Body Harvest Review

I am going to review one of my all time favourite N64 games, Body Harvest. Body Harvest was made by DMA Design (Rockstar North before they became Rockstar North) and is basically the pre-cursor to the GTA series (the 3D GTA games that is). Before there was GTA III, there was Body Harvest which came out the year after the original Grand Theft Auto. It is essentially a 3rd person shooter adventure game, and was more or less the first 3D sandbox style game.

Story
It is currently 2016. The earth's population has been harvested by a race of bug-like aliens over a time scale of 100 years. The aliens live on an artifical comet and attack earth once every 25 years. It is implied that the aliens possess some form of time travel ability. The only human survivors live on space station Omega, where a group of scientists are working on a solution. You take control of genetically engineered super solider Adam Drake, who is sent back in time via the shiny new Alpha Command Post, with a bunch of fancy equipment, to stop the alien attack waves. Accompanying you is Daisy Hernandez, your commanding officer, who stay on board the Alpha Command Post and provides you with intel as you traverse the various levels. There is also an on board robot that also provides you intel sometimes. You go back to Greece 1916, then to Java 1941, America 1966, Siberia 1991 and then to the Alien Comet in 2016.

The story isn't really that compelling to be honest. The only parts of the game where the story even seems relevant is when you cross your arch nemesis, annd when you have to rescue Daisy and destroy the Alien Comet in 2016. Other than that, it has a fairly mediocre intro that is relatively interesting the first time you watch it. The inclusion of the arch nemesis cloned from a drop of Adam's blood was a good touch, although they don't really explain how he goes back in time to 1916, and so the only feasible option is that the aliens have time travel too. The main premise of the game is to kill aliens and to stop civilians from dying, whilst spending the remainder of the time just dicking around completing various objectives. Of course, you can actually ignore the latter objective (providing the body count meter does not reach maximum) and so you are not really under any obligation to go out of your way to save every civilian.

Story: 6/10

Gameplay
The gameply in this game is nothing short of brilliant. There are so many facets of this game that mere words are not enough to do the game justice. This games combines elements of driving, shooting, exploring and puzzle-solving with a bunch of objectives chucked in. Each of the five levels in the game are huge, and filled with an array of era specific buildings, scenery and vehicles. Each level is split into stages, except for the Alien comet which is just one big level.

Greece is a sandy, quiet area, filled with villages, random pillars, the occasional recognisably Greek types of buildings (including a submerged Temple!) and tons of WWI era vehicles, including but not limited to biplanes. Java is wet, grassy area, where it rains for most of the level, filled with lava, volcanos, the occasional military base, WWII vehicles, tropical trees, and LOTS of water. America is a mixed level, consisting of a huge city, a large mountainous area containing a number of towns (including a Native American reservation) and an out of the way military outposts, and a colossal area 51-esque military installation surrounded by hot, arid desert. You get classic American cars, 60s military hardware (Hueys ftw!) and at one point, even a captured UFO!

Siberia is a cold, icy region, where it always snows. It consists entirely of towns surrounded by treacherous terrain, such as icy water, inhospitable mountains, and then there is the odd iceberg or two you have to negotiate with. You get tons of Russian military hardware, including VTOL jets, tanks, SAM launchers, APCs, armoured hovercrafts, and at one point you get an underwater tank and a SCUD launcher. There are tons of modern buildings, including oil rigs, a Nuclear Power Plant, a big military base and a chemical plant. The alien comet is, well, exactly what it says on the tin. No vehicles, no weapons and very few buildings you can actually get into. Of course, you get to pilot the Alpha I tank for the entirety of the level.

Each level you start off with your pistol, and you can acquire more weapons in every level. Note that every time you finish a level, then you lose all the weapons you have picked up, and so must pick up more weapons each time you progress to the next level. Each level, except Comet, contains three weapon crystals, that when combined, form a powerful alien weapon, and there are also three alien artefacts in each level too, which allow you to replay the level's boss battle once you have completed the game. The game pits you up a sizeable and vast array of different types of aliens that evolve and get more powerful throughout the game. There is also a dude in black armour, your arch-nemesis that the aliens cloned from a drop of Adam's blood in the game's intro, that shows up from time to time also.

You spend the entirety of the game exploring, stopping alien harvester waves, killing alien attack waves sent to kill you, more exploring, completing objectives and killing the alien processors, shield generators and level bosses. The levels are huge, as aforementioned, and so, when you aren't busy fighting aliens, etc. and don't want to get around to completing the current objective, you can spend plenty of time just dicking around, either on foot or in vehicle, exploring buildings, finding items or just admiring the scenery. The main purpose of the game is to stop the aliens from, well, eating anybody, in each stage of every level, with the obvious exception of the alien comet, they periodically beam down harvester waves to round up and eat yummy civilians. The aliens, not too happy about your interfering in their affairs, send large numbers of aliens to stop you, which steadily get more powerful as you progress through the game.

Once you reach the end of a stage, you face off against a sort of mini-boss in the form of an "Alien Processor," which controls the harvesting and attack waves within the stage, as well as the portal in the shield wall to the next stage. Once you reach the end of the level, you have to destroy the Shield Generator, and then face off against the level boss, in the form of a building sized alien comprised of multiple parts. Once you beat the level boss, you jump forward 25 years to the next level in your handy time-machine. The shield walls are actually an ingenious plot device. They present themselves as a plausible way of preventing the player from leaving the stage without without coming across as a cheap plot wall.

The objectives in the game, as well as the hidden weapon crystals and alien artefacts, add a uniqe puzzle solving element. Whilst some objectives are simple, involving just moving to a specific area, others are complex, involving you coming up with a specific strategy in order to complete this objective. One such example is where you have to destroy an alien communication centre in Siberia using a SCUD missile. Some objectives can be skipped, yet a number of these objectives result in the deaths of a large chunk of the civilian population if you fail them. One example is in Greece, where you have to stop some kamikaze aliens from destroying a bridge as a refugee truck full of civilians is going over it. The aforementioned weapon crystals and alien artefacts are hidden all over each level. Some can be found in the same stage, some can be fond together, others are far apart and even reqire you to go back and search for them. These are optional, but add another of exploration and problem solving, and give you the reward of an alien weapon!

There are some problems. Such as the games physics seemingly being out to get you. The game has a nasty habit of screwing you over at the most inopportune moment, for example, a wrong turn whilst trying to traverse a mountain in Java can often land you in some lava. You can get vehicles stuck when you are trying to evade enemies, and other times you can park a vehicle and come back to find they have fallen over the side of a cliff or have slid into the water. Water is your wost enemy too. Despite being equipped with state of the art armour and general alien arse kicking gear, if you spend too long in the water, you will drown, due to the weight of your armour. Yes, seriously, that is the explanation given in the game. There are also not that very many buildings to explore, and not a lot of people to talk to inside them. Some buildings are simply empty, other contain items you don't need, like "health". Yet these are more than made up by the good aspects of the gameplay. And whilst many players might be bored with the lack of interaction with NPCs, I think it adds a kind of eerie silent quality that is befitting of an apocalypic setting such as the on in Body Harvest. The game physics are only a problem if you aren't used to the game, and if you aren't willing to retry stages and levels in order to develop your winning strategy, then this game probably isn't for you. The game's only weakess, in my opinion, was that it was made in the 90s, before all the innovations of online gaming came about.

Gameplay: 10/10

Aesthetics
The music in this game is rather odd. On one side, we have eerie piano music, accompanied by strings, that is often dull and boring. Yet I think this goes well with the apocalyptic setting. However, once the alien badguys show up, the music ups from eerie and silent to orchestratic, lively and menacing. I believe that whoever composed the original sound track for this game did an excellent job. Graphics, however, suffers in that this game was made in the 90s, for the N64. Whilst its 3D environments are breathtaking (for its time) it graphics are blocky and outdated. Even at the time, they seemed a little awkward. Other than that, this game features plenty of blood (human and alien), explosions and the like. Therefore the only thing that really sucks, aesthetically, are the graphics, which could be easily remedied today if a remake were to be done.

Aesthetics: 8/10

Overall
This games is huge, and was innovative for its time, serving as the pre-cursor to the best-selling GTA III. This is easily the most underrated game of all time. It only suffers from console limitations, and a few aspects of the story that could be tweaked, but other than that this game is superb. It may get old afte awhile, but every so often, maybe once a year or every couple of years, I guarantee you will be giving this classic a replay. The only thing that might put people off replaying is simply the game's length, yet this is only a problem if you have a low attention span (one also wonders how such a person got into Body Harest in the first place). This game most definitely deserves a remake, preferably for the Xbox (and not some shit console) as an Arcade release and/or as a stand-alone game.

Overall: 24/30