Overall 8.3 Graphics 8 Sound 8.5 Addictive 6 Story 6.5 Depth 7.5 Difficulty 8
3
UN GROOVY ninjamcgee
Earthworm Jim 3D for the Nintendo 64 is the first (and only) 3D EWJ game. This was
the first EWJ game I played. The game begins when Jim gets crushed by the N64 logo
and then also a cow which causes him to literally lose his marbles. Jim is at the
hospital with little chance to recover his sanity. But Jim's super ego is called in
to save Jim's sanity by collecting all the marbles scattered throughout Jim’s
brains. Now this might sound like the greatest plot to a game ever, but the game
itself doesn't hold up to the epic story.
After the intro, Jim's ego exits an elevator, and you hear the best line in this
game. You hear a voice that says "There's only one ego for this job AND ITS A REALLY
BIG ONE!" I love that line, and it’s probably the best thing about this game. This
strange and bizarre looking place is your small hub world inside Jim's head (you can
tell that he’s not really smart). There are four brains: memory, happiness, fear,
and fantasy. Only memory is accessible at the start. Before you can go into memory,
you are given a golden cow udder. Yes, you heard right, a golden udder. I'm not sure
if I should think that it is awesome or terrifying. Maybe it is just awesomely
terrifying. The way Jim opens the door to memory is by playing the golden udder like
a set of bag pipes. Moving on…you need golden udders to open each brain. In each
brain there are 3 doors; two of the doors are levels, and the last door is the boss.
In order to access more levels, Jim needs to be smarter. The more marbles you
collect, the smarter Jim gets.
Jim has two ways of attacking. First is his trademark head whip, which isn’t that
useful, because it’s short range and most of the enemies shoot you before get close
enough (bringing a head to a gun fight). His main weapon is his laser Uzi, but you
can get better, more powerful and amusing weapons through vending machines, but they
have limited ammo. The weapons each have unique abilities like the chicken gun acts
like a sniper, and the heat seeking exploding leprechaun gun one-shots enemies.
The main levels are basically scavenger hunts; you look for 100 marbles and
different amounts of udders. It’s like Mario 64, Donkey Kong 64, and the
Banjo-Kazooie games. In Mario, you collect coins and stars; in Donkey Kong, you
collect small bananas and golden bananas; and in the Banjos, you collect music notes
and jiggies. But unlike those games, it’s done very poorly. The levels are small and
straight foreword, most of the time. You are not in a big open world environment,
and you don't get the sense of freedom that you get in the other games of the same
genre, which makes the levels boring to play.
If you manage to get enough marble before you fall asleep, it’s BOSS TIME! As soon
as you enter the boss door, Jim surfs in on the belly of a pig and shouts "PORK
BOARDING!" I know what you’re thinking; this is the best thing you've ever heard,
but don't be fooled. THIS is what kills the game. There are 100 blue marbles and
three missiles scattered around the area. To win you must get all 100 marbles, but
the boss can collect them as well, which is annoying. To reclaim the marbles from
the boss, you use the missiles. When you run over a missile, you store it to be used
at any time. That is also the same way the boss attacks you. The first strategy that
I came up with was to store all 3 missiles so I could freely collect marbles before
I focused on reclaiming the stolen marbles from the boss. Unfortunately, this
doesn’t work, because you are only allowed to store two missiles at a time, which
means the boss can freely attack you with the remaining missile. Not only that, but
when he hits you, you lose some marbles AND take damage. Now in of itself would be
an annoying fight, but the real problem lies within the controls. It is very
difficult to control the pig, which makes trying to collect the rather small marbles
and dodge incoming missiles nearly impossible. It took years, YEARS for me to beat
the first boss because of the controls. And guess what? ALL of the bosses are the
same thing, and they only get harder.
SPOILER ALERT! There are 5 bosses, 3 of which are from previous games. 1st there is
Psycrow, Jim’s nemesis, then there is Fatty Roswell, a new-comer, then Professor
Monkey-For-A-Head, then Bob the killer Goldfish. Last but not least, Earthworm Kim,
a female Jim, who is trying to take over the brain. After you beat Kim, Jim gets
crushed by one of the fridges that he launched in the first level (he launches
fridges that crush various characters throughout the game). How ironic. Lastly you
are rewarded with the option to start over as Kim. And can you guess what that does?
It makes the game HARDER! As if pork boarding wasn't frustrating enough.
All in all, the game is terrible. The levels are boring, the bosses are frustrating,
and the game just not enjoyable to play. The only good thing about this game is the
humor, which is why I didn't rate it lower than a 3. This game has gotten me to
laugh a bunch of times, like in the second level you decapitate cow mercenaries, and
sometimes when Jim gets hurt he yells “UNGROOVY”. The graphics and sound are okay,
but that doesn't make up for the bad. Do yourself a favor and don't play this game.
Play Donkey Kong 64 instead; that game is awesome.
Graphics 6 Sound 7 Addictive 2 Story 3 Depth 5 Difficulty 8
Review Rating: 4.3/5
Submitted: 08-10-11
Updated: 08-10-11
Review Replies: 5