Forsaken 64

"One of my favorite N64 games."

Well, as I said, Forsaken is one of my favorite Nintendo 64 games. This made it a good choice to review since it's likely that mine will be posted.

Introduction

Earth lies in ruins, destroyed by its own mechanical defenses. Bounty hunters, salvagers, and all other sorts of scum were allowed to go there, to find neither glory nor wealth, but only their death. However, someone was slapped in the face by conscience, and he decided to assemble a task force to go in and destroy the defenses so Earth is no longer a wasteland. This task force is you. You have been given schematics of the defenses and supplied with basic weaponry and fuel.

Graphics and Design

In all fairness, the graphics aren't perfect. Similarly, in all fairness, this is a Nintendo 64 game. They're a bit angular, and some textures are repetitive, but for their time they are quite good. My only gripe is that in some areas, enemies are a bit hard to see.

The character designs are pretty varied, although illogical - once your shields are down, some characters are clearly directly exposed to enemy gunfire and missiles...

Enemies are very easy to tell apart for the most part, as they each have very distinct designs ranging from small drones to futuristic military hovertanks and jet-like enemies. Even the turrets have a variety of designs.

Each level design is unique and has its own style and corridors; for the most part, you can tell at a glance what level someone is playing in multiplayer. Single-player seems to reuse levels once in a while, however.

Gameplay

You are in a ship of some sort that you have complete control over. Horizontal and vertical strafing? Check. Forward and backward movement? Check. Complete rotation along the X and Y axes? Check. Hovering? Yeah, we got that too. Each ship performs differently, though irritatingly there's no way to know without testing them for yourself.Your primary weapons are Pulsar, Suss-Gun, Beamlaser, Transpulse, and Trojax. The Pulsar is your basic starting weapon. Fires little green balls, the Powerpod powerup makes it stronger and faster. Suss-Gun uses unique ammo that's very rare, and is your machine gun of sorts for this game. The beamlaser is rather powerful and has infinite ammo, but can overheat. Additionally, its shots have no 'travel time' - you fire, they hit. Transpulse bounces off a wall towards a target. Trojax can be charged. Then there's the array of secondary weapons, which include two types of homing missiles, three kinds of mines, and another four types of unguided missiles. Switching between these weapons can be a bit tricky with the default setup, but once you get your preferred setup (mine's Beamlaser/Pine Mine), you won't be switching much anyway.You can get a bit disoriented in the game sometimes, and there's no radar at all, so I gotta dock it there.

In single-player, you have one mission for each level, and you have to navigate the labyrinthine corridors to accomplish it. Many of these levels are also available in their entirety in multiplayer, but in single-player there are more barricades, some of which can be lowered with switches - you can bump them or shoot them to activate the switches. Bosses appear periodically, some are huge, some are player-sized, and some require a certain gimmick to take them out. Others have crippling weaknesses. There are three paths through the game, and which one you take is determined initially by your speed in the first level; there are very few split points after that. You can also return to levels you had already beaten, and consequently you're able to eventually unlock all the levels on a single save file.

In Multiplayer, there are always four participants; if you don't have enough people, some will be AI, and you can even play this mode alone if you want some practice. Every player can choose their vehicle, though each has to be unique, and AI vehicles are random. The level variety is quite good, as well. Only a few levels don't have every weapon spawn - Bio-Dome doesn't appear to give Quantum Mines, for example - and there's no way to choose what weapons will appear. Interestingly, the AI appears to follow the exact same rules as the player, and you can even choose to have the AI's "screen" show up as another split screen so you can track what the AI is doing. One point against it is that there's no team mode.

Story

Yeah, I went into that in the intro. Nothing special, your average "robots destroy the Earth" thing. Nothing from the story comes up except between single-player levels, so largely it functions as an explanation for why you're blowing up everything that moves and four or five things that don't.

Sound

Ooh, boy... Some of the songs are good, but a few of them, like Pyrolite, are a bit too obnoxious. Conveniently, while each level has a default BGM, you can just open up the options menu in-game and change it whenever you want.

Sound effects are good all around, and you can even hear the squish of someone being crushed by their own crashing vehicle as it explodes into scrap metal. Every primary weapon and even most secondary weapons has a unique sound effect, which is very useful when someone decides to fling a Titan missile at you so you know to scramble for cover.

Final Recommendation

Do you like FPS? Do you like futuristic settings? Do you have an N64? If you see this game for sale, it's cheap, it's good, get it. It's not perfect, but it's a solid game that any fan of the genre should enjoy. Just be warned that people who get motion sickness in other FPS games will have that problem amplified further with this one.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/06/05, Updated 05/04/09

Game Release: Forsaken 64 (US, 04/30/98)