The controls in Vexx are plausible, with the exception of the underwater areas. These seemed a little more confusing and less responsive than they should have been, although the onscreen map that shows up is nice. Vexx also uses day and night concepts for each level. Locate the giant Sundial on each level and you can literally change day into night by turning it. Doing so can reveal doorways that are only accessible at night, but beware because the enemies you run across at night are usually tougher then the day crew.

Vexx is a man, er, cat-like thing on a mission.

Speaking of bad guys, let’s speak about them. So to speak. (I crack myself up sometimes…) Overall they are a decently diverse group with a variety of attack styles. You have some that are slow and strong and those that are quick but don’t pack much of a punch. A few of them I found more entertaining then the rest. For example, the Grimkins looked like little matches with their heads on fire and when you smack a Puggle they make a noise that sounds exactly like Chewbacca to me. (Here’s a quick tangent. “Chewbacca” is actually in the Word spell checker. Really has nothing to do with anything, but I found it fascinating…)

Well, I’ve had nothing but basically great things to say about the game to this point. So what did I mean at the beginning when I said Vexx could have been much more and should have copied certain areas of past great platformers? Two words: camera system. The camera system in Vexx is so bad it ruins the game. I cannot even explain how frustrating it is or how many deaths I had just because I couldn’t see what was happening. So many areas of Vexx are wonderful, but nothing can counteract the horrible camera. The camera is constantly getting stuck behind obstacles that you cannot even see. Also it would have been very nice to have been able to configure the camera axis. This kept messing me up in very critical times. It seems commonplace now that games allow you to invert the axis and Vexx needed to have had this option.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 78%.  Vexx gets a lot of things right as a platformer, but all of the good parts are completely negated by a lousy camera system. It’s too bad because Vexx could have been special.

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