Let's Play Every GameCube Game, Part 14
Wherein I play more GameCube games.
Geist (n-Space/Nintendo, 2005)
I know you eventually get ghost powers and whatnot, but I can't be bothered to play long enough to get to that. It feels terrible to control because of wildly excessive head bob when you move at all and, even worse, a camera that moves many times faster horizontally than vertically. You feel like a robot that needs some maintenance rather than a human, and it's not fun at all.
Gekitou Pro Yakyuu (Wow Entertainment/SEGA, 2003)
Another Japanese baseball game, but with almost no energy. The announcer sounds tired and never says anything interesting, pitch selection requires you to memorize what each analogue stick direction maps to, and batting is just matching a giant blue crosshair to a smaller yellow crosshair. It's perfectly functional, so I can't say it's even close to the worst I've played, but it's certainly one of the least interesting.
Generation of Chaos Exceed (Idea Factory, 2003)
Some kind of strategy RPG. There's loads and loads of text, so translating it to figure out exactly what's going on would be far more effort than I'm willing to put into an Idea Factory game right after getting back from vacation. It would also require me to watch some boring '80s anime cutscenes and deal with a strange bug that makes some characters not render at all in text boxes.
Giftpia (Skip Ltd/Nintendo, 2003)
An Animal Crossing-like where you have to work of your debt of the money the mayor wasted on your coming of age ceremony after you slept through the whole thing. It reviewed fairly well and was slated to come West, but it sold so abysmally in Japan that they canceled the whole thing. It's just as well, because a mixture of cacophonous music, ugly character models, and extremely annoying Simmish voices for text kept me from getting to any real gameplay.
Gladius (LucasArts, 2003)
A tactical RPG that sounds really cool. It reviewed well, seems to feature large battles, and is one of the only "medieval warrior prophecy RPG" games I've ever seen where the foretold child is the girl. Unfortunately, it hangs in the opening cutscene no matter what I do. Maybe I'll find another way to play it someday.
Go! Go! Hypergrind (Poponchi/Atlus, 2003)
A very basic skateboarding game starring a bunch of Cartoon Network rejects. It feels very floaty and there are some obnoxious lock-on mechanics that make it feel like you're glued to the wall even when you're in the air.
Goblin Commander: Unleash the Horde (Jaleco, 2003)
An RTS where you can take control of units and turn it into an action game for a bit. Considering that it's still considered very hard to make a console RTS, it's safe to assume that this brown blur from 2003 did not crack the code. It feels like a knockoff Pikmin more than anything else, and an extremely generic story about goblins does not help matters.
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters (Pipeworks Software/Infogrames, 2002)
A 1v1 fighter starring various Godzilla monsters and featuring destructible city environments. I remember it being pretty fun as a kid at the time, but the graphics are obviously no longer impressive and the fighting was always very basic, so there's not much reason to go back now.
GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (EA Los Angeles/EA, 2004)
This was criticized a lot for not having anything to do with N64 Goldeneye in terms of plot, which seems unfair considered that the gameplay is lifted straight from that game. It probably wasn't a great idea to borrow the gameplay rather than the plot given that it's fairly uncontroversial that it hasn't aged well, but they did at least give you a clunky aiming system that wasn't in the original. Still, the guns have no weight to them and it feels like a low-budget shooting gallery rather than an FPS.
Gotcha Force (Capcom, 2003)
Another game that reviewed a sold terribly at release, but picked up a following later in life. It's an arena brawler where you can get and customize new fighters through a gacha system. The idea sounds cool and I'm putting it on the list so I can dig into it more and try to find what gave it a dedicated fanbase, but I have to admit that I have basically no idea what happened in the quick match I played.
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (High Voltage Software/Midway, 2006)
A Power Stone knockoff with very small arenas and movesets. The game opened with a disgusting loading screen showing one of the characters (Billy?) with a bunch of boils on his tongue, and I resent its existence for making me look at that. Maybe it would be more appealing to someone who had watched the show.
Grooverider: Slot Car Thunder (King of the Jungle/Encore, 2003)
I'm not sure why anyone thought a racing game that effectively plays itself except for lane changes as was a good idea, but I can confidently tell you that it wasn't. There's almost no gameplay except for when you need to move out of the way of a sign, and since those are in the same place on every lap, it's just making the same couple of inputs once a minute for a few laps. Incredibly boring.
GT Cube (MTO, 2003)
A Japan-only racing game that went for a cel-shading look and came out looking like a Dreamcast game. The racing mechanics are fine, although it you don't need to use the brakes much for what is ostensibly a sim and it doesn't seem to penalize you for cutting corners. It's also probably one of the only racing sims in which a Honda Fit is considered a viable car.
Gun (Neversoft/Activision, 2005)
A western shooter that seems to be fairly well-remembered. Wikipedia's page on it has a controversy box stating that a Native American group called for a boycott because of racism which, yeah, seems like something a western would do. As you can see, I did not make it out of the tutorial because this setting does absolutely nothing for me and I can't stay interested.
Happy Feet (Artificial Mind and Movement/Midway, 2006)
DDR was probably the right way to go for a Happy Feet game, but it still isn't at all fun to play. I hate the horrible nightmare penguins that have human upper bodies.
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
Gotcha Force