Jet Force Gemini

"Thumbs up (again) for Rare."

Jet Force Gemini is a 3rd person shooter. Duh. This game is for the N64. Duh. Let's get on with the review.

Story:

This game is a shooter, so don't expect amazing plot twists. This is the 'save the world' storyline, unfortunate because it seems Rare can't think of anything else.

You get to play as 3 characters: Juno, Vela, and Lupus. Juno is a man, Vela is the blue haired girl, and Lupus is the scrawny armor wearing dog. You get to play as each of these characters and can switch between them, even while you are in a mission. The characters aren't one, they each have their seperate mission. So, for example, if you were Juno, and switched to Vela, then you would warp to where she was. To complete the game, you must complete each characters storyline.

The main problem here is the lack of story. Again 'duh'. You start off in a spaceship faced against a guy named Mizar who is sending men to fight. Except the 'men' are really ant bug things. Somehow they manage to warp on to the protagonist's ship and start to pepper them with bullet fire.

They all escape from the ship, but Juno is seperated from Vela and Lupus and must find them. There's where the real story ends. Really there is just a green troll guy who tells you your next objective. And of course you've been recruited by a king of the native tribals, to rescue them all. Other than that, you are left to your own devices.

There is some tongue in cheek humor which reads a bit awkwardly. Since it's a shooter you wouldn't expect anything more than that, but it is still disappointing.

Sound:

The sound is nice and over dramatic. Some games still have the problem of having dramatic symphonies while trying to balance on a ledge over a boiling pit of lava, but immediately stops when you shoot. Luckily this game does not have this problem, and the music usually fits the moment.

Each of the characters has their own grunt when they jump, and the enemies have a pitiful squeal when they die. The gunshots are nice no choppyness...yep, everything's nearly on par here. Sad because Rare could've done better on the soundtracks, but that's minor, since again, it's a shooter.

Graphics:

Beautiful graphics as everyone expects from Rare. As usual, it dives away from the gritty substance of serious shooters, and goes for the cutesy look of Nintendo classics.

One weird thing about this, is that it's rated Teen. I believe the reason for that would be the insane number of splattered guts everywhere. As the enemies are ants, I wouldn't be too eager to hide it from my kids. Don't believe the rating, this is another cutsey classic.

The characters are much more than just chunks of pixels. You can see intricate details in all of their clothing and weapons. Very good. One thing I can complain about is the bad backgrounds. The backgrounds are very chunky and unrealistic.

Gameplay:

There are two control schemes and I will opt for the easier. You control the characters with the anolog stick, jump with A, crouch with B, and shoot with Z. You shift weapons with the C buttons, and dive with B. It's all simple and effective.

There are a lot of weapons to be found, and each have their own inaccuracies and recoil. You're going to want to collect all the weapons as many are in hidden locations.

Since there are tons of ammo (your pistol alone has 700 shots) the game encourages you to let loose with your aim, and just fire away.

Replay Value:

Surprisely low. The only incentive to go back to the game would be to get all the weapons and/or rescue all the tribals spread throughout the levels. One thing it does have going for it though, is multiplayer, which is rather fun. The only problem with that though is the limited amount of maps, and some frame rate problems.

Buy It?:

Go ahead. If you still have a N64, and you see something on E-bay, it's a good timewaster.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/20/07