Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Masterpiece"

This is, by far, the best platformer I have ever played and one of the best games I have played overall.

The story is not very complicated, but it is very immersive. I loved the characters - they were perfectly voiced and acted.

This is also the most artistic game I have ever played. You can enter many peoples' different minds, and each one is a completely different world in itself which plays differently, looks differently and sounds differently. You can enter a mad artist's mind and explore his world which is artistically colored and Latin. You can enter the mind of an organized agent who represses his negative emotional feelings, which finally ends in the releasing of all those feelings concentrated together, which you have to fight. You can enter the mind of a former asylum orderly who has a battle (literally) going on in his head.

I also liked the wacky situations going on in this game. For example, there's a dentist who is obsessed with brains; there's a world where dogs live in alleys, hiding from the bull El Odio, which symbolises a mad artist's torment, and their only escape is art; there is a talking mutated fish which tries to kill you, then befriends you and carries you around a lake with its mouth; there is a thought where your childhood memories (in the circus) mix with your camp counselor's (whose father was a butcher), and you need to run around a gypsy circus made out of meat, fending off crazy, mutated, rabbit-like creatures while your counselor tries to catch a bunny. Need I say more?

The gameplay is intuitive, and the controls are easy to grip. However, the quests (let's call it that for now) can sometimes get a bit tricky, which adds to the appeal, in my opinion. You get fun psychic powers as you progress in rank and then unleash them upon the enemy. This game is crazy, crazy fun! Fun - remember that feeling we had before games started feeling like second jobs? (I'm looking at you, World of Warcraft!)

My favourite levels here are:
-Black Velvetopia
-The Milkman Conspiracy
-Gloria's Theater

So when you start these, you're in for quite a treat!

The graphics are cartoonish, colorful and fun, and quite good for a game which came out back then. They really add to the interesting atmosphere of the game.

And the best part is, at the moment, it's free for a while!
http://www.gametap.com/play/gameDetails/000475950
Download it (just leave it for the night) and play it yourself, it definitely can't hurt ;-)

You also won't have to worry about performance, this game has very low requirements, so you can have great fun with it even if you're a cheapskate/poor :D

That concludes my review.
10/10