Great Game, Bad Sequal

Let me start my review by recapping the ending of Jumper 2. Ogmo, who had just finished killing the Conductor in an epic boss battle, lands down in the front of the labratory, knowing he finally escaped. He walks forward a couple of steps, and what is that? He sees his body, impaled on a spike, dead. The screen fades to black, and it's the end.

It leaves the player shocked, wanting an explanation, and in full anticipation for a sequal to continue on with this mystery. So here it is... Jumper 3. The long awaited sequal to an amazing game.

Quickly pressing New Game to continue on with this awesome adventure, the game goes into the intro cutscene. It explains how Ogmo was created in a labratory, and how people have been trying to capture him for his powers. It goes on to say that a monster (the picture shows a cameo of Ghostbot from Jumper 2, who became Ogmo's ally at the end) created a spaceship that would send Ogmo home to his home planet. Then it shows Ogmo flying to his home planet, the rocket lands, and that is the entire story. There is NO story after this scene. From then on, it is nothing but gameplay, ending in a simple "The End" screen.

What happened at the end of Jumper 2?!?! Nothing was explained, no loose ends were tied, the game just ignores the events of the previous games, and just continues on with a new, generic storyline.

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GAMEPLAY:

Now, enough of that. Lets get to the actual game. Well, apart from the lack of storyline, the game is very good. However, there were some things that I did not really like about it, but overall, it was good.

One thing that annoyed me was the complete revamp of the physics system. Jumper 2's physics engine was completely different then Jumper 1, which was annoying at first, until I got used to Jumper 2. However, they did it once again... Jumper 3's physics are completely different than Jumper 2. The character runs at the speed of light, slides like he's on ice (wait till you get to the ice level... that's even worse...), and it's very difficult to control. Of course, you get used to it after a while, though.

Another thing that annoyed me was the A button. Two of the Jumper Forms that you recieve use the A button for their ability. However, the big problem with this is that the menu (which comes up every time you die, or beat a level), uses A to return to the title screen. If you're holding down A when you die, you'll go back to the title screen. If you have your finger on A, because you were using the ability, and press that thinking you're pressing S instead, you go back to the title screen. You get the idea. It would have been a lot more effective if they changed the title screen button to Escape, instead of using a standard gameplay button for it.

Other than that, the gameplay and the controls were solid.

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GRAPHICS/SOUND:

The graphical style and sound was very nice. Again, it was much different than the previous games. The graphical style and sounds for Jumper 3 created an 8-bit/arcade like style. It was appealing, and enjoyable, and well done.

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REPLAY VALUE:

The game, like Jumper 2, had good replay value. There were 5 coins in every level that were difficult to collect, and required playing levels over with different Jumper Forms to get all of them. There were also "Target Times" for each level, that required complete perfection of a level to meet.

However, these did not offer much. As far as I could tell, the only use for the coins were to buy little hats and accessories for your Jumper, or to skip a stage that you were having trouble with. Again, comparing it to Jumper 2, this just isn't as good. Jumper 2 gave Concept Art, player skins, gameplay modes, secret stages, and more, for collecting items, and beating stages fast.

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DIFFICULTY:

Last, but not least, difficulty. Jumper 3 was hard, but was probably the easiest, and shortest in the series. However, collecting all the coins, and beating a level in the target time was extremely difficult, and required a lot of skill, so this compensated for the lack of difficulty.

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Overall, Jumper 3 was a good game, but being a sequal caused it to lose some value. As a standalone game, or if it was the first in the series, it would have been an amazing game. However, it differs very much from the prequals, isn't as good as them, and doesn't pick up where any of them left off.

Great game for what it is, but not a worthy sequal of the other two.