O tempora: Gex Trilogy

O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.

My taste in platformers is something some consider unnatural. Despite growing during the era when platforming games of many variations were the dominant genre of games, there were not that many I actually liked. Mario games? Nope. Sonic games? Kinda, but not really my thing. Mega Man? Nah. Classic Castlevania titles? Also no. I admire and respect a lot of entries in those series, but the closer it gets to being just a platformer or action platformer, the less likely I am to enjoy the game, usually. Especially with 2D ones. Exploration focused games, like so called “metroidvanias” I do love. But if it’s just about jumping or jumping and shooting, especially if the game is supposed to be challenging – not for me.

And while there are a lot more 3D platformers that I like, it’s not a gigantic list as well. It lacks Mario, for example. But it does include Gex: Enter the Gecko – a game I have considered to be my favorite 3D platformer for the longest time. So when this game, as part of the “whole” “Trilogy” of Gex games was announced to be re-released, I was super excited. It didn’t need to be a remaster or a remake, just a very good re-release (emulated or not) of the original titles. Gex Trilogy is not quite there, though I’m still happy it exists.

Despite being called a Trilogy and the fact that there are indeed three main games, it’s not a trilogy in any kind of narrative sense. In fact, Gex only has plot for the sake of just having some narrative reasoning for all of the jokes. The premise is extremely simple – there’s a bad guy named Rez who lives in the Media Dimension (basically, a land of everything TV and movie), Gex enters the Media Dimension for some reason and needs to defeat the bad guy to leave. The rest is just parodies and endless movie quotes to keep the “plot” going until Rez is defeated and credits start rolling. I’m not pointing this out as a negative, mind you, just to emphasize that a lot of platforming games by 1995 (when the first game came out) usually had more actual plot.

Gameplay-wise there are a lot of similarities too. It seems like the main blueprint for the original game was Super Mario Bros. 3 (or World), while for Enter the Gecko and Deep Cover Gecko it was Super Mario 64. As such, you always have some sort of a “world map” which is limited in the original 2D perspective game and properly explorable in the 3D titles. And the goal of each level is to collect a TV remote, that’s basically your Star in a Mario game. Though in the original title Remotes had to be found separately from the exit and weren’t always near one another. Gex, apart from the traditional running, jumping and attacking (via a tail whip in his case), has a tail bounce, that was somewhat boring in the original game, but turned into a proper movement ability in the 3D titles (reminiscent of the cane pogo jumping in the NES DuckTales). He can also stick to walls, which included most surfaces in the original games, but became limited to only some surfaces in 3D games. Oh and he eats bugs, flies specifically, which serve as power-ups that work differently based on the game.

But then the games themselves are so wildly different in tone and design… As usual, I’ll need to talk about them separately.

Gex

The original title was developed by Crystal Dynamics for the 3DO and released in 1995. And that’s where I first played the game myself back in 96 or 97, I think, as my friends owned one. And I don’t really like this game much, despite it having a lot of cool ideas. For one, it’s a 2D action platformer and I’ve already established that I’m not too fond of them in general. But more importantly to most people, the game has several issues that were quite common to the genre. The biggest one of which is that the camera is just not good enough, even though apparently the PS1 version of the game improved some of its behavior (I can’t remember if this is true), it is quite common in this game to do blind jumps or get hit by something you simply could not see. The screen is too zoomed in, you cannot scroll the screen to look up or down and some of the automated camera movement is just too sudden or too late to be helpful. A lot of the levels also feature terrible “gotcha!” design to screw the players over and most of the secret world levels are horrendous, including one with a gigantic boring maze. Oh and don’t even get me started on how tediously long the secret ending is and how painful it is to read through its edgy text.

That said, the game does have some cool elements too. Visually it’s quite nice (and 3DO version actually also had additional flair to some elements that is missing in the PS1 version which is the basis of the Gex Trilogy version) and the variety of levels, despite there being just 5 themes (plus secret world) for the levels. A lot of levels have unique enemies, unique mechanics, unique obstacles or central gimmicks that are never repeated. The music is mostly good and sometimes outright fantastic. Climbing on walls is the most fun out of the whole series and the power-ups are really fun to use. And if you don’t want to 100% the game and only go for the required remotes, skipping a few levels, boring bonus games and the secret world, it can be quite enjoyable to play. I still wouldn’t have wanted to finish it without the rewind and save state abilities built into the re-release, but people who like the genre won’t even need that, most likely.

Gex: Enter the Gecko

The second game, however, is my main reason for being in love with Gex and most likely the main reason anyone would bother with Gex Trilogy. Released in 1998 for the original PlayStation, I’ve experienced it around the same time and absolutely loved it. Sure, the plot was a completely throw-away reason to make a new Gex game this time and some of the quotes were reused from the previous title, but moving around the levels was so much fun. Bouncing on the tail, doing a karate kick, expertly moving the camera around was so fun… Camera… Yeah, one thing that really ages this entry is the camera. Despite having three settings (manual, semi-auto, auto), all of them kinda suck and more often than not you will be getting hit or dying because of the camera and not anything else. Sometimes also because of questionable hit detection and collisions. And since I’m on the negatives, I should also add that while the “world map” in this entry is fun to explore and it does have some hidden elements, it is very minimalist and simple, which is quite a downgrade when comparing with the castle in Super Mario 64. Also, the levels eventually do lack variety in themes.

But that’s where most of my complaints end as I absolutely love this game. As soon as you get used to its movement and find the best way to control the camera (I use manual and constantly control it via the shoulder buttons), you start enjoying the fun exploration of the game and its genuinely unique Mood. I mean, sure, it’s still a parody of genres, it’s still silly, but Enter the Gecko also has a lot of… grunginess? There’s a certain edge to the game that feels genuine and not awkward like it did in the first game – something closer to the Oddworld games in how they are colourful and silly, but very dystopian and dark at the same time. Enter the Gecko soundtrack is incredible at building this mood, especially in the dystopian levels of Rez himself, but even in the “spooky” levels or the “computer world” levels there’s something dark and moody in the background that goes beyond a pastiche and feels unique and earnest. Yes, I’m still talking about the game where a lizard constantly paraphrases movie quotes.

Though, even beyond the fact that Enter the Gecko feels very uniquely interesting, it is also, I would say, the most interesting entry to explore. Released during the rise of the collectathon platformers, there are some secret remotes hidden in levels and also a remote you get for collecting enough thingies on the levels. And smartly, the designers made it so the amount of said thingies is usually a lot larger than the amount you need to get the remote. Only in later levels this requires you to basically do all possible routes of the level in one go, but for most of the game you just need to collect a lot, not even necessarily most. Even with the way levels unlock, the game is very generous and you can finish the game a lot earlier than if you try to 100% it. Though I still did because it’s fun to explore, most of the levels are fun (and bosses are also the best in the series, the final Rez fight is incredible in terms of audio and visuals) and the secret ending you get is very good too. This one is an easy recommendation, as long as you can get used to the genuinely bad camera.

Gex: Deep Cover Gecko

The final game in series is… odd. On one paw, it has some of the best and most creative levels in the series and it improves the camera over the previous game by a lot. On the other, it just has so many bizarre decisions. This game is attempting to have more focus on a “story” of sorts, but the results are terrible. Essentially, the main reason to go into Media Dimension now is to save a “sexy secret agent”, played by a real life actress, and it’s sooooooooo awkward. Every cutscene is Gex trying to hit on her, as we’re seeing her reactions and replies and it is as uncomfortable as it sounds. It’s that case, when you feel ashamed for everyone involved. This constant horny tone is also extremely at odds with the rest of the game that now feels a lot more “for children”. It’s more silly and cartoony, Gex has new “friends” for whatever reason, most of the dystopian edge of the previous game is gone and this game doesn’t really have a distinct vibe to itself at all.

On the other hand, apart from the already mentioned improvement to the camera and some of the mechanics and few great levels, the overall structure in general feels more fun. World map is now structured as a proper explorable level with its own secrets and collectibles. Level themes now do not repeat and every level is completely unique. The game also attempts to return to the more interesting power-ups from the original game, after Enter the Gecko barely used those at all. The game in general feels like an attempt to return some of the concepts from the original game in terms of mechanics or visuals, some of which works really well. Some of the music is still fantastic. Visually the game is more refined…

But then again, there are choices that undermine all of the improvements. The thingies you have to collect to get the bonus remote? Finite, you have to get all of them. And yes, it is often as tedious as it sounds, even when they don’t glitch out and fall through the floor, which they can rarely do, making your current attempt to get said remote unwinnable. There are more collectable elements now, but they rarely feel meaningful or interesting, unlike the secret remotes in the previous game that were really fun to look for (these no longer exist). Bonus levels are now extremely boring and all of them repeat a few times, just with different time limits. While actually unique secret levels are far fewer and not that creative. Getting everything now feels even more pointless than ever, since the rewards for all of the bonus things aren’t interesting. And the only helpful collectible is the one that increases your hitpoints (which was temporary in the first game, but is now a permanent upgrade), but even those have an excess of potential pickups and are usually simply in your way, so you only need to grab them. And some levels are so poorly thought out and designed, one even has permanently missable collectibles for the current attempt if you don’t do something counter-intuitive and stupid to grab them.

Deep Cover Gecko had the potential to be the best game in the series, but it ends up feeling compromised. It doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. It feels less focused than the previous game. Its jokes and dialogues probably aged more poorly than those in the original from 4 years prior. In many ways it feels as if Enter the Gecko was re-released with some of the ideas, improvements and levels from Deep Cover Gecko, we’d get a far better game than what this game on its own is.

So, as you can see, Gex trilogy is far less consistent than something like Spyro trilogy. So the remake of the latter was always a no-brainer, but re-releasing or especially remaking Gex games?.. That’s tough. None of the games were fantastic to begin with, with Enter the Gecko being the closest to greatness, so at this point it would seem far more logical to just reboot the whole thing and make a new game instead, even if it would use Enter as its basis and then add all of the best elements of the first and last games on top. And how big would the audience be for that kind of title? I dunno – I would be there for it, of course, but I might be in the minority.

Instead we have a re-release by Limited Run Games. And as implied at the very beginning – it has plenty of issues. First I need to get one thing out of the way – this collection is based entirely on the “ROM”s from the PlayStation releases of each game, specifically the NTSC release of Gex and a choice between the NTSC and PAL versions of the sequels (as they had unique voice acting). As a result, this is in no way a “definitive” release of what Gex Trilogy could be. 3DO version of the original had some effects and cut content available via a debug menu that was removed from the PS1 release. Enter the Gecko had an overall inferior port to Nintendo 64, that nonetheless got unique levels. And Deep Cover Gecko also had an overall inferior N64 version, which had a bunch of exclusive levels. None of those are playable in this collection and are only available as short videos previewing sections of the levels.

On top of that, LRG seems to have some sort of an allergy to normal game saves. While it was completely devastating in their re-release of Clock Tower, where they have substituted the save system of the original game with an objectively inferior one, it isn’t as disastrous with Gex, but still quite bad. Original 3DO version of Gex had a save system that was a bit finnicky, but all later ports only had passwords that you had to find as well, so the fact that LRG added save states and those prompt you to save after each finished level is a good thing. But both Enter and Deep had a proper built-in save system (and Enter had a password system as well), which are completely cut out of the release in favor of the same save state system. Which isn’t how these games were meant to be experienced at all, looks ugly, saves at an inappropriate time in Deep Cover Gecko and also cuts out several unique cool looking screens from Enter the Gecko main menu. Why is that every other commercial re-release based on emulation strives to keep the original save system while also providing rewinds and save states, while LRG always removes the normal saves? Is it so difficult to have a virtual “memory card” of sorts?

But even apart from that, there are odd technical issues with the release. The audio is extremely crunchy in comparison to the originals. None of the aspect ratios work quite right in 3D games – I played with widescreen, which is implemented half-okay, but sometimes things get stretched or squished and it’s never consistent. Camera was breaking for me a lot more than it ever had on PS1, and I’ve played these games a lot on PS1. Emulation itself could break by either completely freezing the game or randomly playing everything at a faster speed. The vibration setting for Deep Cover Gecko resets at every launch. The achievements are utterly bizarre, as neither of the 3D games have achievements for 100% them, but there’s an achievement for inputting the debug code that you basically need to look up somewhere on GameFAQs. Oh and you can’t rebind keys. In a 2025 re-release of games that had the ability to rebind keys in the 1990s.

I love Gex: Enter the Gecko. While now I can safely say that – yeah, Spyro was a far better platformer on PS1, it doesn’t change just how much I love playing Enter the Gecko. While Deep Cover Gecko has some incredibly fun levels I love to revisit and explore as well. But recommending this collection to someone who has never experienced Gex before, especially if they decide to start in release order and play the original Gex?.. Yeah, I dunno if that will be a positive experience. Still, I’m glad that there is a modern release of Gex: Enter the Gecko that has issues, but is the PS1 version of the game that was better than the previously available on GOG PC port of the game. I think you should give it a go. But I also hope that Limited Run Games actually fix this collection and maybe stop hating normal save systems.