Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 14/Jan 00:01

Montezuma’s Revenge: 40th Anniversary Edition – Review

If you look up Montezuma’s Revenge on Wikipedia, you’ll quickly find that it’s a colloquial term for traveller’s diarrhea first and foremost. It’s also a roller coaster, a bicycle race, and… a video game. Originally released in 1984, Montezuma’s Revenge -the game- made its return last year with a 40th Anniversary Edition. Does this old-school puzzle platformer offer an expedition embarking on four decades down the line or is it as crappy as its title implies? Story Hailing from a much simpler time, Montezuma’s Revenge doesn’t bother with delivering a meaningful story. The idea is that you play as an adventurer exploring an ancient Aztec temple. Of course, if you look at the release year of the original game, it’s clear as crystal that Montezuma’s Revenge is trying to tap into the then-current pop culture zeitgeist: 1984 just happens to be the year that also saw the release of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Now, the 40th Anniversary Edition could’ve doubled down on this by fleshing out the story and adding some tongue-in-cheek references to Jones’ adventures, but unfortunately, nothing of substance was added here. It’s the one area where Montezuma’s Revenge really would have benefited from expanded content, unlike with the game’s audiovisual presentation. Graphics For this 40th Anniversary Edition, Montezuma’s Revenge was treated to completely new visuals. Unfortunately, these visuals don’t bring the game forward forty years, but only ten or so. The pre-rendered 2.5D visuals bring to mind mid-to-late 90s PC games in the worst way possible. Not only does Montezuma’s Revenge look cheap, dated, and outright unattractive, but the rooms are very difficult to read at a glance. Screens are cluttered with unnecessary details, resulting in poor visual clarity. Now, you’d expect a game that looks this dated to at least make up for it with performance, but that isn’t the case here either. The game suffers from an uneven frame rate and stuttering. We honestly would have preferred it had the 40th Anniversary Edition stuck with a polished version of the original’s 8-bit graphics instead. Sound Audio is another area where Montezuma’s Revenge throws “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” out the window. Voice acting was added, with the titular character taunting you with spoken lines every time you enter or re-enter a room. What could have been an atmospheric touch of mystery ends up being annoyingly overused. The performance itself lacks personality too, with the intonation of the Spanish voice actor not lining up with the English subtitles. The constant presence of Montezuma overpowers and diminishes the rest of the game’s soundscape. Ambience doesn’t stand out at all, and the only thing that is memorable about the game’s music is how repetitive it is. Gameplay The core gameplay experience of this 40th Anniversary Edition of Montezuma’s Revenge is defined by rigid, old-school platforming, extreme punishment for mistakes and a design philosophy that closely preserves the original game’s roots… for better and (mostly) for worse. Rather than a scrolling action platformer, the game is a labyrinth-style puzzle platformer that sees players explore a massive temple made up of 100 individual screens. The core objective is to collect different-colored keys and open locked doors as you navigate downwards towards Montezuma and his treasure. After confronting him, the game sends you back to the top of the temple, and you’re challenged with doing it all over again, at a higher difficulty level, with more traps and enemies waiting for you. Navigating Montezuma’s temple is a pain, in more ways than one. This is the kind of old-school title that requires precision platforming, and where even the smallest mistake leads to death -if not from stage hazards or enemies, then from taking falling damage. We’d be fine with this approach, as we’ve played other hardcore old-school platformers, but what sets Montezuma’s Revenge apart is the awful control scheme. Moving the adventurer feels rigid and clunky. Jumping in particular is needlessly frustrating, as jumps have a fixed arc and distance, with little room for adjustment. There was more than one instance where we accidentally overshot a jump, resulting in a cheap death. Adding insult to injury is the lack of an in-game map, meaning that unless you memorize the temple’s layout, you’ll be faced with plenty of unnecessary backtracking, and so, more time with that frustrating control scheme. There is combat in the game, but it is handled in the most baffling way possible. The adventurer is unarmed and cannot attack unless you pick up a weapon. Weapons, however, are single-use items that are consumed automatically when you touch an enemy. With only limited inventory space, you can’t simply stack up on weapons either, so most of the time we found ourselves avoiding enemies wherever possible instead of taking them out. Some enemies are unavoidable, however. We did find that when an enemy killed us, it disappeared. Given that you get unlimited ‘lives’ upon death, we found that kamikaze-ing ourselves to clear a room was a more efficient approach than playing the game as it was meant to be played. Those unlimited lives are part of the handful of QoL features that were added to this 40th Anniversary Edition, as were an autosave feature and the ability to extend your run at the cost of your score. Ultimately, though, it feels as if the game missed the mark, and the wrong priorities were picked to bring Montezuma’s Revenge into 2025. Conclusion At least Montezuma’s Revenge does its title justice. We can’t imagine who this remake is for. For newcomers, it is far too frustrating and unforgiving, and retro enthusiasts are better off sticking with the original. It’s not as if a modernized version of a game like this didn’t have potential either, but the choices that were made here don’t even come close to capitalizing on that potential.