Licensed videogames are known to be mostly miss than hit. There are few notable exceptions of games being good, and even rarer exceptions where the game was superior to the product it was meant to promote. I heard that last year’s The Mummy reboot was bad. Yet, somehow it managed to lead to this tie-in videogame. Is it great? No. But it’s quite decent and has an amazing soundtrack.
Given how I don’t really like most games by WayForward, I wasn’t expecting much. But then I saw comparisons with their often forgotten Nintendo DS title Aliens: Infestation, which was pretty novel and cool, and was somewhat of a rare example of having a more survival horror-ish metroidvania in 2D. That’s what got me interested. The game is very different (despite some similarities), and feels more like a run and gun title, but it still has some good things about it. Apart from fantastic art and music, that is.
It does retain a similar concept from the Alien game in that your death is somewhat “permanent”. This time around, however, it’s not about a limited roster of characters that die permanently, but rather about the fact that if you die, you continue as a new “agent” with no gear and have to find your previous character, now zombified, to kill them and grab all the equipment. If you’ve played Zombi(U), you know what it’s about. The exploration of the game is also somewhat interesting, with plenty of shortcuts and upgrades to discover if you use your abilities right. But at the same time, the game doesn’t really require the exploration, rather endorses it.
That said, I’m running out of nice things to say. Even the death mechanic, while interesting, can become a problem (since you need to find your old body with the most basic character setup), but even there, most of the time dying isn’t a problem. Instead of challenging a lot of things in the game frustrate. Bosses have very simple patterns, but take a lot of hits, leading to fights that aren’t tense as much as just hoping that they die before you do. And despite the exploration being fun, the “endorsement” I’ve mentioned before is very light. Most of the “items” in the game are just collectibles that do nothing and aren’t particularly fun to find, rather they just require you to shoot everything you see and maybe some random destructible item will have the collectible.
The game is also so really short. I’m usually all for shorter games, but The Mummy Demastered feels so short, it’s clear that it was due to time and budget reasons, as the game could be expanded and still not get boring. It takes about 4 hours to complete searching for all collectibles, but otherwise may take you under 3 hours and leave you wanting for more. Yet, probably, not really wanting to replay the game, since you can’t skip cutscenes and starting gear feels unfun vs what you get with upgrades, rather than going from fun to more fun as game goes on.
I’m glad I played it, but I am not going to lie – I feel that a huge reason for this lies solely in the music and art. Monomer did amazing job with the music here and it made playing through some boring or frustrating bits so much more fun than it really was otherwise. Definitely have a listen to the soundtrack, but I’m not sure I can recommend the game itself unless you get it on a great discount or in a bundle.