We’ve seen very little innovation in the platforming genre over the past few years. Sure, Nintendo is still constantly reinventing their Mario games, and SCEA is still bringing us great platformers like Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank, but outside of that, the genre is just about dead. That’s exactly what got everybody so excited over Blinx: The Time Sweeper, because it’s set to revolutionize the genre by introducing a concept that’s more original and imaginative than anything we’ve seen in years.

At first glance, Blinx looks no different than any other platforming game. You’re still collecting items, hopping on rocks, and fighting bosses, but in Time Sweeper, Blinx actually has the ability to control the flow of time. Once he has collected enough of certain types of crystals, he can use them to Rewind, Fast-forward, and Stop time, or even Record events and play them back at a later date. The game uses about 200 MB of the Xbox hard drive to record and store your actions, so such a feature wouldn’t even be possible on say, the PS2’s hefty 8 MB memory card. Blinx marks the first truly innovative use of the Xbox’s hard drive, and hopefully not the last.