Introduction
Franchises have always been a mixed bag when it comes to longevity. Quality is something the people of the world strive for and lately it has been shelved and replaced by what we call the quick cash method. It is basically where a company takes a decent franchise and milks it until there is no quality or material to produce a decent entry into any type of series. This is the case with Earthworm Jim, it is a washed up franchise milked to the point where not even a port of a once decent game can save it. The series has become, old washed up and completely bland. That is not the way I wished to remember the series but it has simply hit rock bottom. One point of good news is that this game is in every way, a better port than that horrible version of the original game that was released when the system launched. Even with that complement, the game still suffers from many of the same things that brought the original down. There is a point where not even lame cow humor can save a game.

Gameplay
The graphics are to put it simply, bland. They are in every way too dark and dank, and the once colorful game has now taken a back seat to an overly used amount of darkness. I feel like I am squinting my eyes too much to see the screen. It is dark in even the best light source. Some of the levels have become muddy and murky but other than the colors, the visuals held up pretty well. The animations are also much better than in the first port. Unfortunately these visuals are nothing to google over simply because they are not worth the look if you cannot see them.

Story
As always we will start with the single most important material to making a good game, which would be the gameplay of course. Earthworm Jim used to be a fun game to play but now it is just as if the game was hit by a truck and laid to die in a desert full if serpent snakes. The game has just aged so badly that it seems as if it is a primitive game. Which by today’s standards, it is. The game can be described as a straightforward action shooter with simple puzzles placed in to break up the occasional repetitive nature of the gameplay. The problem is that there is not enough of anything to call it anything. I think I even mentioned that with the first game in my review of it. It is just too empty to sit in one genre and be happy. The action is rare and although when you do find some, there is a lot, it just ends minutes later. The puzzles do not fare to well either, the cramped controls make platform jumping in this game difficult mainly because the game was originally made for a much bigger pad. The bosses are ok and the difficulty has been ramped up but it is such a short game that you may not remember it a few days after it is completed. The humor in this game is lame, in every way it is worse than the first games antics. It was merely tolerable before but now it has become simply disgustingly bland. The save feature is better but it still isn’t as accessible as it should be. Overall this game needed a major overhaul it never received.

Graphics
The sound is a little better than the first game but what takes it down this time around is its repetitive nature. You feel as if every song is familiar even if the notes are completely different. The sound effects are nice aside from a clearly recycled library of sounds used for Jim that become mind numbingly dull over time. Much more time could have been put into making this port a better version of a decent game, but it did not quite add up.

Sound
In the very end, it does not matter if you are an Earthworm Jim fan or not. The truth is, this game loses the graces of its improvements by keeping and possible making its flaws worse. Maybe it is time for this series to go dormant. I will not be happy if they simply make a new game. This franchise needs to go to sleep for a while so that these pain full memories can subside. Not even a rental would suffice, just stay away from this game.