Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M.

N64, Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. (1999) game

Initial impressions weren't particularly favourable, but as always, I gave it a chance and 'Armorines: Project SWARM' turned out to be a fun gaming experience well worth the £4 I paid for it on ebay. Back in the days of the N64 this was one of the first games that stuck in my mind from 'N64 Magazine' and their preview. Desert. Black bugs scuttling across it. What wasn't to like? But finding 'GoldenEye' and more serious shooters, I never got around to playing this more simple sub-genre, and had my fill with the first two 'Turok' games. At my current stage I'm interested in going back to the games on that console (which remains my favourite of all time), the ones I never played in particular, and this was one of the few that I was on the lookout for. But as I said, even taking into account how aged the N64 has become, I wasn't entirely sure I'd made a good buy and might be stuck toiling through a basic, boring shooter for a while. The controls were either too sensitive or not sensitive enough, I couldn't decide which, subsequently never allowing me the feeling of complete power over my character that I have felt in other games, and little irks stood out: the game wouldn't save the control preferences so you had to go through the options every time you switched it on, just to set things up as you wanted (for the record I had Friendly Fire On, Auto Aim Off, and Horizontal and Vertical Control set to the maximum of 15).

The opening Siberia levels weren't great looking, and spending half the time battling to bend down to the little bugs skittering across the snow was a great source of irritation. The front end was pretty scrappy and very old-fashioned with its ALL CAPS SCROLLING TEXT and basic look. There was also instant death from falling and I felt I'd gone back to an age even older than the N64. I love the Amiga, but some of that system's presentation could be a bit ugly, and that was the level here. But as I continued and became accustomed to the game on its own terms I was surprisingly impressed - I began to get into it and appreciate the graphics and style, especially for the fact that I was able to play it on S-Video instead of mere standard Composite. It used the Expansion Pak so it looked crisp and sharp, and despite the angular surfaces and flat textures of the N64, they did a good job on the level design, with varying environments of a good size, and excellent animation on the bugs. The multi-legged creatures scuttling after you were remarkably creepy, especially with the insect-like cries, and playing with earphones only heightened the creeping horror - the sound of beating legs and screeches coming for you when health is low, was most effective indeed!

Thanks to the Expansion Pak, lighting was used to very good effect in realtime, as seen in other games in the middle or late period of the console's life, such as 'Donkey Kong 64' and 'Perfect Dark' - sometimes you needed to use your gun in order to light pitch black tunnels or corners, which added a tactical edge to proceedings, and the night vision was also an essential piece of kit in certain areas, where you felt more vulnerable in complete darkness with restricted vision. I found the standard weapon to be the most useful, though I could have done with an auto-reload feature, although again, running out of bullets after twenty rounds (I played as Lewis with the lower charge rate), with the awful clicking sound of an empty chamber as the bugs swarm you is a further tactical element that needs to be considered. I definitely found it difficult reloading while also trying to escape the hordes and I had to press B several times sometimes to activate the reload. The standard gun isn't that powerful, but like Samus Aran's arm cannon in the 'Metroid' series it has infinite reloads so you can keep firing. Having that freedom is useful when you're trying to hit scuttling enemies that can be literally running up and down the walls to get to you. Once I'd got over the biggest flaw of imprecise control (and it did take some getting used to, may even have had something to do with my controller's old and less responsive handling), I found the game to be engaging and though the objectives weren't on the same level as 'GoldenEye,' they prevented the game from merely being a shoot-'em-up without any thought.

It brings to mind 'Body Harvest' for being a lone man blasting bugs, though that was skewed more to an RPG and vehicle-based exploration, whereas the vehicle sections in this were more limited and on-rails. These weren't my favourite moments, but you can't help but marvel when a game of this age sits you in the cockpit of a big, thumping cannon and flies you over a desert landscape where you have to pick off the bugs, then the next thing you know you're down on the ground and running around in that very landscape you'd seen from above. Like the old 'Turok' games, fogging was an issue, but it only added tension really, as you couldn't see too far ahead, and it was never close enough to be debilitating. Music was also from the 'Turok' stable (unsurprising I suppose, considering they both came from Acclaim), with the same kind of jungle drums. But the sense of scale worked well and the water effects impressed, as did the ability to affect the environment, shooting switches or standing on pads to alter the layout or set things in motion. It was missing the stats common in other shooting games of the time (yes, 'GoldenEye' and 'Perfect Dark' again), so there was no reason to try and beat scores or get more kills, complete levels in a record time or with greater accuracy, and neither could levels be accessed again once completed so I did appreciate the password option which allowed replaying any level of choice.

It was the Jungle levels that first made me realise this was a game I was enjoying rather than playing through out of a sense of duty or for completion's sake. It did require the momentum of regular play, however - I got stuck on one of the Volcano missions for about three weeks because I only had brief plays in that period, it was harder going back in having been away for a week. Also, the game sometimes required you to take leaps of faith and then react to whatever you were plunged into: an early level where you were supposed to jump off a ledge into a pool of water, with the only clues being the sound of a waterfall and your commanding officer sending a message about descending further. The Volcano level where you had to jump down into a cavern and were confronted by a fast-moving lava flow was also a sticky situation and took a number of tries before I worked out how to escape (find a wall with a climbable surface), but it could occasionally appear to be trial and error, especially as dying from falls into bottomless pits was a constant possibility and furthered the impression of an old-school mentality to proceedings! It wasn't as bad as the many precision-jumping moments in the first 'Turok,' I hasten to add…

Whether you were creeping through underground tunnels of the manufactured kind or the natural sort, or out in a more open environment, they were varied enough to keep the experience pleasurable, even if the last section, the Hive, was a victim of the usual last level syndrome: more chance to fall off edges, more enemies, etc. Getting bogged down in exterminating every bug was a necessity when a level was new, as you needed time and space to locate your bearings and understand the structure of a level, but once you knew what to do and where to go, you could often blast through, ignoring the creatures as much as possible, which is how I kept getting back to the final Queen battle which took a few attempts to complete. As with a lot of games of this era the end was a big letdown post-battle with the big nasty, which wasn't actually all that difficult to take out. You killed the Queen then you saw Lewis running away only to get caught in the resulting explosion, followed by the alien ship being blasted to smithereens. And roll credits. There was a crackle as if a final transmission or report was going to come through, but then it cut to credits as if skipping something, which was annoying, because there's no underlining that the mission is complete, you're just exploded! The addition of these little messages coming through during gameplay worked well and made things seem a little less linear, and indeed the game wasn't exactly linear, but ultimately was - you had a couple of routes through some levels, to choose at your leisure, but they all had to be explored eventually.

I didn't enjoy the game to the extent that I wanted to plunge right in as the second character, Lane, especially as it looked like she had the same route through the game, just with different weapons, but I could imagine myself playing it again one day. Though the Egypt level was how I had imagined the whole game being, with attractive sandy dunes and rocky outcrops, and bug hordes crawling out of the crevices, there was much more to it than that. The animation on the creatures was very good indeed, very creepy, with some signs of intelligence, especially in the way they would often attack from side to side instead of making directly for you. It was also a different experience to have enemies that could come from any plane: the sides, the ceiling, or creeping out of the ground, and with improved AI this could have been incredible! So there were control issues (other options were available, but I couldn't get on any better than with the standard), in case I failed to draw attention to that, it got a bit buggy, the puzzles didn't always seem to work every time, there was slowdown, and for the last Hive levels the sound would go, but even with all these problems, and taking into account its age, it was a remarkably entertaining, atmospheric and enjoyable FPS, that was a challenge without being ridiculous, and rarely dragged. A recommended experience from me.

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