Gex Trilogy Review (Xbox): Can’t Slime its Way Out of the 90s

As someone who was born in 1992 and has a deep love for the Nintendo 64, I always get happy when I see games from that era make a return. That’s how I feel about the Gex Trilogy, even though I didn’t have much experience with it at all outside of short spans where I rented Gex: Enter the Gecko from Blockbuster. Now that the whole series is back and playable on modern consoles, I can enjoy the highs but I can’t help but acknowledge the lows. All three of the games in this package are a product of their time, and the decision to avoid fixing up some weak points really affects the overall enjoyment. That said, if you have nostalgic memories of this gecko, you now have a great way to relive them through this collection.

The Gex Trilogy Package is More or Less How You Remember It

Before we dive into the individual games, I want to focus on the entire package first. The Gex Trilogy is Limited Runs’ latest venture of bringing older games back with the Carbon Engine. In case you are unaware, these titles are more or less exactly how they were back when their original iterations were released on the original PlayStation, Nintendo 64, etc. Even though they are no longer under the Square Enix umbrella, the Crystal Dynamics and Eidos banners still show up when you start each game.

With that said, you can’t really call this a remaster collection. The games look just as pixelated and polygonal, the camera is just as iffy, and the level design is as all over the place as it was in the 90s. Because of that, there are some instances where these games just don’t hold up. The CGI cutscenes in particular look awfully pixelated at times. I’m willing to hear the argument for the gameplay experience to be exactly as it was back in the day, but you’re telling me it was impossible to refresh the cutscenes so they didn’t look so horrible? Some work being put into the quality of these scenes would have gone a long way towards making this collection feel more premium.

In Gex: Enter the Gecko and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko, the draw distance is still pretty terrible. Most of my time playing throughout these worlds was manageable, but when you get a larger map and you’re trying to look around for collectibles, you might as well be walking around in fog. There is some merit to Limited Run Games wanting as close to an original experience as possible, but I would much rather these releases work to provide that while also patching up some glaring issues that we have moved on from over the last 30 years.

From what I’ve seen, the biggest changes to gameplay have been adapting the game to work with analog controls, stretching the latter two games to be playable in full screen for today’s TVs, removing password functionality, and adding a rewind and instant save feature. The rewind feature, in particular, is a godsend for how time it will save you when running all over these levels. It makes playing through these games much more bearable, though it will force you to hear Gex repeat even more of his lousy references and jokes, sometimes continuously.

Gex as a character is definitely cemented in the 90s. He is constantly making references to all kinds of television shows and personalities, even in moments where there is no connection. The odd thing is that there were many of these references I didn’t understand. Sure, the Indiana Jones and Star Wars ones are easy to see, but he was also throwing out names and phrases I’ve never heard of. Being so young in the 90s, I just wasn’t paying attention to that stuff. I never found any of his jokes to actually be funny. The weird thing is, he also reuses the same jokes across games. It’s one thing for him to use the same joke continually in one adventure, but to then hear it pop up in the next one is really off putting. Was Crystal Dynamics so short on material back then that they had to rehash jokes that weren’t that funny the first time around? It’s very bizarre. Also, after playing all three games back-to-back, I have no desire to ever hear anyone mention the phrase “tail time” ever again.

Gex’s Humble Beginnings

Starting off the Gex Trilogy is Gex, a 2D side-scroller that definitely has its warts. Through a good portion of the game, I felt the level design was passable, but I can’t say that any of the bosses were necessarily fun. Gex can feel very stiff at times, and if the rewind feature selects a moment where you were about to tail hop on top of an enemy, it will take you out of the attack, leading you to take damage in a spot where you originally didn’t. I was forced to rewind even further in rather annoying places because of this.

Gex’s abilities are essentially exactly the same as his later games. Outside of no tail jump, he’s got his tail whip, can swallow fire or ice power-ups, and can cling to walls. Levels that relied on me climbing the background wall to find my way around were rather cool and being able to crawl across the ceiling came in handy. Those are nice representations of Gex’s gecko livelihood that don’t make as good in the later games, though pretty much everything else is improved moving forward.

Bonus levels in the first game are also very important for 100% interestingly enough. There’s one bonus per world, hidden away within a level, that challenges you with varying tasks. Playing through these, I have no idea how anyone was ever able to fully perfect all of the bonus levels. There are many instances where the objective moves fast, and Gex’s clunky movements would make this an absolute pain on the original PlayStation I imagine. If you were to just play it normally, you might get a few extra lives, but you will actually want to use the rewind so you can get the perfect score, which gives you a piece of a remote. When you complete the remote, you can go to a final secret world which is filled with a lot of challenging levels. 

For the most, these levels were fun, but there are two that I flat out didn’t like. One where you have to hold onto a wall as it pushes you through various UFOs felt like it was impossible to dodge some obstacles and the other was a giant maze that might be the worst 2D level I have ever played in any game ever. It’s gigantic, with nothing going on, and you have to find the hidden remote that feels like it’s a mile away. It’s awful. Do yourself a favor if you get to it and look up a map.

Enter the Gecko for a Much-Improved Experience

When we make our way into the first sequel of the Gex Trilogy, Gex: Enter the Gecko, things are overall very improved with a transition to a 3D platformer. The levels are much more colorful, Gex feels better overall to move around, and there are little items to go about collecting. Instead of stars like in Super Mario 64, we are completing objectives to earn remotes. One aspect I really liked is that when you start the level, the game will show you the endpoint for that mission. That’s something Mario didn’t get to doing until Sunshine four years later, so good job, Gex.

While the overall game doesn’t come anywhere close to reaching the heights of your favorite platformer from the N64, Enter the Gecko was my favorite game in this package. I think a lot of that has to do with the level selection. There are themes that are used a few different times, but almost every level I played I was really enjoying searching it top to bottom for all collectibles and the secret remote. The missions have a good variety as well, so I didn’t ever really grow tired of this game. Also, the bonus levels are a lot more fun here. Each one is a timed sequence where you need to find all of the collectibles in the area and then claim your prize. That might have been my favorite part of the game.

The big issue with Gex: Enter the Gecko is the same problem a lot of 90s 3D platformers dealt with: the camera. This was a time where developers were still figuring out how to make the camera work right in a 3D environment. While it’s not great overall, it’s also not the worst camera I’ve seen in a game from this era. It’s not even the worst in the Gex Trilogy, in my opinion.

I really enjoyed my time with Gex: Enter the Gecko. The bosses are a joke and the hub world is nothing special, but the levels definitely make this a game worth trying for any platforming fan and the standout in the Gex Trilogy.

Go Into Deep Cover and Never Come Out

In Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko, we are largely doing the same things we did in the previous game in the Gex Trilogy, but I feel like this game doesn’t live up to its predecessor. While the levels here are all unique, none of them reusing themes, I didn’t have as much fun running around them. Additionally, the collectible grabbing is just flat-out worse. In Enter the Gecko, you just needed to grab items from all sorts of avenues and there was almost always enough for you to grab the 120 needed to reward you with the corresponding remote. In Deep Cover Gecko, the collectibles for every level have been shortened to 100, but they no longer carry over when you die and if you leave the level under any circumstance you have to start over. This was another aspect that I really wish Limited Run Games would have adjusted. The tedium in grabbing collectibles in this game is so much higher than previously, to the point that I recommend avoiding it completely. You can get to the final boss without following any of the collectible remotes.

I had a lot more problems with the camera in Deep Cover Gecko as well. For some reason, I constantly noticed it moving in very close to Gex, making some jumps a matter of a leap of faith. The rewind feature let me get through this with my sanity in check, but that’s a band-aid over a poorly working feature that, again, would have made this collection a lot better if Limited Run were to adjust it a little. Turning the camera and having it not move through walls is just overall a lot more cumbersome than it was in the previous game.

I haven’t really been talking about the story in these games so far because, well, it’s just Gex moving through different television media type worlds. It’s usually not something worth mentioning, but the third game has a really weird and poorly aged love interest. Throughout this game, Gex talks to Agent Xtra, a real-world blonde woman wearing a skin-tight suit with plenty of cleavage showing. After looking it up, this was a Playboy model named Marliece Andrada. Throughout this entire game, the two are flirting with each other, with Gex making some very adult references to his “bulge” and how he wants to have some “relations” with her. Then you complete the game and you hear the two start having those relations. It’s a really gross  interaction that is a thousand times worse than the human and hedgehog kiss of Sonic the Hedgehog ‘06.

Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko takes a step back from the second game in quite a few ways. I would still say it’s more enjoyable than the original, but it’s rather aggravating.

Final Verdict

Overall, the Gex Trilogy is a great purchase specifically for the gamer who played these games in the 90s and doesn’t have access to them anymore. Anyone outside of that, it’s a hard sell. The games being playable on current consoles is nice, but it could have been made better. Outside of some weird audio distortion when I brought up the Xbox guide, I didn’t notice many bugs that I would attribute to the port. I think anything that felt funky was more a result of the original game code being that way. In some ways, that’s commendable, but there definitely was a way for Limited Run to make these games a better experience than they are. The rewind feature helps make up for a lot of shortcomings in these games but being forced to hear Gex repeat the same lousy jokes even more than if you were playing without it is a hell of its own. 

The Gex Trilogy was reviewed on Xbox Series X with a code provided by Limited Run Games. It is also available on Nintendo Switch, PC, and PlayStation 5.

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