Acclaim, despite putting out some nasty farts in the past, occasionally scores with a golden egg. Vexx is one of those golden egg titles. Not only does it stand up extremely well as a game, some might argue that Vexx is just as good as Super Mario Sunshine (just don’t believe the hype). Yes, Vexx is full of innovation, challenge, great architecture, nice graphics, good sound, some likable characters, and, of course, fun, varying gameplay. It’s really that good! It's not perfect, but it's good.

Vexx tends to follow the format of many other platform games where the hero of the game goes through some quest or mission to track down and destroy the evil bad guy. Vexx offers somewhat of a twist to the game as Vexx is out to seek vengeance on the death of his grandfather and while on his mission, he is greeted by ill-minded enemies that try to stop him. I think it was the developer’s way of trying to make a “mature” platformer. Throughout each level, Vexx must collect a certain amount of shadowraith hearts to unlock more levels. It's very Mario Sunshine-ish, which is something I hate about the platformers of today. You’ll need to collect a large amount of hearts to reach the final battle with the boss, Dark Yabu. If I remember correctly you need 70!

Vexx has many different ways to dispose of the creatures in his way. As Vexx’s way of attack, he has power talons that give extra strength to his attack making powerful jumps and slashes to his enemies. The more attacks you throw at your enemy and you can fill up your power talons to unleash an even more powerful rage of attack which is unstoppable. You launch your attacks against relatively small enemies but as the progresses and you unlock more levels, the enemy becomes bigger and stronger. The fighting system isn’t too complicated at the enemy ranges in difficulty as the smaller enemies are easier to kill than the larger ones and bosses. Like most platform games, Vexx offers puzzles and other tasks to complete throughout the game which range in skill. Some puzzles would require you to move some objects into a certain direction or climbing to a certain area or finding secret areas which in return will earn you another shadowra! ith heart to your collection.

The games visuals are very well done. Level designs are sweet and put all of your abilities to work. Each of the nine levels are pretty huge, with varying terrain, twisting, branching paths, bodies of water, high-flying platforms, and whatever else you can imagine in the genre. Not only are these levels huge, they contain sub-levels that are also often pretty large. There's one level with a large piano. You can actually jump into it, and inside, there's an area almost as big as the one you were just in, with you traveling on musical instruments. Textures are a bit blurry but nothing to cry about. There is a slight annoyance; the framerate does dip a little. It's more than playable, and never becomes a real problem. Vexx also sports a wacky camera system that often sent me dying in the mysterious beyond. Before the release the voice overs needed some work but other than that sound is on the mark, the music will fit the games mood! almost as good as it could. The sound effects of the game is top notch, when performing combos all bang’s & pops are on key. Let’s just hope they get the voice thing fixed before the next Vexx release (trust me it’s gonna happen) so we can have another masterpiece platformer to add to our collections.

Vexx is a fun and challenging game to play. And a nice addition to the action-platform family. But a bunch of minor disappointments bundled together keeps it from achieving excellence. Hopefully the bad will be addressed in the sequel if one is in the works. No wacky camera, no jumping framerate, no collect’em all gameplay. But until then I could only recommend a rental. And if after the rental Vexx floats your boat. Go ahead & buy it.