Like FPS games are today, platformers were all the rage back in the 90's and included some of the greatest games ever made. There were infact so many that, much like today's FPS games it was extremely difficult for any one game to stand out amongst the sea of other platformers flooding the market. Despite this some brilliant games did manage to get the attention they deserved. One of these games was Earthworm Jim. With its blend of excellent platforming and its trademark insane world and humour, it stood head and shoulders above the rest, at least as far as fans are concerned, as one of the best platformers of the early 90's, even managing to spawn several sequels.

 

     Fast forward 15 years later and Gameloft, after many many many re-releases on various platforms, have decided its time to give the anthropomorphic earthworm a proper HD remake. So is it still good after 15 years?

 

     For those of you who haven't played Earthworm Jim before, Jim was just a normal earthworm minding his own business, when all of a sudden a strange suit drops from the sky and turns Jim into a super powered, awesome super hero. Soon after he learns that Princess-Whats-Her-Name (yes, that is her actual name) has been captured by some nasty evil people and for reasons known only to himself, Jim sets out to rescue her. Earthworm Jim's story never really made any sense, nor did it really matter and nothing has changed in this remake. It's still completely nonsensical and despite the comic book style intro added this time around, if you will not be able to figure out what the hell is going on.

 

     That said the story isn't the only part of the game that makes little to no sense. Earthworm Jim's trademark was its totally bizarre and outlandish approach to just about everything, including the levels. There’s quite a variety of worlds here which for the most part deviate from the norm of platforming themes you would have seen back in the 90's and show off the games weird sense of humour, scattering various oddities around them. You'll explore a tyre filled junk yard, bouncing on landfills of tyres to get around, you'll explore a hellish world ruled over by a deformed cat and populated by lawyers and you even explore an under water city where you'll ride giant hamsters and avoid body building cats. Though the highlight has to be one particular level that has you following a cute little dog, who you have to keep out of harms way, lest he turn into a demon and rip you apart! This is just a small sampling of the weirdness and humour of earthworm Jim and I shan’t spoil any more for those who may find it amusing but suffice it to say, this game is weird and has a slightly unsettling fetish for cows.

 

 

     As you'll no doubt of gathered the levels themselves are weird but in a good way. The game doesn’t just hold itself up on its bizarreness alone however, since it also stands up quite well as a decent platformer. This is pure 16 bit old school run and gun platforming, with an emphasis on leaping from platform to platform with all the usual 2D platforming tropes. You'll need to have some pretty keen skills, as most jumps between platforms and swinging between obstacles tend to require precise timing, but at the same time don't feel impossibly cheap so you wont be sat there ripping your hair out after falling down the same pit for the 100th time. Levels are mostly well designed and despite being mostly linear often have plenty of nooks and crannies to find and poke around in. There’s all the typical sort of things you expect from a platformer here, like jumping from platform to platform, swinging across wide gaps using Jim’s head as a sort of lasso and fighting off enemies scattered throughout the level who attempt to hinder your progress, until you reach the end which usually culminates in a fight with a pretty weird boss (I hope I never meet the man who's mind brewed up Professor Monkey for a Head) which you'll generally have to be clever to beat. In addition these side scrolling levels are broken up by levels that bring some variety to the mix, mostly in the form of Andy asteroid’s where you ride Jim’s “Pocket Rocket” and race a humanoid crow through a worm hole, which although great fun does get a bit stretched by the third time you go through it.

 

     Jim also comes equipped with an array of weaponry to defend himself against the various oddities that are the games enemies, but unfortunately they're disappointingly standard compared to the rest of the games bizarreness. You get a small array of weapons from a basic machine gun, to a one hit kills all plasma gun which are fun but its a little disappointing that the developers didn’t go all out with the weaponry. Although in keeping with the weirdness Jim can also use his own head as a sort of whip which goes a little little way to making up for the lack of weirdness, especially since that same head is also utilised in swinging from hooks and acting as a propeller to slow a decent.