Let's Play Every GameCube Game, Part 30
Power Rangers Dino Thunder (Pacific Coast Power & Light/THQ, 2004)
This generic action game was developed by a studio that sounds like a utility company in disguise. It's extremely boring, and letting me play as a giant dinosaur while also yelling at me if I step on cars is a strange combination for a children's game.
The Powerpuff Girls: Relish Rampage - Pickled Edition (VIS Entertainment/BAM! Entertainment, 2002)
You fly around the city as a group and can freely switch between characters, but there's nothing remotely interesting happening anywhere and you can't interact with the city at all except to get in NPC's way. What's the point of creating a (sort of) open world if it's going to be this dead?
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft, 2003)
This time-traveling take on the classic Prince of Persia franchise marked the series' critical height, and you can clearly see how the time behind it would go on to make Assassin's Creed four years later. Deaths being narrated as mistakes in the story is reminiscent of what games like Bastion would do with framed narratives much later. It would be going on the list, but I've owned this and the other two GCN PoP games on Steam for probably 10 years now, and I should probably actually play them there.
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft, 2005)
I deliberately played almost none of this since it's the third in a series I should really get around to playing someday. It still has a narrator for the Prince's actions, so that's cool, but the new voice actor wasn't really doing it for me.
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft, 2004)
The edgelord middle sibling of the series. Once again, didn't play much of it, so I really only had time to notice that it's much more violent that the first one and features possibly the most ridiculous female armor I've ever seen in a semi-serious game.
Pro Rally (Ubisoft Barcelona/Ubisoft, 2002)
A rally racing game that seems to be mostly serious, although the music and over the top navigator voice feel more like an arcade game. It's fine, but rally game have come so far since then that it would have to be a whole lot more than fine to be worth spending time with.
Puyo Pop Fever (Sonic Team/Sega, 2004)
A Puyo Puyo game. I have to be honest: all of these feel like exactly the same game to me. This one is only distinguishable by its very ugly puyos.
R: Racing Evolution (Namco, 2003)
A Ridge Racer spinoff about a Japanese ambulance driver in the US who drives her ambulance so good that a racing engineer is amazed and she becomes a pro driver. I only played the arcade mode, which seemed decent, so the ridiculous plot is enough to get it a list spot.
Radirgy GeneriC (Milestone, 2006)
Putting "generic" in the title of your bullet hell is certainly a bold choice, even when you're releasing exclusively in Japan. It has a unique look to it, but I don't really like it - bullet hells are all about very specific positioning, and the thick border lines used in cel-shading get in the way of that. It's also very fond of giant walls of text in-game, which isn't really what you play this genre for.
Rally Championship (Warthog/Conspiracy Entertainment, 2002)
Another rally game that with all the navigator callouts and mechanical tuning you'd expect from a serious sim. Despite that, it has crazy tracks like this cliff face here and uses A and B for the pedals instead of the triggers. I'm really not sure who it was trying to satisfy here, but the results aren't great.
Rampage: Total Destruction (Pipeworks Software/Midway, 2006)
I was obsessed with this series for the "cool factor" as a kid, so I played all the way through this game even though it's hard to find many redeeming qualities in it. It's the best Rampage ever looked, sure, and it has the most characters, but the destruction effects aren't very impressive and every level is virtually identical. It's not even very long. There's nothing here for anyone other than kids like back-then me.
Ratatouille (Asobo Studio/THQ, 2007)
Oh, look, another licensed Disney collectathon published by THQ. Asobo studio went on to make a much better game about rats in 2019: A Plague Tale: Innocence, which was #44 in my top 100. The also made 2020's Microsoft Flight Simulator, one of the most technically impressive games ever. It's always nice to see a studio survive the hell of making this kind of crap and start to put out real games.
Rave Master (Konami, 2002)
It sounds like it'd be a DDR game, but it's actually a Power Stone-like based on a manga I've never heard of. The game is probably fun for fans of that series, but I think everyone else will have a hard time getting past the small character count, boring stages, and general difficulty of being able to tell what's happening at any moment.
Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc (Ubisoft, 2003)
A collectathon that reviewed pretty well, but the jump+hover movement just doesn't feel right to me. It also has a number of really obnoxious NPCs who talk for ages and ages without being funny, so this isn't one I want to spend any more time with. Which is a shame, because the more recent 2D games are great.
Rayman Arena (Ubisoft, 2002)
Everyone needed a mediocre collection of minigames for parties in 2002, so here's Rayman's effort. As you might imagine, it's mediocre. The games aren't anything unique and it has a tiny selection of characters.
Red Faction II (Cranky Pants Games/THQ, 2002)
The first RF game was a very unique FPS built around the ability to deform the terrain with certain weapons, so you could dig your own tunnels to create new routes or make defensive trenches. Naturally, the sequel decided to just be Halo with destructible environments instead. I've made a couple of attempts to play it on PC and haven't made it very far, so dealing with the less precise controls on GCN was never going to happen.
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
James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
Jikkyou Powerful Major League
Kirby Air Ride
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
Mario Power Tennis
Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
Mr. Driller Drill Land
Muscle Champion: Kinnikutou Kessen
MVP Baseball 2005
Nintendo Puzzle Collection
Odama
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
R: Racing Evolution