Maximo, at first glance, is your standard platform game for the Playstation 2 console. It has the hero, Maximo, who is a displaced king trying to regain his kingdom from an evil tyrant. In order to do this, he must make a deal with the Grim Reaper, and then proceed to destroy the evil tyrant's minions and every now and then his evil henchmen (read as boss monsters). Along the way, our hero receives help from witches that he rescues from the clutches of the evil henchmen.

As with most platform games, Maximo starts out relatively weak with no "power-ups" to help him out. As he hacks his way through the hordes of monsters, he gains items that help him in doling out of mass carnage. Game control is relatively simple, with no complex moves to befuddle the mind and fingers.

I enjoyed the power-up aspect of the game. As you travel along you collect more and more power-ups, and most stay with you as you don't die. This is easier said than done. If you die, you are left with a few select power-ups. The number of power-ups you are left with depends on how far you are into the game. As you kill each boss you get the ability to keep one more power-up after death. There is a wide variety of these power-ups available, ranging from almost useless to REALLY COOL. Surprisingly, the cool ones outnumber the useless ones, making selecting which you are going to keep a true decision making job.

The story of the game is almost tertiary. Most of the game, you don't care about the story. You are just traveling from world to world hacking and slashing your way through monsters. Even the boss monsters only seem remotely tied to the story itself. The only time the story comes into play is during the cut scenes, and you don't have any impact on those.

The graphics are very colorful, varied and entertaining. There is a wide variety of worlds for you to travel through, and a each new level adds new monsters to the foray (not just the same monsters with different colors on them). Even the graphics with Maximo are detailed. As he gets hit, Maximo begins to lose armor pieces, until he is running around with nothing but his sword and his heart covered boxers. If that's not enough, there are "power-ups" that you can buy that can alter the type of boxers Maximo is wearing. You can tell a lot of attention to detail was invested in the visual effects of this game.

The in-game sound at first seems average. In fact, I barely noticed it until last night, when I went to play, and I put the headphones on so I would not wake the wife. It was then that I realized that the game had a soundtrack. And it was good! In addition, the environmental sounds were not drowned out by the soundtrack, or vice versa. Again, the programmers' attention to detail showed through.

It is that attention to detail that keeps Maximo from becoming just another platform game for a console system. The game could have easily been run of the mill. However, the environmental settings and easy control make this a very enjoyable romp.

Final Grade: B+