Body Harvest

N64, Body Harvest (1998), game

Takes me back, this one… Back exactly twenty years as I haven't played it since the first time, the end of May to the end of June 2001. Not because it was a bad experience, it was simply that it was a one-off type of game, not the kind to offer multiple options, game types or co-operative/competitive modes for more than one player. In that respect it was very compact, but that didn't take away from the quality it had to offer. So why hadn't I returned to it before now? I'm not really sure, but part of the reason may have been that it was an intensive month of playing it twice - wishing to get the most life out of games in those days I usually began with the easier difficulty setting (designated rather disparagingly 'Zero' in this case!), and so I did with 'Body Harvest,' only to find that it restricted progression to the end of the third level (America 1966), so I piled in and went for the next (and only), difficulty up: 'Hero.' I had some problems with bugs in the system (and I'm not talking about the alien variety you come up against in-game!), where it kept crashing, and most notably when the third stage of America failed to open the Shield Portal through which it was necessary to travel to beat the level's boss threat, requiring restarting at the beginning of Stage 1 of that era! And it was no joke getting through America, especially the first stage, where there were so many opportunities for the humans you were there to save, to be crushed, shot or eaten, just as much at risk from the wheels of your own vehicles as the alien attackers since they would run around in the road, often directly into your path…

All this being said, and as much as I enjoyed the game, especially at the great bargain price of £9.99 in HMV, brand new, I was not encouraged by the experience enough to want to revisit it, at least not for some time, and that, as I'm demonstrating, was the case! With so many other terrific N64 games to replay, not to mention a steady influx of secondhand GameCube games (and in the last couple of years, Wii), it was simply a case of not getting around to it, but it was always there in the back of my mind as one to go back to eventually. I also liked the idea of recreating the same time of year period I played it originally to assist in connecting to the happy memories I have of the game as well as life around it, so as 'World Snooker Championship Real 2008' on the Wii had kept me away from more traditional gaming pursuits for almost half the year (surprisingly), and I required something more action-oriented, plus the realisation of the twentieth anniversary of my original experience, 'Body Harvest' seemed an ideal choice to pull myself away from snooker and get stuck in on the N64 again - I'd meant to pack the old console away for a while as I had before bringing it out to rediscover 'Zelda: Majora's Mask' (another title I'd not returned to since original play-through), but kept it out after that knowing there would be some game on the system I might play in the near future.

Much like 'Jet Force Gemini' I had impressions that weren't entirely favourable, in the case of 'Body Harvest' it was that the graphics were pretty poor, and as with 'JFG' I was expecting it to look terrible, if not close to unplayable using the VGA adaptor I required to be able to play it on the Dell flat panel monitor I use for gaming - while some N64 games work through the yellow video port on this screen, usually games with a high resolution, the majority don't, forcing use of the inferior VGA port which always makes things appear washed out and loses all contrast on very light colours (for example, '1080º Snowboarding' is completely whited out in snowstorm levels). I was very pleasantly surprised to find, much as I had been with 'JFG' that the game actually looked pretty good, and since it had always been quite basic anyway and the reputation was for poor visuals, the low expectations I had worked in its favour and I found it to look very nice with well developed environments. The negatives were still apparent, mainly in the draw distance for the environmental shapes of hills and buildings which would appear out of the fog, but in some cases this actually enhanced the atmosphere of the level - I'm thinking specifically of Java 1941, a dark swampland where it's always raining so you expect it to be gloomy, only adding to the sense of an alien pall on the landscape so that when the clouds part and the darkness rolls away at the end it's really quite lovely.

Probably the worst offender in terms of visuals was America as entire buildings would pop up as you sped along, or at least solidified out of the orange fog. These things didn't bother me as you're much more intent on the tasks you have to accomplish or the locating of vehicles that will transform your fortunes: this was the game's biggest selling point and remains to this day a great pleasure and the main draw of the game. The fact you could approach any vehicles you discovered and, provided it had fuel and wasn't locked (in a few rare occasions you needed to speak to someone before it would be possible to use), take it for a spin, gave the game an incredible sense of freedom. But what it was really about was showing how small and insignificant you were outside of the safety of a wheeled shell, to the point you actually felt exposed and vulnerable trudging along in your armoured biosuit. The reverse was also true, however, as once you have even a small, basic car, your ability to scout out the level and explore is increased in magnitude and you feel empowered. And that's before you even get the joy of experimenting with various different forms of transport: the super-fast motorbike that allowed you to speed around Greece 1916, but especially the selection of planes and helicopters that opened up the world of flight. Cleverly, this last was generally kept for the end of levels where it couldn't mess up the structure of the game, but on finishing America Stage 1 for example, you had to take a helicopter to get clear across the level to the Shield Portal which was only big enough for a person to walk through, and seeing all those skyscrapers from the sky gave a whole new perspective to the cities.

The game was expertly put together to provide both a freeform gaming experience of exploration and play, but also a tight action adventure with stakes and threat. This came from the necessity of protecting the hapless humans of each time period (who, oddly all looked the same!), fodder for the greedy alien creatures sent to, yes, harvest them. The structure was brilliant with a whole subset of different creatures working together to expose the ant-like humans to the grim blobs of harvester goo that would seek them out and drag them to the spider-like alien for digestion - as soon as you hear that bleeping alarm that a Harvester wave has just beamed in like some evil 'Star Trek' Away Team, and the red warning arrow points the direction, you're put on high alert as you frantically try to get there before anyone dies. It was very well judged, because if you knew your way around the levels and had access to a vehicle you had enough time to get there and run over the ugly beasts rushing into the sides of houses in order to bring them to rubble and expose the nest of humans to panicked escape attempts while smaller bugs go for you and flying ones shoot at you. If you could just kill off the main bug before the globules of human-carrying slime returned to it, they'd be saved as the goo itself didn't harm them, only being fed to the main chomper. But if you didn't know the level or you were caught without a vehicle, that's when it became really tense as it was easy to get lost, the arrow only pointing as the crow flies, not the best route to get there!

If this tension and madcap dash for protection was one of the best aspects of the game, it was counterpointed by vast levels which you were encouraged to explore to your heart's content. While you had specific mission goals to accomplish in order to progress, such as finding a vehicle with enough weight to go through a dividing fence, opening up a new area, there was also value in simply checking each building in case they were accessible (the majority of doors were barred so you knew they weren't), in which you could find characters to  talk to, weapons, ammo, health, fuel, and even special items such as the Alien Artefacts or Weapon Crystals which I was never entirely sure on the purpose of, but appeared to be for making a special weapon. It seemed the weapon came purely from the Crystals, I never discovered what the Artefacts did as I never took time to find all of them (three in each time period). I was only able to locate all three in America and didn't have the patience to go back over the other levels and scour them, though this would add a level of extension to the game it was otherwise lacking, even if game length was pretty good and when you're going through it for the 'first' time, not really knowing where you are or what you have to do, it does take a while - it does show how much this learning experience takes up, however, as when the glitch happened in America (where the Shield Portal didn't open, exactly the same issue I experienced twenty years ago!), I was able to get through all three stages in one day, so probably three or four hours in total (including multiple attempts as it could be reasonably tough), and while my total time was 10 hours, 23 minutes (and 58 seconds), it was probably more like four times that, given the number of times I had to replay sections!

The major glitch I experienced this time aside, the game is pretty solid considering how big the levels were and how much was asked of the machine, especially so early in its lifespan, but there were still frustrating issues here and there, and few more than the experience of getting stuck on scenery, either in a vehicle or on foot. It was much easier for this to happen when you were within a vehicle and the worst cases were when you just went slightly over the lip of a hill or sheer drop and the car would be unable to back out, leading either to an angry ditching in the gully below, or a hopeful attempt to eject and keep going on foot. I once had to make the second jump on America Stage 1, and used the buggy, not getting up enough speed and landing short, gripped on the side of the opposite cliff, below a large drop into water that was not survivable. I managed to eject and the buggy rolled down, but by keeping the stick forward and wiggling it side to side I was able to slowly edge up this steep incline which you wouldn't normally be able to ascend, and pop over the top, saving my attempt on the level instead of certain death, so not all glitches were annoying. It was just that, for all the freedom and speeding around you were given, it just seemed harsh when you'd just misjudge something and end up in water where you were almost guaranteed to die, forced to restart from the last save point at the beginning of a stage!

In fact, this give and take approach and the sense of real danger to yourself as well as the humans you're trying to protect, actually made me more attached to the game because it made the freedom sweeter - the same was true of the vehicles, where if they ran out of fuel you couldn't use them any more unless you had your own cans saved up. Even then, if you were desperate there was always the option of returning back to Alpha I, your space-hovercraft (where your glamorous assistant resided), to reset the positions of all vehicles in the level, so they generally thought of every eventuality. The biggest annoyance was always the fact that your specialist suit was so cumbersome, most affected by water. You could swim, but it was very slow and your suit was frying in the meantime until you eventually died if you failed to reach dry land in time. Not quite as cumbersome as swimming, but not far off, running on foot could be a bit of a trudge, especially if you were caught out in the open without a vehicle, and the turning of your suit was so clunky and awkward you almost feel they should have included a weightless level to show that in zero-g it was actually an advantage. The pros were that it could pack in various weapons and had reasonably good armour (though nothing against the terrifyingly huge creatures you'd face as you progressed). You needed it, too, as some aliens were so big it was like looking up at a building from your perspective on the ground, another very impressive aspect of the game.

You really feel like an ant scurrying across the land and the sense of scale was very impressive - there were two camera views, one up close for a more traditional viewpoint of most third-person action-adventure games, and then a distant, pulled back perspective that gave a much wider view of the surroundings and was necessary for the speed at which you could travel in vehicles. It really was the difference between humans and Borrowers in scale, and touches such as the sound of your heavy boots clomping vanishing when the camera pulls back only added to the sense of a lonely hero in a vast environment. The naturalistic nature of the levels helped, too, whether it was the golden yellow sands of Greece, the greenery of Java or the built up areas juxtaposed with orange desert sands and rock (like 'Dune' - complete with giant sandworms, too!). This worked much better than if it had been some ugly alien planet, and the time travel story gave them the excuse for a great range of vehicles from rickety World War I planes to 1960s police cars and World War II bombers (in fact, maybe I should have played the game back in 2016 as that's the 'contemporary' time your character comes from!). In keeping with gaming tradition, the final level was much less interesting, ugly, tough and not much fun - it's amazing how common this phenomenon is as you'd think more effort and time than any other would be spent on the final level, but that's probably the opposite of reality as deadlines loom and pressure rises to finish a game, while the first level has the most amount of time for tweaking and getting it right.

Strangely, I had no memories of Siberia, the last proper level before the atypical buzz around in the alien landscape of the Comet. The first three, Greece, Java and America had all stayed with me, but Siberia had been lost in its own haze of dull greens and browns. Partly that's due to playing the first three levels through twice (Zero, then Hero), but also it was the most ugly level - they took the time to have snow gently falling so why not have it settle? There were snowy areas, but too much was a duller version of Java. There was a spot of 'Blast Corps' influences with tasks such as destroying the five pump houses of the nuclear reactor in the time limit, and transporting a missile, that kind of thing, but it was certainly the least enjoyable Earth-based levels. It was certainly challenging, sometimes from my own unwillingness to join in - one example is that early in the level you're supposed to get a combine harvester and mow down a load of civilians that had been turned into zombies, but it was so antithetical to my mission of protecting humans that I chose to avoid the shamblers, missing out on the vital ammo they carried and making my task far harder, but I did succeed all the same: I'm supposed to be there to save them, not harvest them myself! But even now as I think back, Siberia doesn't resonate much, it all blended together.

What I did have memory of was the actual final level on the Comet in 2016. And it was memorable for all the wrong reasons: after four levels of glorious freedom of exploration and playing with countless vehicles you're restricted to the terrible Alpha 1 'tank' hovercraft, the most difficult machine to handle in the game, and much of the challenge comes from the trial of dealing with the enemy using this unwieldy vehicle, when the challenge shouldn't come from the poor control issues. It's also much more linear and basic: kill everything in your path simply to survive and keep the ammo coming… so you can kill everything in your path. It's worrying to think that before Nintendo stepped in and ordered the makers to add RPG elements to the game this is probably what the game would have largely consisted of, as it certainly wouldn't have gone down as a classic in my eyes. And this is what I was referring to above when I said final levels are usually the worst. It's a trial to get through and the only good feeling is finishing it!

I had to wonder if Nintendo's influence on the game stretched to more than just suggestion of gameplay improvements, but one of their actual properties - I know Nintendo requested they add RPG elements to improve the experience (talking to characters, collecting things, entering buildings, that kind of thing), but I also wonder if there was some 'Metroid' influence? I didn't know this series at the time I originally played it, still some years away from discovering Samus Aran and her space quests, since 'Metroid Prime' on the 'Cube was my first exposure. For some reason Samus skipped the N64 generation, I don't know why, but perhaps Nintendo simply had enough on their plate transforming so many of their top properties from 2D to 3D they didn't have time, plus they don't present updates from every series in each console generation, perhaps to develop more anticipation and give players a feeling of exclusivity (I'm still disappointed that so many of their top franchises were farmed out to other companies, such as Sega doing 'F-Zero GX' on 'Cube, when only Nintendo can fully realise their own properties). But here we have the orange biosuit complete with large shoulder pads, an attached gun with unlimited ammo on its most basic setting, shooting up alien bugs while discovering the story of what this is all about, chasing around a lot of outdoor environments - there's even an evil 'Samus' in black as a humanoid adversary! It's the closest we got to a 'Metroid' game on the N64 and this suggests it would have been terrific!

While the game has a serious story, none other than the wiping out of humanity by alien hordes, there's also room for some humorous references within it, something else I enjoyed about the game. Right from the 'Camberwick Green' connection near the start of Greece where you need to gain access to a fire engine in the town of 'Trumptonas,' if you know a little TV and film history you'll enjoy the connections. Other ones I spotted were 'Port Humphrey' where a Bogart-alike lets you use 'The Javanese Queen,' to a certain 'Professor Brown' in America who's development of a nitro fuel enables your armoured car to go faster (88mph perhaps?), an apt reference since you start one hundred years in the past at the beginning of the game and proceed to go 'back to the future' again! If you explore, there's even a well-hidden 'Bates Motel' in a corner of the America level, purely there for fun, as well as more general sci-fi examples such as men in black and UFOs with little grey aliens. You can see the British background of the makers in some of these, none more than a 'Blue Peter' reference with a plaque to 'Shep' (in loving memory, 1972-1986), and mention of the 'Mabel' Peace Prize, which couldn't be more surreal! This sense of fun prevents the game from seeming bleak and po-faced, when a vast action game could still recognise it's fun. And it is fun, great fun. They maybe took it too far at the end with all the 'Star Wars' Vader and Emperor dialogue in the final confrontation, but that's probably more to do with my fatigue with that franchise now!

Other details of the game that deserve mention are the map and the music. The former is a lifesaver for putting your position and the terrain in context as well as giving you further incentive to explore as so much of the level is greyed out until you actually visit there. This also tells you what your current objective is, lessening all that confusing wandering around trying to work out what you're supposed to be doing that can plague a large, 3D game world. Here, the worlds are huge, but they're well mapped out and nicely divided up with the internal logic of the alien shield walls that prevent travel between stages until certain prerequisites have been met. The music is suitable for filling these huge levels and as you'd expect, is context sensitive depending on what's going on - so when there's the threat of a Harvester Wave, or a nearby enemy (shown as an orange blob on the handy radar, which I would have liked to have been a little more detailed rather than being limited to the compass points, enemies and the green triangles that denoted vehicles), it changes to enhance the sense of jeopardy just when you want to take it slow and explore a new area you're forced to rush through it and fling yourself into a previously unexplored part in order to save the humans (there's also the personal incentive to do this, not just to get each of the 5000 point bonuses for no humans harvested or no humans killed, but because a meter for the whole time period shows how many have died and if it fills up to maximum you have to start the whole level over again!).

A very useful addition is an optional marker you can put on the map which will give you a purple arrow to follow in game that points the way to wherever you select it to be, giving more options for how you find your way around. Then, although I said there was no replay incentive, you can actually replay any of the levels, and the bosses, at any time, to improve your time and score, so if high scores are a motivating factor, this adds life to the game. And it's really divided into two parts: the external in which all the action takes place, and the internal where you can explore buildings or perhaps underground sewage tunnels, that sort of thing. When you're inside there's absolutely no threat and you don't have the option of using your weapons, it's purely for the RPG side of the game, speaking to characters (the attractive illustration of their faces next to the text dialogue reminded me of Amiga graphics which was a nice connection to older games like 'Supercars 2' or 'Mean Arenas'), searching furniture (a bit like 'Impossible Mission'), and enjoying the period decor of each location. It broke up the gameplay a bit, and though your suit is a bit unwieldy and shows up the limitations in a confined environment, the addition of different music gives it variety. If there is a complaint it is that not enough of that variety was in the music, so every level has the same aural background rather than being level specific, when they could have had more fun with that aspect. On the other hand, this also means we don't get the cliched Greek instruments, American rock or classical Russian styles and it does the job well, plus I counted fifteen different external tracks and four internal, not to mention specific ones for the map or when aliens attack.

The weapons and aiming system work pretty well, though it can be a little awkward when you've got aliens all around and you're trying to concentrate on one, especially when you're out of the protection of a vehicle. It makes sense that you can't look up as far as you want, and in vehicles you have to turn to get more coverage, forcing you to think on your feet (or your wheels), and the side roll becomes invaluable if you are taking on enemies on foot. The standard weapon is a bit puny, as you'd expect, and I found the shotgun to be most effective, especially as most combat takes place close range, though the rifle was very useful for its longer range and so more time in which to attack. While aliens have a health bar to deplete, this goes for vehicles and even buildings themselves, so again, there's a much closer connection to the world than in a lot of games where most of the scenery tended to be indestructible. The fact you can smash through fences or rumble over trees adds greatly to your sense of having an impact on the environment, too! The story isn't bad, even though it's fairly slight, with this black-suited version of you, which you eventually learn is actually you, a clone created from the drop of blood shown in the intro - surprising to see so much blood on a Nintendo game back then, but it was a good scene-setter at the start. I didn't smash my previous time (7:40:28), but I did beat the score (950425 this time, opposed to 826575 before). It may not be the sort of game you want to play more than once (every twenty years), but while you are playing it there's much to enjoy, so much that I can't help but recommend it.

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