The Mummy Demastered Reviews

  • BlackoutIntruderBlackoutIntruder143,721
    31 Jan 2022 31 Jan 2022
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    Profile link: https://www.metacritic.com/user/Lonewolf97

    The 2017 Mummy movie starring Tom Cruise was an unmitigated failure of an attempt to kickstart the MCU-esque Dark Universe of films. Nothing good came from this attempt, save for one silver lining: this game.

    The Mummy Demastered is a Metroidvania where players take on the role of Prodigium agents whose task is to stop Princess Ahmanet, the movie’s antagonist, during the events of the film. Guided by Dr. Henry Jekyll, you give chase to the villainess, confronting all kinds of horrifying hostiles and collecting various med kits, bandoleers and weapons to aid in your quest to permanently put down the Princess.

    Story wise, there isn’t much going on. It involves nameless and faceless Prodigium agents hunting down and eliminating Ahmanet because she’s a threat to humanity. Dr. Jekyll occasionally communicates through your comm-link to give you instructions on where to go next to progress the plot. You follow his orders, go through each area to find useful loot and fight a boss. This cycle repeats all the way till the end. The narrative is not noteworthy in the slightest.

    Gameplay wise, it’s much better. The game is made up of multiple interconnected areas with a map screen being used to show where you visited and where you haven’t, if you happen to acquire an area map. Fast travel is available for select areas by way of helicopters flying you to your selected destination on the map. These fast travel points need to be discovered first before the option to fly to them is available. There are also underground areas that can be accessed by way of rappel gear which also act as shortcuts. You come across save rooms on your adventure at various intervals and you need to interact with the console inside to save your progress.

    Various items are hidden about levels and going out of your way to find them will lead to you being rewarded handsomely for it. The aforementioned area maps do what’s on the tin, while med kits increase your max health and bandoleers increase your ammo carrying capacity. There are also four scrolls and trinkets each that bestow various effects on your character, such as no knockback when taking damage, jumping higher, being able to explore underwater areas, allowing you to perform a phase dash that lets you burst through walls and quickly move in any direction, etc. These eight items either help out in combat or in exploration of the map.

    There are also seven weapons that can be acquired to bolster your arsenal, along with three types of grenades.
    There’s the submachine gun, your standard weapon and the only one that has unlimited ammo, but is the weakest of the bunch. It always stays with you, while your other two guns can be of your own choice.
    The assault rifle, which is a superior version of the submachine gun with better damage.
    The shotgun, which is a little slow to fire off shells, but can easily take out enemies at close range and even kill multiple smaller enemies if your aim is true. The farther the target, the lesser the damage.
    The flamethrower, which has a limited range compared to the other weapons, but can kill any enemies that are within its cone shaped reach.
    The mercury harpoon, a harpoon gun that launches its ammunition one at a time and can pierce and kill multiple enemies in its path.
    The cluster rockets, which fires three rockets that initially stick together, but quickly splinter off into three directions (top, middle and bottom or left, center and right). Depending on your position in relation to your enemy’s, one or all of the rockets may hit them. Useful for taking out multiple enemies at once.
    Finally, the plasma beam, which shoot out a concentrated energy beam in whatever direction you point it in. The beam automatically aligns itself to hit any enemies that are within range.

    The grenades types are all able to do the same job, but in differing ways and only one type can be carried by you. The normal grenades can be tossed and exploded if you wait a few seconds after lobbing it. The incendiary grenades work the same way, except that it releases embers that damage any enemies they hit. The C4 needs to be thrown and detonated by pressing the grenade button again after throwing it. All of them automatically explode when coming into contact with an enemy after being thrown and they’re all also used to clear wooden doors that block you off from helpful secrets, though the C4 is the only explosive that can remove various metal doors that are in your path.

    Alongside all of the above are 50 hidden relics that are scattered throughout the map. They look like silver dinner plates and don’t contribute anything valuable to your toolkit. They’re just there to be collected and nothing more. You can find them by shooting at various objects in your immediate area and most objects cloaking these collectibles don’t have anything to distinguish them from other breakable objects. There isn’t any way to see where the remaining relics are located and it can be annoying to scour through levels to find the last remaining few when you’re aiming to snag them all.

    The enemies that you come up against range from spiders, large and small, to large wolves, rats, locusts, undead mummies, bats, crows, big beetles, flaming skulls, brains that jump about on their own, zombie spearmen and templar knights armed with a sword and shield, to name a few. Most of the time, they all drop either health or ammo pick ups, as do various breakable objects, to keep you going until you discover the next save room. They can initially be annoying to fight as many of them can occupy the screen at once, but after you get some of the upgrades and higher tier guns and learn how each one behaves, you’ll be able to crush them without losing much or any health most of the time. In some instances, they can be a nuisance to fight off, with that blame being placed on the flying enemies. In certain areas, crows and bats refuse to stop spawning and can result in you falling off of ledges to the ground below because of coming into contact with them, requiring you to trek back up in order to progress. Sometimes, these areas aren’t so bad as there isn’t much distance between the floor and the level you got knocked from. Other times, the distance is much greater and travelling back to where you initially fell from is bothersome. Some enemies, like rats and small spiders, travel along whatever surface that they cling to, meaning that if you attempt to enter another room, you might get hurt because an enemy was crawling across that “surface”/entry to the other room. Despite those complaints, it’s still good fun to send them back into the afterlife.

    There are five bosses that need to be slain, with each having their own pattern of attack that needs to studied in order to know when to attack, like literally every other video game ever. The bosses are all varied and you never mistake one for another when remembering when you fought them. The largest spider ever in this game, a dragon, the death god Anubis, a scarab that can fire a laser from its back and Ahmanet fighting alongside the god Set as a two stage bossfight makes for some intense action. The arenas where the fights take place also play a crucial role for survival as you need to keep moving to avoid attacks and reposition yourself to fire on them as boss attacks usually involve various projectiles like bile or fireballs being hurled your way and can take up a good portion of the screen. The arena itself may be manipulated by the boss as they may raise and lower platforms, destroy walls to progress the fight or activate various platforms that knock you down onto spikes. Awareness of your surroundings is key and ignoring them inevitably leads to failure and your death. When destroyed, the boss will leave behind health and ammo pick ups to be collected as a reward. You won’t typically have the highest damage weapons when you confront them, so each battle feels tense and relieving once they finally keel over and die from all the rounds you pumped into them.

    Death doesn’t just mean restarting from the last save room. Instead, if you are killed, the game autosaves and your dead avatar returns as an undead soldier loyal to Ahmanet with all the equipment they obtained. You restart from the last save room you used as a new agent and must kill your previous character to regain all your equipment. It’s an interesting mechanic that makes you afraid of death and forces you to earn back your kit through combat with a superior opponent and can leave you on edge when your health drops to a low level. It was usually easy for me to earn my arsenal back as after getting hit by them, my invincibility frames shielded me long enough to kill them and retake what was mine. If you’re skilled enough to quickly kill enemies and dodge attacks, this mechanic won’t be able to instill much fear in you.

    The pixel art is fitting as it does a good job in depicting the horror themed enemies. This, along with the locations and the accompanying music tracks all combine to immerse and simultaneous keep players tense. The arachnids all look absolutely horrifying since they’re the size of a man, skeletons fit in nicely with the theme of the game for obvious reasons, wolves howl at the moon as they rush to maul you and sarcophagi rising up to unleash a flaming spirit that shrieks as it barrels towards you to attack all fit in perfectly with the game’s atmosphere. The art for each location is also appropriate as various cave systems, a clocktower, sewers and subway tunnels all serve as brilliant backdrops for the action, with foregrounds and backgrounds all being easy on the eyes. Music tracks also help to immerse you, with a creepy track being played before a bossfight to drum up tension, while the tracks that plays during bossfights and escape sequences are fast and intense. Each area has its own song and all are able to ensnare you in the game and keep you focused on it.

    The game’s length is rather short as it can be finished in around five hours and completed in ten if you decide you want obtain all the items and complete the game without the help of a guide. At its full price of Rs. 1,664 here in India, that makes it a little difficult to recommend as it feels like you’re not getting enough bang for your buck unless you buy it in a sale.

    Though it may be associated with the failure of a movie universe, this game is anything but. The Mummy Demastered is a great horror themed Metroidvania with plenty of ghastly goons to fight and weapons and upgrades to collect, though it’s hampered by a short length, some irritating sections with flying enemies and a price that’s a little too high for my liking. You should definitely buy it if it’s on sale.
    3.5
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