The Mummy Demastered (ACTUAL Game Review)

The Mummy Demastered is a movie tie-in game that is actually good! With some fantastic visual design, a great soundtrack, and a diverse pool of enemies, The Mummy Demastered hits several of the marks for metroidvania games right off the bat. Even so, it does not come without some problems.

Pros:

Fantastic visual design and soundtrack. The overall design of this game is fantastic. All of the sprites (especially the bosses) and backgrounds were really well done. The soundtrack was great as well, featuring a good mix of spooky, more ambient tunes, and adrenaline-pumping ones all of which are done in an electronic-chiptune style. All of these aspects work together to bring out the “retro” feel, one that has become a staple in many metroidvania games today.

Enemy variety. There is a wide variety of enemies to be found in the game world, enough so that it never felt like I was seeing the same enemies too many times. For a game that took me 5.5 hours to beat, there was just enough variety to keep me interested. New areas introduced new enemies with new attacks and unique designs, so there was always that to look forward to. The bosses too, each with their own unique attacks and design. It was a lot of fun fighting the different bosses and learning how to manage their different attacks.

Cons:

The grind for health. Health is not regained at save stations and is only regained when earning a new health upgrade. Unfortunately, this leads to a grind whenever the player needs to regain his/her HP before moving on. I would often find myself moving into a save room, destroying all of the boxes, lanterns, etc. in hopes of a health orb dropping from them, then exiting the save room and repeating. This is not as bad in the early game, when the health only goes up to 99, but later in the game, when the player has health in the hundreds, grinding for little health orbs that only restore 5 HP (sometimes 20 if lucky enough) becomes incredibly repetitive. It was frustrating to die to a boss then have to redo the whole health-regen grind for 5-10 minutes before attempting the boss again. I probably could have shaved an entire hour off of my 5.5 hour playthrough if I did not have to grind for health so much. Either save stations or the helicopter fast travel spots should bring the character back to full health, rather than just when finding new health upgrades.

The story and movie tie-in elements. This is a movie tie-in game, but it did not feel like it at all. In fact, if I did not know the title of this game, I would not even be able to recognize the fact that this game is directly related to Universal’s “The Mummy” movie, which I have not seen. It felt as if the story was an afterthought to the game, like the game was created before it was decided that it would be based on The Mummy and those elements were just added at the end. The movie tie-in elements felt cheap and this game could have easily existed without them.

Overall, The Mummy Demastered is a solid metroidvania game. The game’s visual design and soundtrack are fantastic and the enemy variety is large enough to not make the experience feel repetitive. The game does suffer from a frustrating health regen grind and a rather lackluster story, but it is still a very fun game to play.

You can buy The Mummy Demastered on Steam here.

I was provided a free review copy of the game in order to write this review. Read more about how I do my game reviews here.