Let's Play Every GameCube Game, Part 13
This series will be on hiatus until (probably) Sunday because I'm out of town and messed up my planning to keep it going for the whole week.
Finding Nemo (Traveller's Tales/THQ, 2003)
More Disney, crap, but it's not as bad as most of them since they at least figured out how to integrate cutscenes in a reasonable way here. That said, the game they've chosen to blatantly steal from this time is... Superman for the Nintendo 64.
Fire Blade (Kuju Entertainment/Midway Games, 2002)
A helicopter game that wants you to shoot at lots of little things that are hard to aim at with its controls. It also features stealth missions, which are exactly as unfun in a helicopter as you'd think.
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (Intelligent Systems/Nintendo, 2005)
It's Fire Emblem, so obviously it's going on the list. This feels much less dated than other games have, partly because FE's mechanics have been pretty stable over the years and partly because the 3DS games really don't look any better than this anyway. My gut reaction to the beginning of the game is that it seems better written than some of the more recent games, so hopefully that continues to be the case.
Flushed Away (Monkey Bar Games/D3 Publisher, 2006)
An uninteresting licensed platformer that was still inverting the X-axis in 2006, which was how I fell off and got that checkpoint message. I have nothing worthwhile to say about the game, so instead I'll point out that the budget for this movie was somehow one hundred fifty million US dollars, so it barely made its money back even with $178M in sales. And no one remembers it.
Franklin: A Birthday Surprise (Neko Entertainment/The Game Factory, 2006)
I only have the French version, for some reason, so I can't tell you anything about the story of this PAL-exclusive. Presumably it's Franklin's birthday. It's in a genre I'm going to call "bouncy side scrolling platformer", which I normally associate with low budget Japanese indie games. These games usually all feel like the same thing, and Franklin is no exception.
Freaky Flyers (Midway San Diego/Midway, 2003)
A plane racing game with cartoony everything. I like that you can get rewards and environmental attacks for shooting parts of the track, but the courses themselves don't really ask much of your flight abilities. I think this needed higher speeds and more hazards to be memorable.
Freedom Fighters (IO Interactive/EA, 2003)
An alternate history game where only the USSR ever invented nukes and eventually invaded Manhattan. Seems like a pretty competent shooter from what I played, and it was both short and well-received, so it gets a list spot.
Freekstyle (Visceral Games + Page 44/EA Sports BIG, 2002)
A very over the top motocross game. I enjoyed it despite not knowing how to do any tricks or use boost, which bodes well for how it'll be if I actually learn how to play first. The characters are very 2002 edgelord, but I like bizarre mix of motocross and Wipeout in the track design.
Freestyle MetalX (Delbius Studios/Midway Sports Asylum, 2003)
An edgy motocross game that featured an open world mode like Burnout Paradise. Unfortunately, it looks like a PS1 game that got lost and whoever did the audio balanced every noise to exactly the same volume, resulting in chicken clucks that are as loud as your engine. Not that the environment design is anything to remember, either.
Freestyle Street Soccer (Gusto Games/Acclaim Entertainment, 2004)
An earlier street soccer game with all the same problems with lack of defense as the FIFA Street games, but also uglier and with terrible passing mechanics. All around disaster, then. But hey, it was a Blockbuster Exclusive.
Frogger: Ancient Shadow (Hudson/Konami, 2005)
Frogger in 3D with more elaborate level design and terrible unskippable cutscenes. Those cutscenes alone are reason enough to never touch this.
Frogger Beyond (Konami, 2002)
The same thing, but with N64 graphics. It also has a terrible rap theme song instead of long unskippable cutscenes, so that's different.
Frogger's Adventures: The Rescue (Hudson/Konami, 2003)
The same thing, but now with the graphics of a Japanese indie game from the late 2000s. Still not very fun.
From Russia with Love (Visceral Games/EA, 2005)
A third person shooter that's really into lock-on shooting, which is much less fun than aiming yourself. It also features long, boring cutscenes and some questionable voice work. Good graphics, at least.
Future Tactics: The Uprising (Zed Two/Crave Entertainment, 2004)
A tactics game where you can only move one unit per turn, for some reason. It makes you go through a three step process to aim and shoot, but then you have a random chance to hit anyway. And on top of those bad decisions, it has awful music and doesn't look like much.
Gakuen Toshi Vara Noir (Idea Factory, 2004)
A visual novel that doesn't let you skip voice lines and has terrible writing. As an Idea Factory game, it of course made a joke about seeing the main character's panties within the first two minutes. I don't know if it eventually has some kind of gameplay later on, but I don't care enough to find out.
Gauntlet Dark Legacy (Midway Games West/Midway, 2002)
A port of a 1999 arcade game that makes a strong candidate for worst looking GCN game. Even though it's apparently running at 30 FPS, there are so few frames of animation that it looks like like a single digit framerate, and that's with graphics that would've been poor for a mid-generation PS1 game.
The list:
1080° Avalanche
Animal Crossing
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
Batman: Dark Tomorrow
Burnout 2: Point of Impact
Charinko Hero
Chibi-Robo!
Cocoto Kart Racer
Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest
Custom Robo
Dark Summit
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
F-Zero GX
Family Stadium 2003
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Freedom Fighters
Freekstyle