Bio FREAKS

"Chainsaws and robots and gore, oh my!"

Welcome to the world of Bio Freaks, where mutants from the future slug it out with chainsaws on their arms. Every bit as B-Grade as it sounds.

STORY: 4
Really, this score of 4/10 is only given for the innovativeness of the story. In the near future, Amerika (apparently spelling disappears in the future, too) has suffered economic catastrophes, and split into near-civil war between states, as the major companies of the world go to any lengths to steal the others technology and territory. Rather than have this industrial espionage continue to war, a commission decided to have each company build a Bio Freak to slug it out for them in a fighting bout, the winning fighter's company to get the losers territory. The fighters are designed using the assorted company’s best technology in the fields of robotics, genetics, and mutation. Each fighter has their own individual story, none of which are worth the seconds it takes to read them.
Sure, it sounds like a low budget movie, but how many fighting games really have a great story? Most of them are all variants on ''Different fighters beat each other up in a tournament for some stupid reason''. Bio Freaks story isn't any better, but it's at least an attempt to be original.

GRAPHICS: 6.5
Nothing really much to say about the graphics. They aren't bad by any means, but nothing makes you say ''Wow''. The fighters look clunky, but as clearly identifiable. The arenas look good though. The blood and gore effects are interesting, as taking of a fighters arm results in blood splattering the camera temporarily.

SOUND: 4
Oh, right. This game did have sound. There were some dull music at the main menu, and the generic in game gurgles and grunts. Each fighter has 4 signature catchphrases, two for entrances and two for winning poses. Don't get excited though, most of them are garbled and unrecognisable. Listening to them scream ''Die! Die! Die!” and other such cleverly written dialogue grows repetitive, so you end up skipping the entrances, and thus the best sound in the game.

GAMEPLAY: 7
Standard 3-D fighting stuff, really. You have punch and kick buttons for the right and left sides, a fire button, and a fly button. The generic tapping of back, foward, button usually produces a special move of some sort.
Bio Freaks most innovative feature is the ability to cut off the opponent’s arms, leaving them handicapped for the rest of the match. It changes the way you have to play, if your right arm is cut off, you can't use right punches, or any special attacks that involve the right arm. Taking off both your opponents’ arms leaves them in a state of near helplessness.
It also offers an innovative bit where you can fight in first person, looking through your partially transparent body. When you do this, you get utterly creamed, because you have no depth perception whatsoever. Novel, but useless.
You can also fly, for as long as your booster jets last. This enables you (in theory) to take the fight all around the large 3-D arena, and also to lure your opponent near the traps like lava on certain stages. The arenas are well thought out, and have potential to be brilliant.
The major gameplay problems are twofold:
1. There's a system of shielding in the game, which makes you invincible to firing attacks. Unfortunately, it's so complicated to use that you want to abandon it altogether. Luckily, Bio Freaks offers a menu where you can turn on or off flying, shielding, and shooting. The second you turn shielding off, the game becomes a war of attrition, where you just point and shoot at your opponent. No other attack comes even close to the effectiveness of basic shooting, so matches become affairs of just firing till someone falls down. And if you turn off shooting to compensate, it becomes an arduous kick-punch-kick affair.

2. This game is flawed, and majorly, by the short time of matches. On my second try through the arcade mode, I won all 8 matches (two or three rounds each) in a combined time of just over 3 minutes. Pitiful. If the characters had triple the health they are given, then one might get an opportunity to utilise special attacks and fight all over the arena, as opposed to a 20 second shootout. Speaking of the special attacks, these are also broken. The game has fatalities like Mortal Kombat, but they can be used any time in the match. Once you work out the simple combination, you can kill your opponent with one move, at the very start of the match!

REPLAY VALUE: 4
There's an option for a Team Battle, and a survivor mode (in which you fight a series of opponents without your health restoring between fights). These add depth, but with no hidden characters to unlock, no story ending for individual characters, it's hard to want to play the Arcade mode much.

POSITIVES:
It's certainly not all bad. The game certainly panders to the gore freak in you, with chainsaw-swinging, tazer-jabbing, blood coated action. The characters are fairly unique (in particular, Ssapo, the giant vomiting toad robot, is great fun to use). It has a lot of underused potential, and is well worth a play. It's certainly a competent fighter.

BUY OR RENT?
Definitely worth a rental. If you see it very cheap, pick up a copy. As long as you don't pay much for it, you'll get your money's worth.

OVERALL: 6
A good and unique fighter for the N64, it ahs a lot of good potential concepts, sadly wrecked by some flawed aspects of gameplay. It reminds me of a B-Grade movie, not good, but still worth a watch and a laugh. Really, where else can you live the dream of pitting a vomiting toad robot up against a guy with chainsaws on his arms?

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/20/02, Updated 04/20/02