Let's Play Every GameCube Game, Part 6
Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2005 Adventures (Magic Wand Productions/Activision, 2004)
You can play as Male 18, Male 30, Male 60, Female 18, or Female 30, but old women are not allowed to go hunting, apparently. It's just as well, because the game is just wandering around a big open field while getting tired ridiculously quickly, then shooting at animals marked by big red arrows. That part is realy hard, because even though the guns have sights, none of the buttons seem to correspond to using them, and blind firing is basically impossible.
Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2 (FUN Labs/Activision, 2005)
A similar, boring hunting game. This one opens with a tutorial section where I was asked to shoot four bottles, but since this is Dangerous Hunts and man is the most dangerous game, I tried to murder Hugh here instead. The game did not let me, and then crashed when I tried to take a screenshot. Brilliant. I'm not even sure how that crash is possible.
Cabela's Outdoor Adventures (Magic Wand Productions/Activision, 2005)
The third and, mercifully, final game in the series is also the ugliest and the only one to have inverted camera controls, which you can't change. I walked around a lot and never saw any animals, but I did find out that it's Y to look down sights. What a strange button for that.
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (Treyarch/Activision, 2005)
It certainly has an impressive amount happening on screen at once, but all of it is brown and it's next to impossible to tell what's happening at much distance. It's also hard to tell who you're supposed to be shooting at, because uniforms are almost indistinguishable at this resolution and with so many effects going off.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour (Spark Unlimited/Activision, 2004)
Almost everything I said before also applies here, honestly. There's too much going on for the GCN's audio system to deal with, and it's very hard to make out individual noises sometimes.
Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO (Capcom, 2002)
A 1v1 fighter where you pick three characters to tag-team with and a "groove" that (I think) modifies your stats. Fighters aren't really my thing, so I can't tell you if it's any good, but it does at least have a ton of selectable characters and some really nice backgrounds. I'm not a fan of the blurry character sprites, though. The GCN version specifically was panned at release for being hard to play with the native controller.
Captain Tsubasa: Ougon Sedai no Chousen (Konami, 2002)
It eventually becomes a soccer game, but I don't play these for nearly long enough to see that. What I played is basically Princess Maker but soccer, which could actually be a pretty neat idea. The game is way too long winded for my taste, though, and something about my setup was causing the non-UI text to be blurred, which made some kanji very difficult to read. 夢, the second to last character there, is at least readable by its outline, but it gives you an idea of how bad that problem was.
Carmen Sandiego: The Secret of the Stolen Drums (Artificial Mind and Movement/BAM! Entertainment, 2004)
An action platformer, of all things. It seems unremarkable from what I played, and contemporary reviews panned it for being generic and boring.
Cars (Rainbow Studios/THQ)
A really easy and generic racing game. My 4 second lead in this image was attained with the advanced strategy of just holding down the gas all the time and never using the brakes, because you don't need them. It gives you points even though score doesn't seem to matter.
Casper: Spirit Dimensions (Lucky Chicken Games/TDK Mediactive, 2001)
A game with a truly bizarre control scheme. Analog stick controls the camera while the c-stick does... literally nothing. You fly forward with X and backward with B. This is ridiculous, and 3D games had definitely been a thing for long enough that they should've known that. It also features horrible nightmare character faces and long cutscenes full of bad voice acting.
Catwoman (Argonaut Games/EA, 2004)
An action gamed based on a movie, neither of which fared well. Jennifer Hale put it probably her worst voice performance ever as Catwoman and a lot of the game consists of looking like an idiot by running around on all fours. Apparently the GBA game was considerably better, but that's for a future series.
Cel Damage (Pseudo Interactive/EA, 2002)
Cel-shaded car combat game. The weapons are extremely unbalanced and while I love how the game looks in stills, it's very hard to tell what's going on at a distance and you're constantly dying to AI attacks you never saw coming.
Chaos Field (MileStone/Able Corporation, 2004)
A really generic bullet hell ported over from arcades. It barely has any sound and looks like it could've been an N64 game.
Charinko Hero (Banpresto, 2003)
A tricycle racing game themed around sentai heroes and monsters. It's very clearly inspired by Mario Kart, but you can use a boost whenever as long as you manage your stamina gauge, and blue coins that you can find around the track let you build up charges of your special attack to use against nearby racers. Add in some cool track design (the one after this was a volcano full of fossils) and you've got a surprise list game.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (High Voltage Software/Global Star Software, 2005)
Another licensed game, but notable for managing an impressive 39/100 review average. That's the complete lack of quality control I've come to expect from Global Star! I can't tell you much about it myself, though, because the game broke a few minutes in and I wasn't able to progress out of the first level. So sad.
The List:
1080° Avalanche
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
Batman: Dark Tomorrow
Burnout 2: Point of Impact
Charinko Hero