Saturday 22 February 2014

Game Art and Machinima Research: Gex 3 Deep Undercover Gecko

By Meg Sugden
The next game that I wanted to look at was Gex 3: Deep Undercover Gecko which plays out around the story of Gex, a gecko who is trying to save Agent Xtra, an agent from the second games back story, and head of the TV Terrorist Defense Unit, after she is reported missing. She has been kidnapped by Rez, again another character from the previous games, and Gex must get her back. The whole basic story is okay, especially for a PlayStation game that came out in 1999, but definitely could have been better. It's a basic plot that follows Gex as he travels through different television ports to get to other levels in the game. 


The general character of Gex is pretty good despite the poor graphics. He is obviously based from a gecko but the character of him is taken further by again like other games giving him human qualities, like the ability to talk and walk on two legs. This is a nice touch along with the fact that he wear clothes and lots of different types. From each level that he visits he wears a new costume which looks good, if he is on the snow level he will wear snowboarding gear and if he is in his home base he will put on a robe, this is probably for comfort but it is nice to see that they thought about it. Along with Gex there are some other characters that have all been designed in the same way, like his butler Alfred and also the number of characters that appear throughout the levels. They are all modeled to fit with Gex and create consistency throughout the game, besides Agent Xtra who is a strange lady made using actual film and added in through live action.

The environments that are featured throughout are all very interesting and definitely are unique. They are probably not as good as other games, but again this is due to the poor graphics of this early PS1 game, but despite that they are still not fantastic, especially when comparing it to a game like Spyro; this game out earlier and still had better graphics and a more varied environment. Having said that though they are still pretty good and have a varied nature to them, offering the player wide and vast places to explore and find different things to do in.



Lastly I wanted to look at the cut scenes, these again are much like the character in terms of quality. They are okay, better to look at than the actual game but still are not brilliant and do include the live action scenes with Agent Xtra. That aside they are very comical though and do include witty lines, but also some that are of a weird sexual nature, that were in fact removed from the Nintendo 64 version. The cut scenes could come useful though when creating our own as we intend to produce a humourous and interesting piece of film. 

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