I love early 3D platformers. I'm pretty sure it's one of, if not my favourite genre. This opinion is far from widely shared, with both retro gamers and modern gamers completely dumping on these games... Mario 64 is outdated, or overrated, or perhaps was never even good in the first place! SMH! As far as I'm concerned the N64 platformer is the videogame equivalent of the giant sloth: perfectly suited to dominate its evolutionary niche in the environment of its age, but faintly ridiculous to imagine stomping around anywhere or anytime else.
However, little did I imagine I would find a game that basically proves the case against 3D platformers, and make me feel empathy for all the haters!
Starshot: Space Circus Fever is not a game you will hear many people talk about. It most certainly doesn't grace the top game lists of the system, but neither is it often mentioned along with the likes of Superman 64 or Carmageddon as one of the worst games on the 64. It should, though, it really should. In most regards this game is a typical early 3D platformer on a system stuffed with them. From the outside its colorful graphics and ostensibly cute and generic characters make it look like a kids' game, and it is no wonder that so few pick this game up when there are so many better options to play through first. Be warned though: the wicked spite in the design of this game, combined with a generally seedy, melancholic and unsettling tone make this game far from kids' stuff...
I really do want to try and get to the point of why this game is so bad, as succinctly as possible, but that is very hard to do. Basically every design choice, every visual and artistic element, every level, every challenge, every moment of the game proves the fail. I will do my best to summarize, starting with the positive and what I THINK they were trying to do, before explaining why they couldn't and didn't succeed.
The game has an admittedly unique and potentially interesting premise. You play as Starshot, a clown/gymnast hired in the space circus owned by your boss Starcash. The space circus roams the galaxy bringing its show to different planets, and your boss Starcash has a deep seated rivallry with the owner of your competitor Virtua Circus. In the game, you play as the lackey of your boss as you complete tasks on various different planets, with the aim of disrupting the Virtua Circus and collecting unusual acts to bring more money into the Space Circus. The game is actually well written during cutscenes and dialogue with NPC's, humorous and with a cynical/nihilistic worldview that reminds me of something like Fututrama. The premise is also interesting because you are basically not really acting on behalf of your own interests, nor are you engaged in an epic quest to save the world or save a princess... you are just trying to help your boss make a lot of money and outdo his rivals. The game also contains a bunch of interesting character designs, animations and other assets, and the levels are of a decent size and complexity. All in all, this game is NOT a simple cash grab or lazy throwaway title, it is clear that a lot of artistic effort and some talent has gone into this game. And that's it. All the nice things I'm going to say. Everything else is completely downhill!
This game fails at the VERY first hurdle that a 3D platformer has to overcome, which is the JOY of movement. It is this simple pleasure that you can usually get a feel of almost as soon as you pick up the controller in games like Mario 64 and Banjo. The entire basis of the fun of playing a 3D platformer is directly tied to the feeling of freedom, the ability to traverse and conquer your environment in the 3D space. That joy of movement is completely lacking in Starshot. Your character's movement is janky and jerky, your turning circle is wide and unwieldy. Jumping is a crapshoot, and your weapon fires shots that seem weak and lack any impact whatsoever. The only aspect of control I even slightly enjoyed was the triple jump, where you hold the jump button and Starshot will automatically jump, with each jump in a chain of 3 being higher than the last. Oh! And the flying controls... just... no.
The camera, often a sticking point in the enjoyment of 3D platformers, obviously sucks. Despite having an entire 5 buttons dedicated to controlling it (C-buttons AND Z), it gets stuck on game objects and rarely seems to be where you'd want it, even though you should be able to put it where you want. But, I always say that you can power through camera issues in these games, and that is usually true, AS LONG AS the levels have been designed to accomodate this. They haven't.
There are 7 levels in Starshot, all badly designed. Unlike Mario 64 or Banjo, where each level feels like its own little world or playground to explore, the levels here are spindly, semi-linear series of walkways, platforms and corridors, which only sometimes widen out into more open spaces. You rarely get a sense of exactly where you are in a stage, as there is no realistic coherence to the environments, no notable landmarks to guide your memory, and many many repeated textures and design elements. There is also very little in the way of naturalistic flow to the levels. In most 3D games, you are guided by environmental clues, puzzles and enemy engagements to help find your way through levels. In this game, you have absolutely no initial idea of where to go or what to do, sometimes you will meet NPC's or robot balloons which tell you what to do, but overall it is an akward and unnatural way to plot a course through a stage. There is also a map you can access at any time which will show your position and the position of your objective. However, the map is a jumbled and blurry mess of horrible looking textures, and there is no way to orient yourself to figure out your direction in relation to it, without opening and closing the map repeatedly to see where your cursor has moved to.
Worse than the overall level designs, however, is the platforming and the challenges themselves. There is not ONE challenge in this game that is not a fiddly, annoying, janky, repetitive mess. If you need to jump into a cubby hole to hit a switch, it will take 100 attempts because the camera will be in the wrong place, the platforms you are jumping from will be misalligned, and there will be a robot in the hole that kills you even if you do manage to get in there. If you need to jump across a series of tiny, moving, falling platforms, there will be far too many, and the camera will not give you a good sense of depth, and there will be a robot on the last platform that kills you. If you need to chase and shoot a random bird to get it over to a tree to water it with urine, you will run out of bullets half way through, and the bird will run in completely the opposite direction right at the last second and ruin all your progress, and there will be a spaceship come out of the sky from nowhere to kill you. That happens a lot. If you need to fly through a series of narrow passages, where the terrible flying controls make it impossible, and if you hit a wall you fall and die, and there are tight turns and limited flight fuel to help give you enough time to make it through, then there will be 3 or 4 robots waiting to knock you out of the sky and kill you.
The game feels almost vindictive in its placement of enemies, and challenges seem almost intentionally strung out in order to waste your time. Battling with the controls and camera is bad enough, but when your path is blocked by robots that can fire multiple fast shots at once (with zero invincibility frames upon getting hit), and when the only way across a series of pits is over a series of precariously small platforms, it just feels like the game designers were deliberately stringing out the game to pad the runtime. It is clear that someone on the design team realised this, however, and there is a small mercy that becomes almost immediately apparent as you play. Basically, each level is riddled with checkpoints and there are infinite lives. This means that as bad as the game is, and as frustrating and unfun as it may be, there is really no reason ever to quit, because you can brute-force every single "challenge" in the game by simply trying over and over and over again. In many cases, you will be intentionally killing yourself, simply to refill your energy and ammo, or to reorient yourself to give you a better run at a series of platforms. Any game where you are INTENTIONALLY killing yourself, has gone wrong somewhere along the line. Needless to say, EVERYTHING you do in this game is awkward, EVERYTHING you do is unfun, and EVERTHING you do feels cheap.
The problems of this game run beyond gameplay and game design. The difficulty of this game would put off any child, quickly. However, the real reason I say this is NOT a kids' game is the tone, the art style and the general feeling this game exudes. As decribed above, there is a cynical, nihilistic quality to the writing of the game, but this extends into the artistic design. Although ostensibly colorful, the graphics are muddy, crowded and the various colors clash, to the point that it becomes unpleasant to look at. The oppressive atmosphere is ramped up significantly by terrible, dark, blurry tiled background textures. The character designs are inventive and varied, but ill-suited to the low-poly, low-resolution nature of N64 graphics. The characters in the game all tend to display various spindly, abstract and finely detailed features, which are very hard to visually interpret. This adds to a general unease and confusion invoked by simply gazing upon the game. Add to this, the soundtrack, which contains one or two genuinely decent tracks, but mostly a bunch of techno noise and/or generic plinky plonk sounds. However, most tracks also contain dreary, low, melancholic undertones, that sap potential joy from hearing them, and again inspire dread and unease.
The game culminates with a trip to Earth. I was genuinely looking forward to reaching this stage, as I thought a little bit of familiarity and pleasant scenes, wide open spaces and fresh air would help rouse me after the dreamlike terror of the other stages. Of course, the Earth had been destroyed, overrun with robots and squidlike aliens, my mission to track down the SINGLE human survivor. The stage was an apocalyptic nightmare hellscape of a ruined city, bisected by deadly forcefields, restricting movement and killing instantaneously, all played out under a chaotic hell-red sky. Upon saving the final human, you realise he is also hideous...
I believe that playing this game may have genuinely made me ill. Over the past week of playing I felt like a dark shadow was hanging over me, one that would sit on me through the night and stalk me into my waking hours. I felt hungover, and tired, even when I wasn't. The smallest thing would irritate me, and I even considered abandoning my game collecting and N64 gaming entirely... I mean if this hobby had brought me here, could it ever be worth it? However, beathing the game and seeing off the foul spirits contained within seem to have excised these thoughts and feelings. I look upon a new day and a new gaming challenge with renewed vigour!
Don't play Starshot: Space Circus Fever... Don't play it.
