Initially, The Mummy may seem like Tomb Raider, but it’s not. The game provides you with a sense of discovery that is couched in an action formula and not in a wide open, discovery way. Almost everything you need to find is right around you, whether it be on a ledge nearby, behind a wall that opens by a switch, or basically in any easy–to–find area. You’ll find that the sense of discovery is very easy, quite frequently throughout the game — again, it’s an arcade game.

However, there is one sense of discovery that will knock you over the head — and that’s when a group of enemies will swarm in on you and pummel you on the head. Nine out of 10 times I had just enough, or not enough, ammo or weaponry to fight off diggers, mummies, zombie workers and the like. I guess that’s where block move comes in? The block function helps when you’re fighting an enemy in front of you, not behind. Actually, scratch that because they always sneak up from behind you! Seriously, the hack–and–hack–some–more mentality of The Mummy, while paralleling the movie, quickly grows repetitive and uninteresting.

If more time was dedicated to smoothing out the 3D engine and the interactions between Rick and his enemies, the game would have had a little more life to it. This game simply won’t drive your imagination very far. The Mummy is packed with bad guys to fight, and oddly enough (or not), it stole Tomb Raider’s (or was it Zelda’s?) auto–aiming function, while it uses several techniques and ideas from other games as well. The Mummy enables players to light torches, which can be used as weapons or to light passageways, as well as handling two–fisted pistol attacks. Players also can hang from walls and move left or right while doing so. Essentially, you’ve got a relatively fast–moving Tomb Raider here, but again, with more focus on simple redundant action, and almost no real exploration, which makes you tire of the title quickly.

However, the high point of The Mummy is its compelling music. The dramatic movie score comes straight from the movie and is simply awesome. It changes depending on the situation, which is nerve–racking as it builds momentum and increases tension in all of the right places. I can’t say that I liked the game much, but man, if more games could dish out the sweet sounds that The Mummy does, I would be a happy sweet–song fool. Also, it should be noted that while these don’t sound like the original actors’ voices, they’re close enough to fit the bill. Plus, the less Brandon Fraser says the better, right? Meanwhile the trite, one–liners are cut down to a minimum and when the characters do speak, they’re either helpful or funny.

What kills the game in the end is the overall look, feel and polish, which doesn’t leave much else. (You already know the ending, right?) You’re given a decent set of actions and you’ll need all of them. These include walk, run, strafe–roll, attack, jump, leap, quick 180 turn, block and look around. But while the character moves are functional, they’re coated like syrup with a poor framerate, chunky, sluggish animations and some super dorky looking character models. Any work that was done to make this game look good is questionable and once you get a look at Brendan Fraser’s face, you’ll see what I mean. It looks like less than 150 polygons were used for his entire character model, and his face looks like one giant, flat, jagged–edged block, with a texture map stretched across it like a Silly Putty picture. The end result is a face that better resembles a mangled Lego character head, certainly not anything human.

If it’s enemies you want to shoot and hack away at, you should be happy with The Mummy. You won’t be short on enemies to kill, or weapons and power-ups to find, because there are quite a lot of them to acquire — every 10 to 20 steps you’ll be fighting or picking stuff up. It’s an absolute treasure chest for hyperactive, Ritilin–induced kids.

In the end, while the boss fights aren’t too bad, and the weird tomb surfing is a neat idea, The Mummy is a forced, unpolished, simplistic game that makes me confront the whole Tomb Raider concept once again, only this time it’s worse. If you are looking for an adventure game, I recommend the first, fourth and even the fifth Tomb Raider, or Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver for some vampiric fun, while even the lowly, comic Xena Princess Warrior is far superior to The Mummy. If you take the game’s choppy animation, the horribly un–human-like faces on the clunky and awkward character models, as well as the miserable framerate, the entire game comes crashing down into a pit of mediocre mummy stew. A good witch’s brew might be a little tastier than this meatless Mummy loaf.