Blinx: The Time Sweeper (Xbox)

Developer:

Artoon

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Release Date:

2002

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Systems:

Xbox

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing a game about a cat called Blinx: The Time Sweeper. I gave guest poster mecha-neko plenty of chances to be the one to write this, I know he's a cat person, but he decided to pass so now I'm stuck with it. But there is a good reason why this has to be this particular game on this particular day.

It's because today is the Xbox's 20th birthday and I'm covering an original Xbox exclusive to celebrate! I needed to select a game that was never released on PC but could be played on an Xbox One to make it easier for me to get good screenshots, and once I narrowed my list down to games I could get hold of easily there was only one name left on it. But I think this was probably the best possible choice; I mean it's even got "Only on Xbox" written on the title screen, how perfect is that?

Oh plus it had to be on a 'top ten' list somewhere, that was also important seeing as that's Super Adventures' gimmick this year. Fortunately I found the game on videogamer.com's Top 10 Most Disappointing Console Exclusives. I suppose poor Blinx is probably on a 'Top 10 Failed Mascot Characters' list somewhere as well, seeing as Microsoft straight up abandoned the trademark in 2015. That's not entirely fair though, as he's actually doing pretty well these days as the mascot for the Poorly Aged Things twitter account.

The game's by Japanese developer Artoon, which had a pretty mixed output, with lots of red and yellow scores on their Metacritic page. Though they did also create Blue Dragon and The Last Story with Mistwalker. Unfortunately that really was their last story, as they went defunct in 2010. It was directed by Naoto Ohshima, the legendary character designer who came up with Sonic the Hedgehog. He also directed Sonic CD and Nights into Dreams... and his latest project was designing characters for Balan Wonderworld. So Blinx is actually part of a pretty, uh, remarkable lineage.

Anyway I'm going to give it an hour or so and see what it's like.

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The intro begins with a narrator explaining what this massive ominous facility is all about. He's speaking a language I don't recognise though, possibly the language of the Time Cats, so I need to read the subtitles.

He reveals that he's called Blinx and he works for the Time Factory. The cats here have two jobs: delivering time to different worlds and cleaning up time glitches before they turn into monsters. Makes sense to me; everyone needs more time than they have and monsters have to come from somewhere.

Unfortunately Blinx gets cut off before he can tell us how they found the time to build a Time Factory to make time as his narration is hijacked by an emergency announcement: the Tom-Tom Gang of time bandits has invaded World B1Q64!

Hey there's actual humans in this universe as well. Well, there used to be anyway, before time broke.

The screen goes wibbly and all these people disappear into crystals, which are hoovered up by the pigs flying overhead on hover bikes. "The Tom-Tom Gang profits by selling time to other worlds," the announcer explains.

Hang on, so there are worlds that the Time Factory cats don't deliver time to? Entire planets relying on black market minutes, living on borrowed time? It's no wonder they've got time thieves raiding planets.

Suddenly the announcement that hijacked Blinx's narration is hijacked by a broadcast from the time bandits!

Hey isn't that the woman from Skies of Arcadia?

They've got the princess of World B1Q64 captive and she doesn't seem too keen about it. She kicks the king pig in the face on live TV, knocking him to the ground, and the cartoon hearts appearing around Blinx's head reveal that the pig's not the only one who's fallen for her hard. Then the villain picks himself off the floor and punches her back! The jerk!

We never actually learn why he called up the Time Factory like this though as a henchman comes over to tell him that the time crystals are turning into monsters, and they cut the signal. C'mon man, how did he not see this coming? Even I know that time crystals turn into monsters and I haven't made it past the intro yet.

Okay I didn't expect the time monsters to explode and destroy the entire world, and all these Blinxes seem kind of shocked by it as well.

The Time Factory announces that B1Q64 will be cut off from its supply of time, freezing it before it can explode and threaten other worlds. The time cats go running for the exits... all except Blinx. He's in love with that princess he glimpsed for 3 seconds and he races for the portal to save the day all by himself.

Speaking of glimpsing things for a moment, a 'Now Loading' screen came on after the intro, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. I don't know what the loading times were like on an original Xbox, but when it's running on an Xbox One you can blink and miss them. I blame time bandits.

Blinx leaps out of the portal into some weird wonky street and then it's my turn. It seems like the city's been horrifically warped by time distortions, but judging by the intro it's always looked like this.

Right away I've noticed something about the gameplay: Blinx walks really slowly. The planet's being overrun by monsters and it's going explode any minute now but he's not in any hurry. Not anymore anyway; he was sprinting just fine in the intro.

I walked over to grab one of those spinning blue moons lying in the street and the game stopped for a moment to explain that I just picked up a time crystal.

There were three blue moons sitting here, which were enough to earn me a PAUSE when I finished the set with the other shape. But if I'd collected four blue moons I would've gotten two PAUSEs. It reminds me of how you collect gems to get better weapons in Starfighter 3000, except here the colours don't have to be collected in any kind of order.

I can store three of these time controls I've crafted, apparently. I think a cat ideally wants to walk around with four PAUSE, but I'll see how well I do.

Next the game helpfully pointed out that there's trash here and I can suck it up with my portable vacuum cleaner. I thought I was a time sweeper not a street sweeper.

I can only hold five pieces of trash at once, so my dreams of being a trash hoarder have been shattered. It's probably for the best though, as it takes 1.5 seconds to suck each barrel up individually and that's a long time when you've got a timer in the top left corner constantly ticking up to the end of the world.
 

The mystery of why I'd even want a vacuum cleaner full of trash has been solved! Turns out that I have to shoot trash at time monsters to kill them and turn them back into time crystals.

I fired a single barrel at Shrek's decapitated head and that sorted him out. One of those Psychonauts figments in the top left got a tick mark and the game let me know I have two monsters to go. Weirdly I don't have to collect all the time crystals, even though that's my actual job and they turn into monsters if they're left lying around long enough. I mean I'm not going to be sticking around long enough to see that happen, the monsters here are finite, but it does seem like the problem I came here to solve.

There's a 10T weight blocking a path over on the left so I decided to try my vacuum on it. But the game told me not to bother as I don't have enough power. So that's a bit of a mystery.

Aww, I wanted to start collecting hearts to fill in my missing hit point, but I was carrying three crystals already so I just wasted this one completing a bad crystal combo. I thought it might have just dropped the first crystal and shifted the rest over to make room, but nope. There probably aren't going to be enough hearts left on the level to get a full set now!

It doesn't seem like there's any reason to experiment with different combinations as anything other than three or four of the same shape is just a bad combo. It's not one of those games where you can find secret combinations or combine powers to see what happens.

Alright there's the last monster! I'll go over and sort him out with some high-velocity garbage and then I can leap into the goal gate over there on the left.

I know I didn't say much about the level itself, but there isn't much to say really. Oh I did come across a giant golden pig door along the way. I jumped on a switch to open it and bubbles came out of its snout.

Another thing I should mention is the music... but I dunno what to say about it, except that it's a catchy techno track and it suits the game, plus it's got a riff that sounds like clock chimes. Here, have a YouTube link to save me from failing to describe it. It's probably my favourite thing about the game so far.

And my grade for that level is... D+. It's what I deserve really. At least I got paid for the trash I still had in my vacuum. That's 22 extra G in addition to the 30 I found in the level!

I also got a replay to watch in the background and I noticed something I missed while I was I playing the level:

Blinx has green glow in the dark eyes! He's half cat, half Xbox.

Hey the game has a world map! Kind of. It turns out that I can replay levels to beat my times and find secrets, and it's giving me all the information I need to do that.

It's not the prettiest stage select screen in the world, but I like that blue metal frame that slides in around it. Bits of it slide in and out depending on what's being displayed in the middle and it's very slick. I was tempted to include a video, but I've already got enough screenshots so I'll just point out that the info box on the bottom right has disappeared out of the way on the next image.

Huh, is the shopkeeper cat on planet B1Q64 as well? I wonder if she's aware that I can't take my time because the world's about to explode. You'd think the two of them might have a bit of a chat about it, but nope there is no conversation here.

I'm not impressed by the clothing selection either, as the only garment available is a different coloured version of the top Blinx has on, though there is some other interesting stuff here. I can increase my max hearts or buy a more powerful vacuum... except I can't as I only have 52 gold. It costs 200G for a single hit point refill! Fortunately I can just grind for them on stage 1 by going back to collect the heart symbols.

ROUND 1 - TIME SQUARE, STAGE 2

I got a SLOW! I also got a good screenshot of Blinx and he reminds me of the photographs of the characters in the manual for the first Star Fox game. He's got the same tiny ankles and shiny metal feet.

You know, I should probably try using one of these time control powers already. I've got three now, so I can't pick up a new one without losing one I already have.

That's cool, the game pauses when you bring up the power select bar so you never need to worry about accidentally triggering the wrong one while frantically hitting buttons. In fact they don't even seem to be mapped to buttons, so I have to bring this up every time I want to use a time power.

Speaking of pausing, let's see what happens when I use the PAUSE power.

Everything around me froze in time for a few seconds (relatively speaking), so that's pretty much what you'd want to happen. It seem like I'm immune to my own powers, so if I pick SLOW I'll still be walking around at my normal speed. Honestly I don't think it's even possible to walk any slower than Blinx already does.

Anyway all the enemies are frozen, along with the barrels that used to be rolling across the floor, so I can stroll around, fire trash at them, and watch as they all die simultaneously when time restarts.

The game's still giving me pretty obvious hints about what I should be doing. It's also showing off its Sands of Time-style cloth physics with that flag on the left. I'd try jumping into it and see if I can push it around, but I'm preoccupied with picking up these purple plus-shapes. I need to collect a REW so I can rewind time and un-collapse this statue.

I got the REW power, fixed the broken statue... and then it just broke again when time resumed. Okay, not sure what that was about. I'm obviously missing something here. Fortunately it isn't necessary to beat the level and I made it to the exit just in time to earn my second D+ rank.

ROUND 1 - TIME SQUARE, STAGE 3

Stage three has me jumping over the rooftops, which is cool. Trouble is the camera doesn't always make it obvious what I'm walking into, and it turns out there's actually a big gap between where I'm standing right now and that other roof over there. Fortunately it doesn't seem like there's falling damage. They didn't even put a spikes or a bottomless pit down there, so I just jumped back up again.

Incidentally, the game loves drawing circles on the screen to introduce every new feature I come across, but it never bothered to tell me I have a double jump!

I finished the stage 3 with my third D+ victory in a row, so that means I'm all out of stages for the time being and I'm going to have to take on the first boss. Well I could just keep replaying these stages over and over until I have enough cash to buy stuff in the shop, but... nah.

ROUND 1 - TIME SQUARE, BOSS

 

The boss fight's not going great.

You don't just take damage and start flashing for a bit when Blinx gets hit, he's actually knocked out for the count. He's done, game over, the world is doomed... except the hit point hearts are actually Sands of Time-style rewinds. They should've called this Blinx of Persia... except this actually came out a year before the other game.

The difference between these heart-shaped RETRYs and my regular rewinds is that they affect Blinx as well, so now he never got knocked senseless and he has a chance to avoid whatever hit him. They're like save states, except I've only got two of them. Well, one now.

There's something kind of ironic about a game featuring VHS rewind lines on a console that was sold on having a built-in DVD drive to replace people's VHS players.

My mistake last time was stopping to grab some trash and leaving myself vulnerable for a couple of seconds, so I'll leave it for now.

Oh by the way I'm stuck in a boss arena fighting a bouncy thing covered in numbers armed with a time wand that shoots barrels. I can knock him senseless for a moment by firing a barrel of my own at him, but then I have to wait a while for the stars to stop dancing around his head before I can take my next shot. Hey, maybe that's when I should've stopped to suck up more trash!

I got him in the end and money poured out everywhere. But then it vanished before I could grab it. If I'd known it was going to do that I would've used my SLOW or PAUSE control on it. Hey I wonder if you can use rewind to make the gold reappear so you can grab it twice.

ROUND 2 - DÉJÀ VU CANALS, STAGE 1

I was expecting to get a cutscene or something after the boss fight, but nope, it just opened up the next set of stages. Now I'm in the Déjà Vu Canals, and they look pretty cool. A bit more open.
 
Alright, the first thing I need to do is suck up five pieces of trash, same as on every other level. For some reason I always start with the replays and time controls I had left over from the last stage, but I never get to keep my trash.

Here's a shot just to show off what the pretty water looks like. It's pretty!

I'm still doing the same thing by the way, getting trash and hitting monsters. There are eight monsters on this stage and I need to hit all of them before the exit opens. Fortunately they never seem to be hidden.

This Cat Medal wasn't so hard to find either, though I bet I walk right past the other two. There are three of these Cat Medals on every stage and if I collect enough of them I get... something, presumably.

Okay, I looked it up and they unlock clips and concept art. Plus if you get all of them then the ultimate vacuum cleaner... is put into the shop with a price of 90,000G. I ain't ever going to see that much money!

It wasn't hard to figure this puzzle out. There was a collapsed bridge with rewind symbols all around it, so I just used REW and strolled across before it collapsed again. Weirdly the REW power always rewinds scenery to the point where something happened to it, even if it's been minutes since it happened, but I'm not complaining.

I got the last few monsters and jumped into the exit for another rank D+ victory! At least I'm consistent.

ROUND 2 - DÉJÀ VU CANALS, STAGE 2

 

This thing's new. I saw a time bandit TV set with a target on it, so I fired trash at it and gold spilled out. I guess it's random what you get, and I just got lucky. That means I've got 1000G now! Though right now I'm saving up 2000G to get the extra-strength vacuum I want.

By the way, the gold is shaped exactly the same as the time crystals, which is bloody weird. Some classic games used clever tricks to fit their game into memory, like Super Mario Bros. reusing the cloud sprite for the bushes, but I doubt they were that short of RAM on an Xbox.

I did find a proper crystal to complete my set though, then I used REW to ride one of those logs up into the sky. It didn't actually go anywhere however, so that was a waste of time (control).

ROUND 2 - DÉJÀ VU CANALS, STAGE 3

I'm trying to carefully grab the heart from this pile of shapes and then get back out again without touching the others. If I can find one more heart afterwards I'll get two RETRYs at once and refill all my hit points.

Oh crap, I was so focused on the shapes that I wasn't paying attention to that balloon enemy on the left and he knocked Blinx out. I didn't know they could fire stuff at me! Okay, now I need three retries.

Second time around I didn't take any chances, and came in blasting the enemies with my barrels. I still managed to get hit!

At least now I know what happens when I run out of retries.

Fortunately I was just kicked back out to the round map, with all the stuff I was carrying back when I started the level. It's like I just loaded my last save.

ROUND 2 - DÉJÀ VU CANALS, BOSS

 

Boss #2 is a bit trickier than the first boss. Every time I fire a barrel at him he just grows a little bigger and spits it back out at me, so that's not working. Plus it wasn't easy getting those barrels as the guy is on my tail the whole time, leaping at me. He's relentless.

The camera isn't helping, as it's permanently locked onto him so I can't see what I'm doing. It was fine in the last boss fight, but this one has ledges with time crystals that I need to jump up onto and that's tricky when they're behind the camera.

Bloody hell. How am I supposed to work like this?
 
I decided to try a different approach: deliberately feeding him barrels so that he'd grow too big and explode. I've played enough of these games now that I know what they're like, and the sort of tricks they pull. Didn't work though!

It took me another four or five attempts but in the end I finally got absolutely sick of it and gave up. I'm really not enjoying this! I mean I'm still going to defeat him, but I'm just going to look up how to do it instead of trying to figure it out for myself.

SOON

Turns out that you're supposed to get behind him as he only eats the barrels from the front. Not the easiest thing to do seeing as he's constantly bouncing towards you... unless you go back to an earlier stage and grind for time controls to use.

I've actually ran into a few smaller enemies that were like this, so I guess the idea was that fighting those monsters were supposed to teach me how to take on this guy. Trouble is that they were always standing next to bombs, so I just fed them one of them instead and learned nothing.

There was no cutscene after this guy either by the way.

ROUND 3 - HOURGLASS CAVES, STAGE 1

The game's getting trickier with the platforming in round 3, mostly because the bloody camera isn't showing me where I'm landing! I haven't even reached those cloud blocks yet, I'm actually leaping from bounce pad to bounce pad right now, but you're just going to have to imagine what they look like I'm afraid.

ROUND 3 - HOURGLASS CAVES, STAGE 3

Actually here you go, I've found some other jump pads to screenshot... right next to the slippery slopes washing me down into a sand river. Camera aside, it's not actually as awkward as it looks, and the only penalty for failure is having to get back up and do it again. There's no spikes down there or anything like that.

3 MINUTES 13 SECONDS LATER

Hey this is different! I need to use a REC to record myself standing on a switch, then run over and stand on the other switch up at the top to open up both of those doors on the left. It's not exactly a puzzle, the game straight up told me what to do, but I still managed to mess it up on my first try.

I guess I need to go backtracking to collect more REC crystals then. I think I'd missed some monsters along the way, so I would've had to do this anyway.

Oh, damn, it turns out that there are spikes down here in the sand after all. They're waiting at the end of the river to impale you if you don't get out in time. Speaking of time, I'm getting a bit close to hitting my 10 minute deadline now. I need to kill those monsters I missed the first time around, get back and open those doors with the REC I just collected, and then get the hell out of here.
 

Man, why did the last monster have to be a tiny version of that second boss? I hate these guys! All I have to do is kill this guy and then jump into the exit on the right, but he keeps eating my barrels and kicking my ass. Fortunately the timer also rewinds when I'm hurt, so these last few seconds on the clock have been lasting me longer than you'd expect.

That was my last retry though, so either I manage to beat him and make it to the exit in 30 seconds without being hit, or I'll have to replay the entire level. Fortunately I bought that 2000G extra-strength vacuum before starting the stage, so I'm going to see how he likes being fed an entire tree.

Oh come on, he sucked in a whole tree? I seriously don't have time for this.

Fortunately he was a bit sluggish after his big meal and I was able to slip behind him and launch a fridge at the back of his head. I leapt into the goal with 10 seconds left!

ROUND 4 - FORGOTTEN CITY, STAGE 1

There are no special bonus stages to break up the monotony, but the regular levels do mix things up a little. Like this stage is covered in bombs, which makes it really easy to blow all the enemies up. Trouble is I keep blowing everything up, including myself.

I managed to buy the extra RETRY slot though, so I can have four hit points now and survive more of my own mistakes.

SOON

Alright, I did a thing and made a balloon float out of the ground, now what? I can't jump onto the rope, I don't think I can shoot it. I tried rewinding time to make it sink back into the floor so I could stand on top as it rose up, but it wasn't affected at all.

I went exploring down the ladder instead and found another Cat Medal, which means this is one of those magical video game moments where it's easier to find the secret than it is to figure out where you're actually supposed to go next.

Ah screw it, I've probably missed a monster anyway and I can't be arsed backtracking. I'm turning the game off.


CONCLUSION

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The thing about platformers is that they're all about movement, so if a developer gets that right they've won half the battle. The Mario games were always a dream to control and the Sonics let you fly through the levels so fast you can barely tell what you're doing sometimes (in a good way). Blinx: The Time Sweeper, on the other hand, isn't much fun to move around in. Not because the controls are bad, but because Blinx moves kind of slow and the camera's always sabotaging your attempts to get anywhere. I mean the walking speed is okay, it's not a problem, but there's no joy in traversing a level. You can never cut loose and have fun.

Those time powers are the game's selling point and they add a bit of originality to it. They also add some replay value, seeing as you need to play around with them to get good times and reach all the secret Cat Medals. The game's basically spelled out how to get past every time puzzle in the main path and I've no idea if that's going to change later, but getting to those secrets is trickier. Though the way you acquire the powers makes getting around the levels even more of a pain. It's not too difficult to carefully leap between crystals and only collect the ones you want, but it's not something you necessarily want to be thinking about when you're fighting enemies. It's frustrating when you've got three shapes saved up and you accidentally walk into the wrong one, and even more so when you walk into the right one by accident and flush two of your saved time powers away when you only wanted one. Not good when certain time powers can be necessary to finish a level. It's also frustrating to realise that you've missed an enemy and have to go back and find them. The game's actually a collect 'em up, except for monsters instead of items, and this only gets worse as it goes on. I'm already up to 16 monsters on the checklist and I only made it to the start of round 4.

There's also a 10 minute time limit to worry about, which I guess is both bad and good. It's bad because you can find you don't have time to backtrack, but good because you only ever have to replay 10 minutes at worst! The game has 8 rounds, with each of them containing 3 stages and a boss, so it's not that long overall either. It apparently takes about 10 hours to beat... though I don't know if that counts the time spent grinding on old levels to bank a few PAUSEs for those bloody boss fights. I wasn't surprised that I didn't enjoy the bosses much, because I rarely ever enjoy fighting bosses. Not my kind of thing.

One thing I was surprised by is the story... as there pretty much isn't one. The game came out in 2002, four years after Sonic Adventure, but it doesn't seem like there's going to be any cutscenes between the intro and ending. There is a lot of character to it though, thanks to its flashy (for 2002) visuals and occasionally catchy music. Plus I like Blinx himself, he's just a regular dude stepping up to do a job and save the day. He never does anything obnoxious, he doesn't have a catchphrase, and he makes a cute little 'meow' sound whenever you accidentally slam his face into a wall. He's also pretty good at auto-aiming his shots at enemies for you, which is good as I needed the help in this one. The camera is not your ally, at least not in tight spaces.

Here's some Blinx trivia for you: there are apparently two versions of the game, the original version and the Platinum Hits re-release which lowers the difficulty (and some of the shop prices). I thought the Xbox One might have patched my original version up to the latest release and I'd been playing the easy version all this time, but it seems that the opposite happens: putting a Platinum Hits version into a modern Xbox downloads the original version instead. Unless you play it off a Japanese disc, then you get the easier Platinum Hits version. Apparently. I've only tried it with an original edition disc so I haven't checked.

I'm not the best person to judge third-person platformers, they're not really my genre, but it seems that Blinx: The Time Sweeper is... alright. It towers above games like Bubsy 3D in quality, there are way worse platformers out there than this, but there are way better platformers as well. You might enjoy it, but you're not missing out on much if you haven't played it yet, and it apparently only gets more tedious as it goes on and the number of monsters to find ramps up. That world one theme's still stuck in my head though.

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Thanks for reading! If you want to leave your thoughts about Blinx: The Time Sweeper or take a guess at what the next game will be, please form an orderly queue in front of the comment box below.