Let's Play Every GameCube Game, Part 4
Beyblade VForce: Super Tournament Battle (A.I./Takara, 2002)
I don't think I'll ever understand why anyone would want to buy a video game about two tops slowly banging into each other for several minutes. It's barely interactive, takes forever, and is barely improved from something you could easily just do in real life. At least there's only one of these games on GCN.
Beyond Good & Evil (Ubisoft Montpilier/Ubisoft, 2003)
Another GCN cult classic. I've watched a full playthrough of it before, so I don't feel any need to play through it myself, but it's definitely a neat early mix of Zelda ideas and open world design for anyone that hasn't already seen it. There's a sequel coming, but probably not until after Duke Nukem Forever 6 has released.
Big Air Freestyle (Paradigm Entertainment/Infogrames, 2002)
A port of the PS2's MX Rider with the license removed. It seems fun enough from playing part of one race, but it received terrible reviews at the time for having too many similar tracks and a tedious process for unlocking new stuff. Oh well.
Big Mutha Truckers (Eutechnyx/Empire Interactive, 2002)
A bizarre mix of Euro Truck Simulator and Burnout that fails at being both games. It's slow and boring and crashing into things doesn't change that.
Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (Sonic Team/Sega, 2003)
It has its fans, but overall reception was mixed and I couldn't deal with the stiff camera controls. Thankfully, Sonic Team learned from this and never again made a game that had any camera problems.
Bionicle (Argonaut Games/EA, 2003)
A collecathon-style action platformer set in LEGO's Bionicle franchise. It looks terrible, has fully inverted camera controls for some reason, and features incredibly slow combat. All around disaster.
Bionicle Heroes (Traveler's Tales/Eidos, 2006)
I was not expecting this to be a third person shooter. While the idea of a Bionicle TPS is potentially interesting, this is another one that tries to put everything on the control stick, and it's practically unplayable as a result. It doesn't help that the filed of view is so narrow that you can hardly see anything.
Black & Bruised (Digital Fiction/Majesco, 2003)
A very slow-paced boxing game where the randomly allocated powerups seem to matter more than anything else. It also has a camera that spins around wildly and sometimes has you looking at your character from behind your opponent. Not great.
Bleach GC: Tasogare Ni Mamieru Shinigami (Sega, 2005)
A Japan-exclusive fighting game based on Bleach. Since I'm not really a fan of fighting games and have zero familiarity with Bleach, I really can't tell you if it does either of those things well. I can say that it at least looks decent, and my character's power to slow down time seems unique for this genre.
Blood Omen 2 (Crystal Dynamics/Eidos, 2002)
The story doesn't make many allowances for new players, so I have no idea what's happening. A couple nearly-naked vampires are wandering through the slums for some reason. It's yet another game that puts camera control on the control stick, and it's also yet another game where that doesn't work. Even in the first few minutes it was often unhelpfully looking in completely the wrong direction.
BloodRayne (Terminal Reality/Majesco, 2002)
There's a bit of lag when I take screenshots, so what was supposed to be a sword swing ended up looking like poor Rayne is hugging this zombie. The game features surprisingly good voice acting for 2002, but very simple combat and dull level design keep it from being something I want to come back to.
Bloody Roar: Primal Fury (Eighting/Hudson, 2002)
A 1v1 fighter where you can transform into a giant creepy animal, including a bunch of creatures that don't seem terribly well adapted to 1v1 fighting. It seems more or less fine. Despite the lack of a Dead or Alive game on GCN, this one gave the system jiggle physics all the way back in 2002.
BlowOut (Terminal Reality/Majesco, 2003)
A mashup of Contra and Metroid that really likes to interrupt you with tutorial cutscenes. I didn't play very far, but the tepid reception it received at launch doesn't suggest it was going to get any better.
BMX XXX (Z-Axis/Acclaim, 2002)
This game is a fascinating trainwreck that has been better documented in a million places around the internet, so I'll just say that you should go look up the story if you're not already familiar. All that aside, it's a mediocre BMX game that's trying way too hard to be edgy and looks pretty bad.
Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo Dassutsu! Hajike Royale (Hudson, 2005)
I think this eventually becomes some kind of puzzle platformer, but it was taking forever to get to the point and was completely incomprehensible as someone with no familiarity with this series. It tries very hard to emulate the look of the anime, but I don't think that was a good idea when they went with low poly 3D graphics. A lot of the characters just looked cursed now, and the sort of visual freeze-frame gags that anime love to do don't work as well when you've got 3D models awkwardly splayed out on a low-res 2D background of flowers.
The List:
1080° Avalanche
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
Batman: Dark Tomorrow