izigame.me

I played this game when I was much younger during the PS2 era, and remember being very stuck and unsure of how to progress. But I always meant to come back to it as I remember it feeling expansive and interesting.
I finally did, and now that I have played through I can comfortably say that this game was worth coming back to for my own nostalgia, but take that away and in my opinion this game is fine, good even.
The story is okay with it being the most interesting early on, the game play and mechanics available are also alright with some new toys being introduced, combat being simple and straight forward, overall I think this is an inoffensive title that its strongest asset is probably the setting, although saying that I did enjoy the puzzle sections with the mummy and the exploration with Sphinx, and even some of the surprise mechanics such as the creature collecting.
Although for my tastes I found that I didn't struggle too much with any portion of the game difficulty wise, but some of the mummy puzzles especially weren't exactly difficult but there were a few moving parts to discover before things clicked into place which made up for it.
For some reason I also noted, the animations used for door opening and Sphinx's movement felt especially well animated.
But my main reason for not rating it higher even though it's a competent experience is that mechanics are sometimes displayed once and never used again, rewards in game are usually uninteresting and you can anticipate what will be given, what is deemed the 3rd and 4th chapter by the achievements are much shorter than the other two and feels like the game was paced well at the start but speeds up and finishes quickly nearer the second half, which is especially a shame in my eyes when the game at the start introduces a lot of new locales and makes the world feel larger than it ends up being.
I do think the game was in the end a good length because I was personally ready to be finished with it, but I was expecting more from the way it has presented itself while playing. With that in mind though, I do think the game does a good job of giving the illusion of the game being larger than it is and the world feeling well inhabited.
Someone looking for a just above mediocre adventure game with some comfortable platforming and puzzles, and wants to enjoy exploring the setting and world, I think this does well and succeeds, and for £14.99 it's in my eyes an acceptable price for me having 20 hours of gameplay from it.
With all that's said above I do have to take into consideration the age of the game and the hardware at the time, which makes me far more on the side of recommending this as opposed to not.