Summer is in full swing, and there’s lots of hot gaming to check out for the season. We flipped through TV channels and saved the world in the Gex Trilogy, created copies of ourselves on a distant planet in The Alters, plus checked out demos during Steam Next Fest. See our gaming thoughts on this month’s Gamebox 2.0!
Gex Trilogy (Chris): Limited Run Games had ventured into the Media Dimension to bring back a classic ’90s icon for a new generation. The remastered Gex Trilogy has finally arrived for gamers to dive into this quirky, pop-culture-rich franchise that once helped shape the modern 3D platformer. Created by Crystal Dynamics, the Gex series is known for its quippy hero, Gex the Gecko, a TV-binging anthropomorphic gecko, voiced by comedian Dana Gould. Gex is a laid-back slacker who gets pulled into epic adventures to save the world. While Gex didn’t collect mushrooms for power-ups or follow a witch doctor mask for guidance, Gex used his enhanced gecko abilities to crawl, spin, and whip enemies and obstacles. Each Gex game perfectly reflected the trends of the time, usually through a witty comment or catchphrase that Gex would drop. This remastered trilogy not only retains all the elements from the original titles but also scales up the visuals to be as crisp as possible, given the polygon counts, improved performance, and quality of life improvements, to provide players with a smooth, nostalgic trip to the past.
The original Gex introduced players to the titular wisecracking gecko. The game follows Gex as he’s pulled into the “Media Dimension,” a surreal TV-inspired world ruled by the villainous Rez. Each stage is themed after different genres of TV shows and movies, ranging from horror to sci-fi themes, and set around maze-like level designs. This is a 2.5D platformer that combines various perspectives and traversal, leaning into Gex’s sleek character design.
Gex remains a charming and inventive platformer, but it shows its age in a few of its mechanics. The level design is creative, with each TV-themed world offering unique mechanics and aesthetics. Gex’s snarky one-liners are dated at times, but they add fun personality to Gex’s TV obsession and humor to the adventure. The camera often feels a bit too zoomed in, making it easy to run into enemies accidentally. While the difficulty can spike in later levels, the overall experience is a rewarding throwback to the ’90s platformers.
In the follow-up title, Gex: Enter the Gecko, Gex returns to save the Media Dimension once again from Rez’s evil plan. This time, Rez has stolen remote controls to dominate every television worldwide, leading to the world’s eyes being under Rez’s command. A secret organization asks Gex to enter the Media Dimension and take back all the remotes. Enter the Gecko not only expanded on the premise but also brought Gex to the 3D space with a fresh set of witty jokes. Like the first game, levels are themed after various movies and TV shows, ranging from kung-fu movies to Star Wars and Tron.
Enter the Gecko is a total mechanic redesign from the original that many 90s gamers got to experience. The levels are wider, the platforming is smooth, and the 1997 humor was ripped straight from the growing fads of the time. The change to a complete 3D environment works well, and the remastered version ensures that the game looks and plays better than before.
In Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko, Gex is pulled out of retirement to stop Rez, who has once again taken over the Media Dimension. This time, Rez is using a powerful Mind Control Remote to brainwash TV viewers and has trapped Gex’s former partner, Agent Xtra. Gex packs up his spy gear and enters the Media Dimension, channel-hopping one last time to save the world.
Deep Cover Gecko is a continuation of what gamers have come to expect from the series since Enter Gecko. The spy theme adds a fun twist to the game mechanics. Gex has new gadgets to bring onto the stage and new small stealth sections that quietly slow down the action. The levels still keep with the tradition of being off-brand parodies of famous movies and shows, but offer way more areas to explore and collectibles to find. The humor remains a highlight feature, with Dana Gould dropping James Bond and Austin Power-inspired quips that are missed in the modern age. The remaster ensures the controls are responsive, which has improved from Enter the Gecko. While not as groundbreaking as an all-time classic platformer, Deep Cover Gecko is a solid game that captures the best of what Gex had to offer.
With updated visuals, smoother performance, and all the humor and charm of the originals, Limited Run Games has done justice to Gex’s legacy. There are bonus features that include a soundtrack player, an art gallery, TV clips, and an interview with Dana Gould. The Gex Trilogy is a perfect time capsule of 90s nostalgia gaming, reflecting the designs and tone that made gaming fun in a pre-smartphone era. Whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer looking for a retro platforming experience, this collection is the best way to revisit the wisecracking Gecko.
The Alters (Zach): Coming from 11 bit studios, The Alters is a fantastic new spin on the survival game by cutting out a lot of, I would consider, the tedium associated with those games. You play as Jan, a builder on an intergalactic mission who crash-lands on a desolate and isolated planet. The only survivor of the crash, Jan, is forced to utilize a mysterious element called Rapidium and a quantum computer capable of “branching” a person’s life to create copies of himself, but with different life experiences, which results in a new set of skills. You can make a Jan whose life took him into science, making him a smarter scientist version of Jan, while another followed his abusive father into the mines and is now an experienced miner. Along with deciding which Jan to bring into existence, you also need to balance your relationships with the ones you’ve already made. If they get pissed at you, they are far less likely to help out with any jobs you may need them to do.
The game features excellent acting and writing and it has a sort of Telltale system to the conversations, where certain answers will raise or lower different aspects of the other Jan’s personality, like pissing him off or calming him down. The relationship part is a third of the game, with the other parts being exploration and base management. Exploration is the main chunk of the game, and you put on a space suit and venture out onto the cold, desolate planet to find resources and explore new areas. You can find small deposits of minerals around but you have to find larger deposits underground using probes and then build mining outposts to extract a larger quantity. You can assign some of the other Jans to man the outposts, and they also serve as a fast travel point back and forth with your base, which is an awesome rolling structure that is also your main means of transport across the planet.
The planet goes through periods of intense radiation, so you only have a limited time each day to explore the surface before you have to retreat back to the base. You eventually are forced to also prioritize what deposits you want to mine, as you may find a few different types but only have enough resources to mine 1 or 2 at a time. You also have to connect the mining outposts back to the base via pylons but the game does a fantastic job of showing you how far you have between connections, so you can stretch and use just enough pylons because you can see exactly how far you can go with each one. At certain points you also have a time limit ticking down, as the planet has sunrise events that cause radiation that even the base won’t protect your from. In those cases, you need to gather enough resources, complete your objectives, and move to a different part of the planet before that sunrise event happens. The planet’s surface, and really the entire game, is just stunning to look at, and it really nails the feeling of isolation and desolation of a remote alien planet. The game also lets you speed through actions like mining elements, so you can mine a large amount in a few seconds, but in-game, a few “hours” have ticked down, which is another of the many decisions you need to make.
For your base, it is laid out like something like X-Com, where you have a sort of diorama side view of the base, and you can move and add new rooms to gain more options and upgrades. You have to keep in mind the weight of the base because the more you build, the heavier it gets, and the more resources you need to move it. The loop of each day is paced fantastically, and it’s extremely easy to play for much longer than you anticipated, as you go for “just one more day” and then play for another few hours. The story is also compelling, and the fact that you have explicit objectives that you need to accomplish helps to make the survival elements more tolerable, at least to me. I’m not really a fan of any of the survival games where you slowly have to gather resources and build structures without really any plot guiding you. The Alters has a lot of the elements of those style games but polishes everything to a high sheen so that it never feels like there’s any wasted time and you always feel like you have something to push toward. The Alters is a fantastic game that will easily drain away hours of your time if you really get into it, and it’s a must-play on PC, Xbox X/S (and Game Pass), and PS5.
Dead as Disco – Demo (Zach): One of the many games I checked out during this month’s Steam Next Fest, Dead as Disco is a cool as hell brawler from Brain Jar Games, Inc. Incorporating elements of rhythm games with the combat style of the Arkham games, you play as Charlie Disco, who is looking to reclaim his former glory. To do this, he must challenge his former bandmates, the Idols, and defeat them in combat. The game is oozing with style and personality, with everything portrayed in a hyper-neon drenched style. Like the Arkham games, you will face a group of enemies, and you have a main attack button and a counter button. Enemies will telegraph their attack with a button prompt, and you need to press the button to attack them. In this game, it is also timed to the music, so you need to keep the beat of the current song in mind. The soundtrack is full of original songs and some licensed tracks, and it also allows you to upload custom songs, which you can play in the game’s Infinite Disco arena mode.
You can play the game solo or in co-op with a friend. The animation is fantastic, and Charlie Disco’s fighting style is a fun blend of dance moves and martial arts. The demo is still available on Steam, and it’s definitely worth checking out. The full game is coming soon.
Dispatch – Demo (Zach): Another demo I checked out during Steam Next Fest was Dispatch, which comes from the former writers and directors of Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands. Their new company is Adhoc Studios, with Dispatch being its debut. You play as Robert Robertson, voiced by Aaron Paul, who was formerly the superhero known as Mecha Man. His mechanical suit that he used to fight crime was destroyed, and he’s now working as a dispatcher for a superhero deployment center, basically a 911 operator. Given command of a group of misfit former supervillains, Robert gets incoming calls for crimes, accidents, and other incidents and has to decide which hero or heroes to deploy to the events. Each hero has a range of skills, and you have to determine what skills are best for each incident. If the hero or heroes are able to meet a certain threshold based on their skills, they complete the incident and return to base, and eventually, they will level up and gain additional skills and options for completing the missions. Things start out fairly easy, but multiple incidents quickly break out, and you have to manage who is available versus who might be the best choice for the mission, and you may not have time to complete everything.
Along with Paul, the voice cast is stacked and features Jeffrey Wright, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Alanah Pearce, Erin Yvette, Matt Mercer, and more. Along with the dispatch gameplay, you’ll also have cutscenes where you’ll have dialogue and make decisions that will affect your relationship with the other characters. The game seems to be trying a bit too hard to be crude, especially Jeffrey Wright’s character, but if you’re a fan of stuff like The Boys or Invincible, you’ll definitely enjoy the style and tone. The animation is absolutely incredible and looks like a top-tier animated TV show or movie, and all of the characters are fun and interesting. A lot of them are clearly inspired by actual comic book characters, but there is usually some sort of unique quirk or change to make them feel original. The demo is still up on Steam, and the game is coming out sometime this year.
Gunstoppable – Demo (Zach): Coming soon from CAGE Studios, the demo for Gunstoppable was just released on Steam. An FPS rougelite, Gunstoppable takes place in a cyberpunk world where machines have taken over. Escaping from prison, you set out to destroy the machines and free the city. The game really focuses on movement, and you have a double jump, a dash, and a grappling hook that offer you a wide variety of movement options. There are also rails you can grind on, and you can wall run on certain surfaces. It feels like Doom or Ghostrunner with how you need to be constantly moving, and you’ll also find yourself in combat arenas where you need to survive for a certain amount of time. You can unlock a wide variety of weapons, ranging from the standard like shotguns, rocket launchers, and machine guns to more wacky weapons like bananas. In roguelite fashion, you gain upgrades during your run, and you can apply them to your weapons. The trick there is that the upgrades are positional on a grid, so you need to place them in a certain way to activate them. There’s a sort of puzzle element to arranging your weapons and the upgrades so everything lines up and is active, and you can try and rearrange them and try new combos at any time.
The game is colorful and has a gritty, low-poly quality, and it runs at a smooth, fast clip that is necessary for how the movement and combat play out. When you are killed, you restart your run, but you can use the currency you collected in the previous run to unlock new permanent upgrades to your weapons that will most likely help you progress further in the next run. The game also features a “Reaper Mode” where you can slow down time and shoot enemies, but instead of instantly shooting them, it marks them with a target and, when time resumes, all those bullets will hit at the same time. You can check out the demo now on Steam, and the full game is coming soon.
