Nintendo took quite a hit in the mid-to-late 90’s due in no large part to the popularity of Sony’s PlayStation: games were cheaper to manufacture on disc and therefore cheaper to sell through to the consumer, a lot of Nintendo faithful third-parties from the 8-16 bit era abandoned ship to Sony’s platform and it had a wider range of mature games. That’s not to say that the Nintendo 64 didn’t have a lot going for it as well. As always it had its power stable of first-party franchises, like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Mario Kart, along with their Rare developed titles like Banjo-Kazooie, and most importantly Goldeneye 007. What really made the N64 stand out from its competitors though were the four controller ports on the front of the console. This design choice turned the machine into the system to own for party games: Races and battle-mode in Mario Kart, mini-game shenanigans in Mario Party, and the introduction of the first-person shooter deathmatch on consoles in Goldeneye 007.
Acclaim dabbled in the first-person multi-player space in Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, but in between that game and the trilogy’s conclusion in Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion, they created a game outside of continuity that focused first and foremost on multiplayer for consoles that would stand to compete with PC multiplayer first games like Unreal Tournament and Quake III: Arena that would arrive in the same year. While an interesting experiment, Turok: Rage Wars is a title that’s very much of its time and doesn’t really hold much relevance in today’s over saturated first-person obsessed multi-player climate. The Turok titles didn’t always have the deepest narratives, but Rage Wars throws all semblance of story out the window. The game has an option for solo-play complete with levels objectives that need to be satisfied, but these exist as single-player deathmatches where human opposition is replaced by bots. Objectives come in one of four flavours: kill so many enemies, capture the flag a set number of times, beat a boss, or the worst of the four monkey tag where your goal is to kill the person designated as “The Monkey” who has no offensive power to speak of. The only reason your going to want to play this mode is to build up your roster of playable characters. Starting out you’ll only have three: Turok, Adon and an Elite Guard, all of which play and look identically. It’s pretty hilarious to select Adon from as the developers didn’t feel it necessary to create a feminine set of arms so she ended up with the same, bulky arms as Turok. One of my favourite characters to play is one you unlock fairly early, that character being the velociraptor who has no long range weapons to speak of, just the ability to run up and flail his tiny arms like a madman.
Pingback: THE YEAR OF ACCLAIM: PLAY OR PASS | Comic Gamers Assemble
Fuck you for not liking rage wars. You obviously didn’t have any friends over to play it the multiplayer had so many characters maps weapons weapon upgrades and power ups and game types. Hundreds of hours of four player back in the day. It is ahead of its time by not wasting resources on single player and focusing 100% on multiplayer
LikeLike
Pingback: RANKING THE NINTENDO 64 COMIC BOOK GAMES | Comic Gamers Assemble