From the moment we saw Blinx in action you can immediately tell this game came from ex-members of the Sonic Team. In development at Artoon, who previously released the GBA hit Pinobee, Blinx focuses on the adventures of the titular cat who works as a janitor at the Time Factory - a place where time is manufactured and managed – collecting lost time crystals before they cause glitches in the time continuum spectrum. When Blinx hears that a princess has been taken hostage by a family of thugs who plan to steal all of the time crystals and abuse their powers, he decides to take matters into his own paws and sets off to rescue the princess and restore timely order. OK so the story may be full off the usual platformer clichés, however the actual game is anything but generic. <br /> <br /> With the aid of his trusty and powerful Time Sweeper, the TS1000, Blinx has the ability to manipulate time to aid him in his journey and solve the various puzzles in the game. Each level requires you to destroy a certain amount of enemies in a gruelling time-limit, throughout each of which are a variety of differently coloured gems, which allows Blink to rewind, fast-forward, record and pause time. These each have a direct way of how you play through each level, rewinding time is a particularly neat feature that allows you to rewind if you messed up, or to access hidden areas and progress through the level, for example a crumbled bridge may be passable if you rewind time to the point before it crumbled. The effect is particular cool as the game rewinds in real-time, rewinding your exact actions, of course this feature would only be possible on the Xbox due to the Hard Drive, finally we are seeing some innovative uses for the peripheral. Fast-forwarding time allows you to speed up the game time, particularly helpful when the time limit is fast approaching. Recording allows you to record a set of actions you perform and then plays it back, so you can have two Blinx’s to help you out, for example if there’s a particularly difficult enemy in your way, you can record yourself walking up to him and attracting his attention, the playback will then show the recorded Blinx attracting his attention, whilst your free to take him out without any hassles. The pause-time function allows you to pause time funnily enough, enabling you to walk across crumbling walkways, take out the creatures without any hassles and serves various other purposes, these function was neatly shown when we paused time and entered a nearby pond of water, walking through the water created a trench, as the pause ran out the water neatly flowed back into the trenches that we created, very cool… <br /> <br /> To defeat the enemies you need to suck up junk that’s scattered throughout the levels, it works in a similar manner to Luigi’s Mansion, allowing you to suck up refrigerators, barrels and various other objects to blow back at the enemies. Junk that you keep at the end of the level is recycled to give you money to spend on upgrades and other purchases. <br /> <br /> <br />