Our friendly hero Jim is prone to having enormous cows fall upon his frail body. This particular cow has dome some major damage to Jim and has caused him to lose control of his mind. There is now a battle raging inside his own body and it is up to him to put it to a stop. For this brave, new adventure, Jim will not be trying to save someone else from peril or destruction, but will doing his best just to save his own sorry butt.

Earthworm Jim 3D's stages take place all in locations related to Jim's brain. When you first enter into the game, you are told by your canine companion that you have to collect a certain amount of items in order to win the game. When the time comes that you have all those items in your possession, you can return to him and begin on the final, climatic battle. All of the stages are subdivided into separate emotional segments; a couple of them being fear (i.e. a haunted house) and happiness. The different sections have their own themes that represent the general gist between them. A couple of them are fairly generic (fear), but some of the others are, well, weird. Take, for example, "memory"; Jim has to complete certain objectives to complete the level in a barnyard full of rambunctious animals. Strange, sure, but an entertaining derivative to what most plaformers incorporate.

As for the actual environments and graphics themselves, they stay true to the wacky 2D art found in the previous two Earthworm Jim 3D games, but are nothing special. The same texture blur that occurs in 99.9% of all Nintendo 64 games is present once again, though it does not seem to be as severe as in other titles. There are little details in the game that caught me by surprise and showed that there was a good amount of detail put into the making of the game. The most obvious instance is right in the main hub where you can go from section to section. Toward the very front there is Jim's closed eyelid. Walk up to it and it will open up and reveal the outside world, with a doctor (a dog, no less) checking out Jim from top to bottom trying to figure out what is wrong with him. Beyond the subtle touches, Vis Interactive has not created anything that will make you leap out of your seat and wonder if this is actually an N64 you're playing on. The graphics fit the bill and are perfectly appropriate.

I did notice, however, that the engine keeping Earthworm Jim 3D on its toes did choke every once and a while and would slow down in larger (though, at times, in smaller more confined areas) areas that had a considerable amount of action all going on simultaneously. Nothing disastrous; simply a little hitch I felt like nit-picking about.

Usually I am not one to have much difficulty working my way through any particular platformer, and Earthworm Jim 3D was no different. See, the boss battles are not the standard battling we have come to expect. At first, I thought I'd just end up having to solve a puzzle to kill off the boss, or shoot him until his health hits the 0% mark. In traditional Earthworm Jim fashion, this 3D incarnation has you against the boss in a race to see who can collect all the marbles in a given area. This wouldn't be so much a problem if you were on foot, but this all takes place with you having to steer Jim on a pig. Yes, you heard right, a pig. Humorous in the beginning, I quickly learned how frustrating these boss stages were going to be. The control for the pig is downright horrendous and it's nigh impossible to steer in the correct direction most of the time. I found myself collecting marbles out of pure luck than skill most of the time. Add that the fact that the boss usually sits around and shoots at you (which causes you to loose marbles) rather than actually collect the marbles, and you'll be yearning to smash the game into itty bitty pieces.

I was having much fun with Earthworm Jim 3D until I hit these parts of the game, and I usually ended up turning the game off immediately after tackling a boss. Vis Interactive either should have tweaked this aspect to make it easier on players, or scrapped it completely; it just is not any fun at all.