Games that deserve to be on HG101
Mar 21, 2006 10:34:35 GMT -5
Post by Weasel on Mar 21, 2006 10:34:35 GMT -5
I have a ready-made article for Blast Corps. I'm going to post it on here if you guys don't mind...
Also, I have some OGG files to upload (ripped from the USF soundtrack).
A nuclear arms carrier is barrelling through various cities - and if it hits anything, it spells radiation doom for the whole world. Enter the Blast Corps, an elite team of demolitions specialists, to clear a path for the carrier to get through without detonating.
You are the most recent arrival to the Corps - as a newbie, you get behind the wheel of a gigantic bulldozer, and plow through Simian Acres as a training mission. Eventually you find other tools of destruction - Ballista, a motorcycle with twin missile launchers; Backlash, a dump truck with an armored rear; J-Bomb, a flying mecha that divebombs into stuff; and many others. There is no single vehicle to select in a given area - you can hop out of your vehicle at will and climb into another one, but while you're outside of your vehicle, you run rather slowly and can't do anything to the buildings. You can also use cranes to lift and move vehicles (and TNT crates), ferries, and trains.
Destroying buildings is only part of the fun. The first run of any mission involves clearing a path for the nuke truck. If you return to a level, you can also earn medals by destroying all the buildings in the level, illuminating all the RDU markers, and "rescuing" all the survivors (by flattening the buildings that they're trapped inside).
You also get to play in various timed challenges - from race tracks, to destroy-all-buildings levels, an oversized pool table, and even a homage to Pac-Man. They're good distractions from the normal missions.
Being a first-generation N64 game, this actually appears to be the defining standard for all that go after it. The texture resolution isn't too high, but the models are pretty detailed (for 1996 anyway), the explosions are very cool, and the cities all look quite convincing. There are also some special effects that were quite impressive for their time - from J-Bomb's environment-mapped jetpack, to the bump-mapping on Backlash, and the water.
The musical score, composed by Graeme Norgate (also responsible for the Goldeneye and TimeSplitters series soundtracks, among others), ranges from hard rock, to electronica, to some sort of mix between country and techno. The tunes are very catchy, and even shift into more tense and pulse-pounding variants whenever the carrier is about to hit something. The sound effects are appropriately powerful as well.
The game's controls are a bit on the touchy side. To use Backlash, you have to handbrake-spin so that its rear end plows through the buildings. Doing this is no easy task. Also, the camera is zoomed in quite a bit, which occasionally makes navigation a pain - though there is a handy radar and an arrow which will tell you where the carrier is, and where the next building is in the carrier's path.
There's a lot of secrets to find in this game. Cleverly hidden shortcuts in the race tracks (it's a lot easier to clear a couple of them with the bulldozer than it is with a sports car, simply because you can plow a shortcut through the buildings), new vehicles to race in (including the Ford Gran Torino from Starsky and Hutch, the A-Team van, and a more politically correct version of the General Lee), and even a whole new set of levels once you've obtained gold medals on everything. It adds a lot of replayability.
The only thing Blast Corps is severely lacking: multiplayer. In the time when Nintendo revolutionized multiplayer by having 4 controller ports right out of the box, Blast Corps would be a game that simply wouldn't hold up in a party. At the very least, a two-player cooperative mode would have been welcome for the tougher missions (like Outland Farm).
Overall, this is one of the many reasons that the Nintendo 64 doesn't suck.
You are the most recent arrival to the Corps - as a newbie, you get behind the wheel of a gigantic bulldozer, and plow through Simian Acres as a training mission. Eventually you find other tools of destruction - Ballista, a motorcycle with twin missile launchers; Backlash, a dump truck with an armored rear; J-Bomb, a flying mecha that divebombs into stuff; and many others. There is no single vehicle to select in a given area - you can hop out of your vehicle at will and climb into another one, but while you're outside of your vehicle, you run rather slowly and can't do anything to the buildings. You can also use cranes to lift and move vehicles (and TNT crates), ferries, and trains.
Destroying buildings is only part of the fun. The first run of any mission involves clearing a path for the nuke truck. If you return to a level, you can also earn medals by destroying all the buildings in the level, illuminating all the RDU markers, and "rescuing" all the survivors (by flattening the buildings that they're trapped inside).
You also get to play in various timed challenges - from race tracks, to destroy-all-buildings levels, an oversized pool table, and even a homage to Pac-Man. They're good distractions from the normal missions.
Being a first-generation N64 game, this actually appears to be the defining standard for all that go after it. The texture resolution isn't too high, but the models are pretty detailed (for 1996 anyway), the explosions are very cool, and the cities all look quite convincing. There are also some special effects that were quite impressive for their time - from J-Bomb's environment-mapped jetpack, to the bump-mapping on Backlash, and the water.
The musical score, composed by Graeme Norgate (also responsible for the Goldeneye and TimeSplitters series soundtracks, among others), ranges from hard rock, to electronica, to some sort of mix between country and techno. The tunes are very catchy, and even shift into more tense and pulse-pounding variants whenever the carrier is about to hit something. The sound effects are appropriately powerful as well.
The game's controls are a bit on the touchy side. To use Backlash, you have to handbrake-spin so that its rear end plows through the buildings. Doing this is no easy task. Also, the camera is zoomed in quite a bit, which occasionally makes navigation a pain - though there is a handy radar and an arrow which will tell you where the carrier is, and where the next building is in the carrier's path.
There's a lot of secrets to find in this game. Cleverly hidden shortcuts in the race tracks (it's a lot easier to clear a couple of them with the bulldozer than it is with a sports car, simply because you can plow a shortcut through the buildings), new vehicles to race in (including the Ford Gran Torino from Starsky and Hutch, the A-Team van, and a more politically correct version of the General Lee), and even a whole new set of levels once you've obtained gold medals on everything. It adds a lot of replayability.
The only thing Blast Corps is severely lacking: multiplayer. In the time when Nintendo revolutionized multiplayer by having 4 controller ports right out of the box, Blast Corps would be a game that simply wouldn't hold up in a party. At the very least, a two-player cooperative mode would have been welcome for the tougher missions (like Outland Farm).
Overall, this is one of the many reasons that the Nintendo 64 doesn't suck.
Also, I have some OGG files to upload (ripped from the USF soundtrack).