Jersey Devil

A good game that has already been done before.

Publisher: Sony
Developer: Charybdis
Genre: Adventure/ Platform
Origin: U.S.

People from New Jersey will appreciate this review because it gets straight to the matter. The newest 3D platformer from No Cliche is a decent platformer that doesn't push any new envelopes or do anything that hasn't already been done. In a phrase, it's a cliche. Ouch.

That may sound harsh, but Jersey Devil is essentially a 3D Crash Bandicoot, with a spin attack like Crash's, and full 3D movement across a decently textured, full 3D environment. You run around with spin dashes, perform jumps, hover, and you can also bash doors open or whack bad guys, and why because you're a bad-ass purple Jersey Devil, that's why.

It's not a game that I hooked into immediately and played for hours upon hours. It's the kind of game that you buy because you have too much time on your hands and you simply can't bear to wait for the real big, real important games to come out. Thus, we have the first summer movie of games to arrive on the PlayStation. It's no Godzilla flop, it just ain't Mario or even a Crash.

Everything about the game smacks of middle of the roadness: the been-there-done-that level design, the ho-hum Jersey Devil character himself, who looks like a purple Bug Bunny, and the completely muzak composition will have you falling asleep between levels as you collect pumpkins, navigate through museums, jump across so-what mazes, and hover from generic bush to blasé wooden hut.

I'll keep this review short because there is no need to extrapolate. Jersey Devil is a generic 3D platformer that aims to do everything you've already seen and done, and no better than you've played in any other game. It's not terrible, and it's not great. But if I had to recommend Jersey Devil or Gex: Enter the Gecko, it easily would be the latter.