JumpJet Rex (Xbox One)
The prehistoric and futuristic come together in JumpJet Rex, a game that not only has the dinosaur species of the past using technology well beyond what humans have today, but they aim to put their jet boots and spaceships to work in an attempt at stopping the meteor that lead to the K-T extinction.
Cartoon silliness certainly guides the hand of the game world JumpJet Rex takes place in, the title character traveling from planet to planet and fighting robots and weird alien monsters on its quest to reach the incoming meteor and stop it before it ends all dinosaur life. The T-Rex you play as is a fairly simple little dinosaur himself, but while his green and grinning face is the default, as you play JumpJet Rex you can collect coins to spend on new colors for him and his gear as well as new faces that can change his head’s appearance, taking him from looking like an adorable tyrannosaurus rex into styles both cool, weird, and referential. This is all just optional fluff surrounding the most important part of the protagonist, his little jumpjet boots. In this sidescrolling platforming title, you aren’t just jumping over dangerous drops and hazard to get from platform to platform, but also using the T-rex’s rocket boots to boost the little dinosaur around many different types of levels. To this end, your jumpjets have a few functions, the most basic being the ability to jump as many times as you please, but you can also hover or shoot yourself forward in a sudden burst, the burst serving as an attack both forwards and backwards thanks to your boots shooting out a small projectile when launching you ahead. You can also cut out your boots entirely for a little butt slam if needed, although it’s certainly the most situational inclusion in your small but effective set of skills.
Levels in JumpJet Rex come in many different forms to try and test your mastery of the simple movement mechanics. Some can end up long and mazelike, often with dangerously cramped spaces that might have enemies waiting to attack you or dangers on the walls, ceiling, and floor to punish you for bumping into them. Many levels involve lining yourself up properly before moving or finding the right window of opportunity, but there are small levels as well where the task at hand still keeps them interesting despite the lower movement space. To get to the end of a level in JumpJet Rex requires passing through a certain amount of rings to activate the exit, and while you can use your boost attack to collect rings behind you, most of the time it’s pretty much a checkpoint system for larger stages or one that urges you to make riskier movements or dodge enemies well in the smaller gimmick stages. JumpJet Rex does keep you moving through many different ideas for levels, and while the fact you’ll be airborne during most of them means things like ice stages won’t slip you up, areas do still have themes that come with shake-ups in what dangers stand in your way and what you’ll need to avoid. Despite nearly every level having some design ethos unique to it, many of them aren’t all that memorable, serving as good challenges of the controls but only the really divergent ideas leaving an impression after.
Boss levels manage to leave an impression though. While levels are presented in a somewhat open order to tackle as you please as you unlock them, you’ll need to overcome boss fights to unlock the next region of space on your quest to reach the meteor. Since your little T-Rex’s fighting capabilities are pretty limited though, these boss battles tend to keep the focus on movement present, many sending out attacks that will require you to fly about until they’ve set themselves up to be attacked. They all pack some weakness as well to make the battle go faster than butt slams and boost projectiles, but they do take some figuring out, ensuring that they won’t be conflicts that conclude too quickly to really be enjoyed. However, once they are figured out, you can potentially take them down quite easily, which helps with one of the major focuses of JumpJet Rex: the three star system.
JumpJet Rex is built like a precision platformer to be sure, but it’s a bit odd to apply that term to the game unilaterally. Each stage has three ways to earn stars that are universal across every stage but the final one, and these stars are necessary for the level unlocking process. One star will always be given to you after a stage’s completion regardless of how you did, but you can earn an extra star for not dying in a level and each level has a certain par time that you want to be under to earn the third possible star. Levels do have checkpoints that you can respawn from if you’re only interested in beating the level, but to get enough stars to beat the game and even get to some of the later levels, you will have to do more than simply beat stages. The reason I’m hesitant to say that the game is a full-on precision platformer though is, despite having this clear prerequisite for completion that will require you to move expertly through stages, certain stages you can definitely choose to just settle for the one star, and overly careful play can even get you a second star in a stage pretty often. The timed stars have levels designed to be pretty easy to complete in their par time as well, but probably what does squarely place this game well and truly into the precision platformer subgenre is its later stages. While earlier levels can be beat with cautious hovering and careful jumps, later levels tend to be fast-paced or quick to punish failure, and the star count needed to beat the game will likely push you to do well on these levels as well. The final level is definitely a precision platforming stage through and through as well, it providing a timed challenge with incredibly tight action required to succeed.
JumpJet Rex being a precision platformer is by no means a bad thing, and its balance of letting you choose which levels you attempt to do better in keeps some of the frustration endemic to the genre at bay. Trying to complete the mazelike stages in a short amount of time or the really dangerous ones without dying isn’t necessary to beat the game, but an understanding of how to move optimally is, it’s just you get to choose where you apply that knowledge. Pursuing all the stars in every stage is optional, and levels even contain hidden items and small bonus areas for players to get more out of the game, so JumpJet Rex does have more to offer for people really looking to push themselves. If you’re only aiming for completion though, many levels are actually pretty short. Since many of them are designed to be completed in under a minute, if they don’t have the deadly designs that make you retry them again and again, you might just eat through the game’s content a little too quickly, this again going back to levels feeling like they leave little mark on your mind as you move through them. The focus on speedrunning and perfecting your movement comes with a small price of some stages just being too easy to blast through to support such a direction.
THE VERDICT: JumpJet Rex is mostly a a precision platformer all about using your generous movement options to blast through stages at great speed, but the game design does allow for some variation in this department. Longer levels exist that are more challenging to survive in and plenty of levels push you to really optimize your route through them, but the star unlock system allows you to focus on stages you feel up to rather than needing to get every design down perfectly. The focus on speed and on challenging a rather open movement style does mean some levels are utilitarian in their layout rather than providing interesting platforming stages, but the occasional boss battle or strange gimmick ensures there’s some style to this silly game’s substance.
And so, I give JumpJet Rex for the Xbox One…
A GOOD rating. JumpJet Rex does definitely lean a little too hard into hoping you’ll engage with all of the optional content to give it a hearty second layer outside the main experience, but perhaps more effort could have gone into engaging you through the first run to encourage you to move onto the extra activities. JumpJet Rex does give you plenty of levels to test out your speed and skill with the simple jumpjet mechanics while also offering a way to skip some of the tighter requirements, but the three star system leads to just as many creative level concepts as it does forgettable ones. The end package does combine them well enough that the experience doesn’t really dip in quality as you go, so the precision platforming of JumpJet Rex remains strong and responsive throughout in levels tailor made to suit the movement style. Had the focus been on individual level design rather than the universal goals though, the movement could have been pushed even further with more involved and unique tests, but the concepts on show here at least match the gameplay style so it’s still an enjoyable little journey.
JumpJet Rex seems like a game set up for a certain type of player who likes to perfect their movement and plumb a game for all its secrets, but an excellent game can encourage these traits just by succeeding really well at its basic concepts. JumpJet Rex got a little ahead of itself, but it still does offer an enjoyable base game that mixes a little accessibility in with its precision platformer mechanics, meaning it can still be a bit of fun without having to learn how to speedrun.