Bio FREAKS

"This game won't be remembered, and thats a good thing."

Bio Freaks is an arcade style 3D fighting game from Midway, the makers of Mortal Kombat. Unlike MK, Bio Freaks seems very unbalanced and out of place. It just leaves you frustrated at its glaring flaws, so much that you can barely get any enjoyment out of it.

This game will not be remembered, and that's a good thing. Its an unpolished mess. The visuals are dark and slimy, not appealing in the slightest. Why does everything have to be so dark? Having some bright environments wouldn't hurt for a change. The characters range from bland and boring, to cliche', to downright silly. None of these characters stick out. Psyclown would be the neatest one, but he's still nothing to go home about.

The combat is clunky and unbalanced. You can press A to shoot your enemy, and then they are invulnerable to your shots for a few seconds. This is when they usually decide to shoot you, but when they do it it takes out over half of your energy! The combo system is simple, and does what it should. You will most likely find yourself shooting, and then rushing in to wail away at the punch button to take down your opponent. There isn't much strategy involved. You can press B to fly up in the air for some aerial combat, but once one of you get hit, you are both coming down hard. This is a feature that adds nothing.

The difficulty gets too hard way too fast, even on the easiest difficulty. Your enemies will start to take out over half of your energy with just one attack. It gets very annoying. You will find yourself bored enough that you won't even want to press Continue. You'd rather turn it off and take it out. There are far better 3D fighting games out there on the N64. This one falls at the bottom of the barrel. Go check out Mace: The Dark Age or even Dual Heroes. Anything is better than this.

Now, one redeeming factor is that it is very violent and bloody, so that's always a good thing. You'll see some nice gore. But even the violence factor doesn't mean this game is worth playing. Its cheap as mess, around $4 nowadays. So you may as well get it. I mean, no matter how bad a game is, $4 isn't much. At least the front of the cart looks cool.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/30/09

Game Release: Bio FREAKS (US, 05/31/98)