Review – ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth
I’ve begun to believe that someone either likes ToeJam & Earl or they don’t, which maybe seems like an obvious statement, but hear me out. The ToeJam & Earl games aren’t fun. They’re built to challenge but not to thrill. They aren’t narratively compelling, they aren’t engaging, and they’re slow as mud. They’re also commonly unconventional. They’re more about the vibes. They’re simultaneously relaxing and challenging. You need to love wandering in hostile places. The games are a taste.
I think that’s why pretty much every game in the series has received mixed reviews. Part of its initial popularity I would attribute more to its timing as an early Genesis title and its overall ‘90s weirdness. As a kid, I was enamored by seeing it in advertising, but I never played it. I can’t confidently say whether or not I would have liked it had I played it in my youth.
So, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth got mixed reviews on its release in 2002. In fact, while I went into the game with my expectations on the floor due to what I perceived as a negative reception, I should have known that those reviews just reflected the era video games were in and the fact that the series just isn’t for everyone.
What I’m saying is that I actually like ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth.
YO, 1-2, BREAK IT DOWN
To my credit, there was a bunch of things that critics complained about that would normally not be to my taste. For example, while the previous games generally pushed the concept of funk, ToeJam & Earl III is largely hip-hop. Not a huge jump, really. But it means that the characters rap and speak in ebonics. As a white woman with a rural upbringing, I’m not really into hip-hop. Thankfully, I’m not into country music either, as my demographic leanings might imply. In fact, a game that leaned on a country music aesthetic would be a straight no from me, whereas I’m merely disinterested in hip-hop and not repulsed by it.
Yeah, it’s heavy. Beyond the hip-hop and funk, the levels get introduced by a trio of gospel (or soul, maybe, as if I know the difference) singers. Fuck. I like gospel less than hip-hop. Each level introduction, I would watch the bottom of the screen for when “Loading…” would switch to “Press start to continue” so I could get out of there as quickly as possible. It was never fast enough.
It’s a mixed blessing that Mission to Earth has so many cutscenes. The developers really want you to like these characters, so there is absolute heaps of cutscenes. The opening alone is way too damned long, and it’s both charming and awkward. Personally, I like the interactions between ToeJam, Earl, and Latisha. Especially Earl. Earl is great.
Latisha, on the other hand, is the token female. Hear me out: Panic on Funkotron already had female Funkotronions, and Latisha wasn’t among them. Lewanda, for example, would have been a good character, but I think they wanted someone with more, um, female proportions (which they gave Lewanda in Back in the Groove anyway). It’s the old thinking that males are the default and females need to look like women. I’m not preaching anything here; I’m just saying Latisha is too obvious. I wish we fake gamer gurls got to play as quirky aliens, too.
On the other hand, Latisha has obvious African American stylings, which is an even more underrepresented demographic in video games, but I’m still going to assume the developers just thought their token female should have tits.
MY GIRL
I’d probably like the game more without so many cutscenes. The actual gameplay is pretty similar to the original ToeJam & Earl. You wander around looking for something. This time around, it’s vinyl albums or microphones, depending on the level, as well as keys which are used to unlock further levels.
Like in the original, you can play with procedurally generated stages, but this is locked when you first start out. It’s unlocked after the first level, so I have no idea what the reasoning for that was. I wound up playing the preconfigured levels because I didn’t notice that “random” unlocked so early. Whatever.
The big difference from the original TJ&E is that Mission to Earth is a lot more combat-heavy. You’ve got “Funk-Fu” which is aggravatingly introduced by the Funkopotamous, Lamant, another character who I sway between liking and hating with every cutscene. You use Funk-Fu, as well as funkified notes (which you shoot), to funkify the humans. This makes them inert and rather pleasant. Every time you walk near a funkified human, there’s a cordial exchange between them and the character you’re playing. It makes the levels rather pleasant after they’ve been heavily funkified. You know, if you ignore the implication that you’re essentially brainwashing and subjugating them.
SOUL PURPOSE
ToeJam & Earl III still maintains some of that avoidance requirement. You would often just run from humans in the first game, and sometimes that’s necessary here. That’s because they’re shielded until you’ve leveled up to a certain point. You can get by their shielding if you use funkified notes, but some enemies dodge them. You can still defeat those enemies by using the rhythm game power-ups. You know, assuming you actually have rhythm. The world is simply a better place if you take out all the humans.
Speaking of which, the presents are still here, making TJ&E3 appropriate for the Christmas season. They lean less on their randomized nature than the first game, though they can still be randomized and hidden. However, it’s less of an issue revealing what’s inside – you don’t just have to keep opening them and hoping for the best. This is probably because a lot of levels require the use of Icarus Wings or Spring Shoes to navigate, and that would be a lot harder with the original games’ amount of randomizing.
So, really, despite all the changes, it feels a lot like ToeJam & Earl, which means you need to be prepared for a lot of slow wandering. A lot of it. Too much of it, maybe, since the last few stages feel like an absolute slog. At least the stages are divided by themes: grasslands, urban, desert, snow, and swamp. And while they’re generally compiled in similar ways, they each bring their own unique feel.
Also, when you find one of the vinyl albums, each one contains its own BGM track. The first one you find is the normal ToeJam & Earl theme, which got the most play for me, but a lot of the other ones are great, too. They lean more on the funk stylings of the first two games, with some of them featuring some unique samplings.
STILL JAMMIN’
The series has never really done boss battles, but it feels like they added one to ToeJam & Earl III out of obligation. The Anti-Funk shows up as an antagonist, and he’s just awful. From his design to his dialogue, he’s completely intolerable. You only fight him twice, but there are boss segments that take the form of gimmicky combat encounters against normal enemies. I can see how it’s difficult to end any game without some sort of climactic showdown, but it feels out of place here.
The important part here is that all the things that make ToeJam & Earl unique are here. Like the previous games, Mission To Earth was a slight reprieve from the constant buzz of anxiety and the deep lows of depression I’ve been stuck in. Getting lost in the bizarre concoctions of abstract terrains felt right in the darkness of winter.
However, I’m not sure it will be the first one I reach for the next time I need the pair to funkify my soul for a little while. That would probably be Back in the Groove, but that’s a story for another day. But what I want to stress is that ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth isn’t as bad as its reputation makes it out to be. It isn’t a bastardization of the series, it’s simply another take on its formula. If you already jive with TJ&E, then there’s a good chance you’ll like this, too. If you don’t, then I think it’s a lost cause.