Blast Corps review

by Piyoz on Jul 6th, 2011

It often disappoints me that people my age who played N64 as a child, and have a deep love for its games, draw a blank when I mention a game like Blast Corps. Back in early 1997, there wasn’t all that much publicity for this game, unlike Mario games or Banjo-Kazooie or Goldeneye, so one can imagine how such a hidden gem of early three-dimensional gaming went unnoticed. This is a shame.

Blast Corps is a game that is difficult to define. It qualifies as an Action/Puzzle game, but even that says very little. The premise of Blast Corps is that a big, red truck carrying a massive nuclear warhead has gotten loose and this has caused quite a ruckus. The truck is driving forward at a steady pace, no turning or accelerating, and due to the radiation leakage, nobody has been able to approach it. The world governments have no choice but to contact the militant construction mercenary team called “Blast Corps” to come in and clear the path for this unstoppable ticking bomb.

The game consists of numerous main challenge stages, in which you have to destroy cities, towns and many other forms of human achievement in order to see this red truck out safely. This is accomplished with a variety of machines, such as bulldozers, rocket-launching motorcycles, to giant robots. As you might imagine, early path-clearing missions are quite easy, mostly to let the player feel the controls and how the different vehicles perform. As the game progresses, our favorite little carrier finds itself in worse and worse situations, some on tropical isles, to urban stretches of concrete, to green farmland.

What makes this more entertaining that a normal sand-box game is that the game forces you to think. Here’s where the puzzle aspect of the game comes in. It’s not just mindless demolition all the time; there are many instances later on that require you to explore the whole stage, find other vehicles, try different paths, activate Radiation Dispersion Units (RDU’s) and investigate for better methods to achieve your goal. Oh, and if you so much as tap the carrier, it will explode. Good luck.

This annoying red truck isn’t the sole focus of Blast Corps. Being a vehicle-based game, Rare naturally felt as though some racing was necessary to round out the game play. And they were so right. Between all the main missions of the game, there are smaller racing/item collecting/item smashing missions all over. Most of them require the player to make five laps around the track as fast as they can. Other require the player to destroy floating orbs, beacons, or levitating pastries in a given amount of time. There are even challenges much like a game of Pac-man. These can be just as fun as the main challenges of the game, but mostly they provide a change of focus and a bit more variety to Blast Corps that is much appreciated. Lizard Island is my personal favorite.

After some time playing you’ll find that the game itself it pretty short. After you locate six hidden scientists in certain stages, the game will tell you that these bright gentlemen have theorized a plan to stopping the carrier. Then you see a credit sequence play as the carrier containing the warhead travels down a town street as a very nice ending theme plays. The carrier then drives down a short hill into a pit, where it explodes safely (oxymoron, I know). So thanks to the Blast Corps, the nuclear warheads were detonated safely and the world breathes a sigh of relief.

But wait! There’s more!

A screen pops up and tells you that a space shuttle coming in from orbit is about to make an emergency landing, but the only safe location is an island populated by empty buildings! Call the Blast Corps! So you go for one last mission to save some astronauts by clearing out an entire island for the shuttle to land (and if you know about shuttle landing, it takes a whole lot of room). Of course, you clear the path and the shuttle folk are so happy that they tell you that you can use their spaceship whenever you like! Whoa. I see some freaky possibilities here…

Rare were probably up late one night, intoxicated by coffee, eyes burnt from their computer screens. Then someone, maybe one of the Super Stamper Bros., said in a room full of silence “LET’S PUT THEM IN SPACE!” And the rest was history.

So yes. After you save a space shuttle, the Blast Corps packs up all their machinery and heads into the Last Frontier. While in space, you can travel to the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Neptune. These last four missions for patient players are a joy to play, racing on alien planets and destroying weird space-polygons.

But oh no. It doesn’t end there. Even after you complete the challenges all over the solar system, the game finds more for you to do. If you truly have the patience and the determination hitherto never seen since the builders of the Great Wall of China, you can earn a platinum medal in every stage in the game, mission-based and racing-based, terrestrial and extra-terrestrial. Whereas previously you earned gold medals for excellent times, earning platinum medals is nearly impossible in some levels to obtain. Most gamers would stop here, but for those of you who seek an inhumanly difficult task, this is the place for you. Platinum challenges are quite a feat, so be warned.

Graphics:
Rare has always gotten a thrill by giving their fans impressive graphics. This game is no exception. The environments are very nice-looking for N64 graphics, and the detail looks fairly realistic. The vehicle figures look very well-designed, as do the graphics of the buildings and other destroyed figures. Buildings even crumble before you finish destroying them. Designers at Rare obviously put some love and care into the visuals of Blast Corps.

Vehicles:
With such a variety of vehicles, it’s great to see that they all control very well and very comfortably. Only the giant robots have slightly awkward movements, mostly because of their detailed animations. That being said, the animations for the vehicles is also nice and appropriate for the game. The vehicles themselves include the bulldozer, Backlash, Skyfall (rocket car), Sideswipe (a car that punches. Kinda tough to explain), Ballista (rocket-launching motorcycle), the Cyclone Suit (break-dancing yellow robot), Thunderfist (giant silver robot), J-Bomb (flying mecha with steel feet for slamming on buildings), cars from Starsky & Hutch, the A-Team, and the Dukes of Hazard, as well as some trains, police cars, ferries, and a crane.

Audio:
Sound effects are fine and dandy. Music tracks are pretty upbeat and cool, and vary from 70’s pop to techno to country rhythm. It’s a cool range of music, and some songs will get stuck in your heads weeks later and some songs are simply beautiful.

Conclusion:
Simply put, Blast Corps is a blast to play (you saw that pun coming). At first, it doesn’t sound like much fun, or even anything different from a typical sandbox game. But once you play for a while and wrap your mind around the premise, this game really begins to become entertaining and engaging. The purpose of the game is to demolish buildings, but as was said before, it’s a logical and practiced demolition. This game makes you think a little, yet have a good time. The main challenges are not too difficult, but the extra game play at the end really will give you a heck of a time. The sound mixed with the beautiful N64 graphics all create an excellent package that has definitely become a hidden classic for 90’s gaming. It’s a shame many gamers never played Blast Corps; they’re missing quite a unique experience. In an industry that tends to rely on tried-and-true titles and constant revisions and sequels, it’s great to see entirely original games come out of the blue and sweep us off our feet. Rare took a bit of a chance with this title in creating something unique and fresh, and was quite successful in the opinions of anyone who has ever had the pleasure of playing this game.

If you have the opportunity to play Blast Corps, do it. You can usually find this game at used game stores for pretty cheap ($2 at my local store!). It’s very well-designed game in every capacity, and a fun experience for classic gamers. This game is yet another one of Rare’s inspiring creations during this time period, and it surely deserve attention among the company’s great successes.

4/5

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