhat flat interpretation shown in the original game; they’re not straight-up evil, rather they’re shown to have concerns not only for their boss, Benito, but also for each other, though the same can’t be said for how they feel towards the Time Sweepers. Regardless, it’s good to see some character development on both ends between the Time Sweepers and the Tom Tom Gang.

Blinx gets somewhat of a redesign in this game.

The gameplay is also fleshed out as well when compared to the previous game. The Sweeper you are given as a Time Sweeper now has more capability than before, which includes the ability to hold more time powers at a time; rather than having a limit on how many you could have at once, you now have a limit on how many you can have for each time power (ex. you can initially hold up to 2 of each individual time power instead of initially 5 total time powers including duplicates). You are also not bound by having to sweep up a number of Time Crystals (which also receive a positive design overhaul to resemble the powers they represent) in a row, rather you can sweep up Time Crystals in any order you wish, so long as you sweep up 3 of each Crystal to get one use of the respective power. You can also eventually gain more abilities for your Sweeper, including a later ability to combine time powers. All of these enhancements to Sweeper usage allow for some much needed freedom in the gameplay, all of which is on top of the fact that the timer no longer restricts itself to 10 minutes, allowing you to take as much time as you need to complete a level. Also, rather than having the same goal of defeating all of the Time Monsters as in the last game, you have a choice of goals to meet in each stage, with Time Monsters not always being a priority, and even then you are not required to eliminate all of them; Time Monsters commonly give you Time Crystals upon defeat, and can respawn to give you the required Crystals needed to get through an area (the Crystals they drop are more context-sensitive in general, but it’s still a nice change of pace).

Adding to this is a nice bit of variety, made possible partially by the addition of being able to play as the Tom Tom Gang, whose gameplay is based more in stealth and using space powers, in the form of gadgets, to sneak around. Such gadgets include sending in a distracting decoy that fools Guard Sweepers, grenades that can pause time, space tunnels that allow you to travel underground to most areas, and invisibility cloaks, among other things. Some of these can hinder your abilities in some way, especially when you have to carry loot around as well, but they can come in real handy in a pinch. You also have access to a variety of arms, which ranges from a slingshot with sleep darts to a sniper rifle or from a metal bat to a fireworks launcher, their usefulness depending on the situation. Unlike the Time Sweeper sections though, you only have one goal to accomplish when playing through a Tom Tom Gang section, but this can be attributed to serving the story more than anything.

It is now possible to play as the Tom Tom Gang.
(Controls in the flip-side of the manual, seen here.)

The lack of any time limit makes it easier to complete a level, but it’s also much easier to collect money in the game. This subsequently makes it easier to go through the shops in each respective hub world (one for each side) and pick up any new gadgets or upgrades you might need to beef yourself up (you also have the ability to clean your clothes for some reason). However, I found it a lot easier to accomplish this with the Time Sweepers than with the Tom Tom Gang, though that likely has to do with how different their styles of play are. You also have to go through tutorials in order to be able to access later stages of the game (on both ends), though this makes sense considering you’re learning a skill you’ll need to get through the next level. You can also go through challenges to acquire new items, recruit new members into your team, or earn Cat/Pig Medals for your collection(s), among other goals.

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, you now have a team to keep track of, though it mainly comes into play when you reach a certain point of the level, where you have to fend off the other side while trying to keep yourself and your teammates alive; if you are taken down, you are then put into control of one of your teammates and the fight continues until you run out. Tying into this is a character creation system you have to go through when you start playing each side for the first time. This system is actually pretty deep and allows for a lot of freedom in creating your ideal character, which even extends to name, team name, and the design of team logo and flag (these last two are more limited, presumably for good reason) though the custom characters have the same voice no matter how you design them. As a downside to this, however, you are unable to actually play as Blinx throughout the whole game, despite him being involved in the story and his name being in the title, which lead to me using the character creation tools to create a cat resembling Blinx, down to his name; as for the Tom Tom Gang, I based my design somewhat off of the box art (because creativity).

On the subject of designs, not only does each non-playable Time Sweeper or Tom Tom Gang member look somewhat unique, but the designs of the Time Monsters get something of an overhaul, looking more menacing and frightening compared to the more cartoonish designs present in the original. The Octoballoon (a returning Time Monster), for instance, not only looks more menacing with having the balloon directly attached to the head rather than by what appeared to be “strings”, it also has a more tactical approach to combat by gaining a pair of arms it can swing at you with should you get too close, in addition to throwing garbage at you from a distance. While the Boss battles themselves can be a little underwhelming, their designs are also interesting and the strategies used to defeat them can get really clever.

The Tundragon, a monster from the Tom Tom Gang's
side of the story.

While I praise the character designs, I also praise the look of the game in general, as it is an improvement over the visuals of the original Blinx. Today, things such as the character animations might not be anything to write home about, but the graphics are overall good for the time the game was released (I don’t have many Xbox titles to go by at the time of this writing) and they still hold up somewhat thanks to the aesthetic of the designs. The sound design is also good, with a good soundtrack that goes with each setting well (though some tracks can get a little grating when repeated long enough), and sound effects carried over from the first game that still work well here. Notably, this game features the characters speaking in English for the first time, which I only found to be a good thing since I could spend less time trying to catch the subtitles. The voice acting itself is actually not that bad, with each voice fitting the characters well without becoming annoying, including the voices provided for the player-created characters.

One last thing I want to comment on is the difficulty. From what I have mentioned previously, the increase of freedom leads to a significantly lowered difficulty, especially now that there is a handy Checkpoint system in place in case you run out of Retries (as a Time Sweeper) or you run out of life (as a Tom Tom Gang member). However, the difficulty may have been lowered a little too much, since there is also a significant increase in hand holding, where others tell you through text boxes exactly what you need to do in order to get through the stage, with little to no opportunity to figure things out for yourself. Still, at least I was able to actually finish the game, something I have not yet been able to do with the first.

Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space is a vast improvement over Blinx: The Time Sweeper, though perhaps maybe too much of an improvement in terms of difficulty. The story is more engaging, the characters are more fleshed out, and the Time Sweeper abilities receive an unbelievable amount of innovation, with the addition of Tom Tom Gang gameplay increasing the variety even more. If you are a Blinx fan, it is likely you already own this game, though if you only have/played the first game, I would definitely encourage you to seek this title out. If you have never heard of Blinx before, but the premise of being able to control time intrigues you, and especially if you are a fan of platforming games, I would tell you that Blinx 2 is a better representation of what the concept has to offer, though one should still play the first game in order to better appreciate the sequel.

Blinx: The Time Sweeper - Is It Worth Your Time?

As many of you may be aware, the Xbox One is out. This is a day I have been looking forward to for a good while, and so in anticipation I acquired my copy of the system early. The system showed a lot of promise, and from what little I have seen of it so far, I am satisfied.

Behold!

Also, the new Xbox One system came out today.

Behold!

But that’s not the One we’re getting into right now.

Behold!

In all seriousness, we are going to dig into a game called Blinx: The Time Sweeper, released for Microsoft’s original Xbox system back in 2002. This is a game I got for my birthday a while ago, long after I came into possession of an original Xbox, making this game my first, and, at the time of this writing, only, original Xbox title. Before getting any further, let’s get into a little personal history with the character of Blinx.

In my childhood, I was well aware of the existence of Blinx, I just didn’t exactly have the system to play the game on; I would not receive my first gaming system, the PlayStation 2, until much later, so the only way I had any gaming experience was through PC/internet games, playing on someone else’s system, or playing in-store demos. Blinx was one game I demoed in a store, like maybe two or three times (which may or may not have included the now defunct Circuit City), but I got some enjoyment out of what little I was able to play, and since then the game had been in my mental wish list of games I wanted to play. I was also aware of the existence of the game’s only sequel, Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space, but only after seeing it on store shelves, and even then I wanted to experience what Blinx was like, even after the character unfortunately faded into obscurity. Now that I was able to do so with the first game, I can say that the game is overall…just okay.

The Time Factory, whose employees are all cats, is a facility that is responsible for making and distributing time across an infinite number of worlds, in the form of Time Crystals. However, Time Glitches may sometimes occur from unused Time Crystals, resulting in the creation of Time Monsters. Should this happen, it is up to the Time Sweepers at the Factory to eliminate the threat. Blinx is but one of these Time Sweepers, minding his own business when it is reported that the Tom-Tom Gang, a gang (whose members are all pigs) who runs a sort of black market on time between worlds, has caused great unbalance in world B1Q64, causing the Time Factory to force all Time Sweepers in that world to evacuate so they can cease the flow of time. However, when the Tom-Tom Gang reveal they have captured the princess of B1Q64, Blinx instantly falls in love, heading towards the Time Portal to that world so that he may rescue her.

Blinx, the titular Time Sweeper.

During the game, you are tasked to defeat a given number of Time Monsters across each level within a 10 minute time limit. Using Blinx’s Sweeper, you can suck up trash scattered within the level, which can be fired at the Monsters. Sometimes you can even run into a member of the Tom-Tom Gang, creating a mini-boss fight as you prevent them from taking gold from within the immediate area. Levels also often feature a number of hazards and doors that can only be opened by stepping on large buttons; these buttons can also activate whatever is needed to continue the level, such as activating moving platforms and creating large jump pads. These mechanics work well to feed into the central platforming aspect of the game; however it wouldn’t really stand out without the ability to control time.

Yes, you have the ability to control time, which seems to come with the job of being a Time Sweeper, with your powers including pausing, rewinding, fast-forwarding, and slowing down time, and even being able to record yourself to aid in solving puzzles. Each of these powers can only be used for a brief period, and some of them are more useful in particular situations, so you have to be careful with how you use them. However, in order to use them, you have to worry about Time Crystals scattered in each level.

You see, in order to be able to use these powers, you need to collect the right number of Time Crystals (3 of any like Crystal + 1 different Crystal give you 1 of that power; 4 of any like Crystal gives you 2 of that power), as well as pay attention to their shape and color (ex. PAUSE Crystals are blue and moon-shaped). On top of this, you can only hold a certain number of total time powers at any time, and going over the limit overrides another power, so you have to be careful. This also extends to RETRYs, which are essentially your lives, represented by red, heart-shaped Crystals, but they are kept in a separate part of the screen away from the time powers. When you die in a level and you have at least one RETRY on you, the game will rewind a few seconds to before you lost a life, allowing you enough time to undo whatever mistake you made. However, if you don’t have any RETRYs when you die, the game ends (this can also happen when your 10 minutes in the level run out).

Pictured: How Time Crystals work.

Adding another layer to the Time Crystals, unused powers and lives carry over into the next level, which can provide a certain tactical advantage for the time powers, but can also create more of a sense of urgency when it comes to your RETRYs, depending on how many you still have.

As an added bonus, there are Time Crystals that appear golden. These, however, are not really Time Crystals, but rather the aforementioned gold, whose value depends on size, but not shape. These will not give you any powers or add to your Crystal count, but will give you currency to spend in the Stores found in each set of levels, where you can upgrade your Sweeper to hold more and bigger items, hold more time powers or RETRYs at a time, or even buy new outfits for Blinx to wear (and of course, Sweepers and outfits are among the more expensive items). You can also purchase additional RETRYs, which may save you some pain in later levels. Levels also feature hidden Cat Medals, which more often than not require you to go above and beyond to nab them, and additional gold can be obtained by having any amount of trash left in your Sweeper (and even then it depends on the type of trash and how much you have).

The gameplay features involving time, while unique and interesting, are not without their drawbacks. The fact that you have to collect the Time Crystals from within the level to use any of your powers can be a bit of a drag at times, since the Crystals, when not placed at predetermined points in the level, are often random drops, which can alter your plans significantly if you are trying to get a specific power. I’ve had it where I was trying to get 2 of a certain power (or RETRYs), but the proximity of the one required Crystal to an unrelated one resulted either in me getting only 1 of that power or a bad combination, which annoyed me a little. As for the rest of the gameplay, while taking down monsters seems fun at first, I eventually became disinterested with the game about halfway through due to the sheer monotony of the whole thing, with little variation outside of visiting the Store for an upgrade or two or facing a Boss, especially since each Stage, or set of levels, is always 3 levels and a boss fight, with a Store unlocked after beating the first level in each Stage. Granted, some of my mistakes that lead to frustration were more a result of human error and I’m aware you can visit previous levels to improve your time, but I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to keep playing. I might go back to the game in the future, especially since at this point I have no idea what the Cat Medals are even for.

There are, however, some things that I think the game does really well. Though I have literally no other Xbox game at the time of this writing to compare the game’s graphics to, I would still say the graphics actually aren’t too bad for an Xbox game, especially for a game released in 2002, and they seem to hold up fairly well, probably helped by the cartoonish visual style. The character designs actually have a lot of variety to them, mostly when it comes to the Time Monsters, who each have a unique design so you can tell from a distance what kind of monster they are and, based on their color scheme, how hard they would be to take down. The members of the Tom-Tom Gang manage to look distinct from one another (though their names, along with a handful of Time Monster names, only show up in the manual) and, admittedly, Blinx himself looks kind of adorable sometimes.

What I’ve also noticed in my time spent with this game is a little detail regarding Blinx’s animations, specifically falling animations. When Blinx falls from a great height, he will normally land flat on his face without taking damage (unless, of course, in the off chance there is a hazard underneath him). However, if he falls from just the right height, he will move such that he lands safely on his feet. Since real-life cats can actually do this to an extent (please don’t try this at home), this is one small detail that, for me, helped sell me on the fact that he was a cat, since evidently the team working on the game must have done some amount of research on cats. Also, when you hit a wall, Blinx will slowly slide down while attempting to cling onto it, though this action also tends to make him more adorable.

Benito, leader of the Tom-Tom Gang
(according to the manual)

The levels themselves have some good design, but the way some of them are laid out tends to lend more to the difficulty than some of the Time Monsters do (levels with swinging axes present can get more than a little frustrating). While the levels themselves feel long due to how they are laid out, it often feels like you are just ascending further up within an enclosed space, but that doesn’t mean the designers didn’t go wrong when working with limited space. On the other hand, at least one or two levels felt like you had to complete the level in a specific fashion, otherwise you are wasting precious time if you mess up (fortunately, if a Time Monster goes into a currently unreachable space that would require tedious backtracking, it will simply reappear in the more immediate space with damage intact).

The music in this game is also very good, with some very catchy tunes present in each level, the music variety itself depending on Stage and whether it is a Boss fight. The tone of the music nicely compliments the design of each level, making each Stage feel more unique. Then there’s the voice acting, or lack thereof. The characters speak in a nonsense language (with subtitles provided), which makes sense from a practical standpoint as it makes it easier to carry the game over between multiple countries, with prompts and subtitles being the only language change. This also gives the setting more of a unique feel, since neither the Time Factory nor B1Q64 are evident to be related to our Earth in the first place (especially regarding the Time Factory).

In the end, Blinx: The Time Sweeper is a bit of a mixed bag. While some aspects of the game are good, especially in its visuals and sound design, it has some moments of seemingly unnecessary difficulty, especially since more difficult levels can make the 10-minute time limit a bit stricter than in earlier levels. However, despite my feelings on this game, I would encourage anyone who (still) has an original Xbox to play the game for themselves to see what they think of it, especially if they are a fan of platformers. If you do, I would recommend playing it in short bursts, particularly if it starts to feel like a chore. From what I gather, things change a bit for the game’s only sequel, which I hope to get to play at some point in the future.