Story

The story of Gex is a simple one, as is accustomed to most platformer games. Gex, the titular character and protagonist of the game, is a gecko that loves nothing more than watching TV and movies. One night whilst watching a movie, a fly started to fly around Gex’s head, so he ate the fly. But unbeknownst to Gex, the fly was sent by Rez, the tyrannical overlord of the media dimension. Not soon after eating the fly, Gex is pulled into the media dimension himself by Rez. Now, Gex must traverse the media dimension and stop Rez from ruining both television and cinema

Graphics

Gex uses sprite based graphics that are pretty vibrant in their color. Each world of the game offering new color palettes, and the levels in each of these worlds are equally well colored. Also interesting is that each of these worlds also have their own animations, such as the first world having a slime pouring out of it. However, these animations are only alright and only just simple animation loops.  The enemies are able to match almost perfectly with the color palette of the world they’re encountered, with some pretty good animations. However, Gex himself seems out of place, as his own color palette is much too bright to convince players that he’s actually at say a graveyard at night. And while he is animated well enough there are a couple of frame rate drops when he cycles through idle animations.  Another flaw is that whenever Gex gets hits, the game seems to freeze for a tiny brief moment.

Sound

The music in Gex can be considered as alright, with each world having its own musical theme. The music in levels is also alright, but it suffers from the fact that every level in a world plays the same exact musical track. Now while there are no major flaws in the game’s sound effects, there is a small issue regarding Gex. Gex will frequently spout a joke that references some subject within pop culture. However, these jokes are not funny unless players understand what Gex is referencing, and worse yet he repeats a lot of the same jokes.

Gameplay

In a similar notion to older platformers like Super Mario World, Gex lets players explore five worlds with several levels within each one.  In these levels Gex has a small range of abilities for which to defeat enemies with. The first ability is the tail whip for defeating enemies, which rarely need hits to be defeated. Another ability of Gex’s is the tongue lash, which will let Gex eat the numerous power-up flies. Gex can also crawl on the walls and ceilings, and while this is a very useful and required ability, it can be frustrating trying to get on smaller surfaces since Gex keeps falling off.  Gex can also use tail to break block below and to bounce off enemies (though players will rarely do that). Now, as stated before there are several flies scattered throughout the levels. Each fly has different effects. There are health flies that heal Gex. There are extended health flies that increase Gex’s maximum health. There are life flies that will give Gex another life. There are invincibility flies that works the same way as the star from Super Mario Bros. There are speed flies that increase Gex’s speed, though not very useful. There are jump flies that increase Gex’s jump height, but they’re extremely rare. There are fire flies that will let Gex shoot fireballs to instantly kill enemies. There are ice flies that will let Gex freeze enemies to shatter for an instant kill. Finally, there are thunder flies that will let Gex fire three electric blasts that go different directions for instant kills. However, players must use the tongue lash for the most of the flies because if they were to use the tail whip, they would destroy the power-up. Now, to advance to next level, players must grab a remote within the level. Once they complete the level they must use the remote to open the next level. There is also levels that require you to get two remotes. The first remote unlocks the boss level while the second remote unlocks the next world. Bosses are similar to the levels in that they’re simple challenges that are unique from each other, and can get easily frustrating further into the game. Defeating a boss will give the remote to access the first level in the next and a password, which is another problem with the game.  Games like the classic Megaman and classic Castlevania use password systems as a way of saving progress. However, those games give players a password once they completed a level and gotten a game over, Gex does not do that. In order to get a password in Gex, players must find a tape in a level. However, not every level has a tape, which causes a big loss in progress when a player receives a password from two levels ago and gets a game over.