Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M.

Developer: Acclaim Studios London Publisher: Acclaim

Released: December 9, 1999 Rated: T 4/10

I don’t know if there’s a game that has tricked me as often as Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. (heretofore referred to exclusively as “Armorines” so I don’t have to type out the acronym with punctuation a dozen times). The first time I played it, I figured out that this game was bad. And sure, the mask was off after that, I never got to thinking that it might actually be “good,” but I definitely played it again under the assumption that it couldn’t be as bad as I thought. And yet, this isn’t the first time the Turok engine has been handed off to another IP to make an underwhelming first-person shooter stretched over its bones like the Edgar suit from Men in Black. But coming from a Valiant Comics IP that lends itself much more easily to a video game adaptation, particularly with its similarities to recent films of the time like Starship Troopers, there are plenty of ways to make a good, if not particularly original FPS title with the foundations of one of the N64’s best third-party exclusives.

I didn’t try to get this many shots of incomprehensible darkness, it just happened this way because there’s way too much of that going on.

Players begin Armorines by choosing between two characters, which will not affect any level progressions or mission structures in the campaign, but offer a slightly different playstyle between them, as they offer a different selection of weapons that each can use. It’s your first of many decent ideas you’ll encounter that just completely whiffs in execution. Tony’s slower but hard-hitting arsenal versus Myra’s more rapid-fire approach are palpable differences in gameplay, but useless when neither plays very well at all, and the weapon variety evens out by the middle of the game anyway. The very act of aiming and shooting in this FPS title is simply unappealing and clunky. Aiming, either with or without aim assist feels terrible and is so difficult to use, it’s practically an instant death-knell for this whole game. It shouldn’t even be an issue when the Turok engine doesn’t have this issue, but Acclaim Studios London comes off as a tad too ambitious with all these little gameplay quirks they want to try, and there isn’t any strong explanation other than that they messed with it a little too much. And it’s hard to compliment the selection of weapons when something as basic as the controls to switch between these weapons are also laughable. Not a classic weapon wheel to cycle through with the face buttons, but instead holding the A button and using the control stick for a different option in each direction. Which manages to hardly work. Yes, controls are a pretty consistent travesty here and there’s not much that it does better anywhere else.

Flirting with weaponry choices akin to boomer-shooter classics like Hexen and Powerslave, this staff possesses the satisfaction of neither.

The level design is somewhat similar to that of the first two Turok titles as well, with a progression that plays out with a particular route you’ll take through the level, but with an expected level of tasks to check off along your way that determine if you’ve actually cleared the level or just reached the end and may need to go for another run. Here there are also some doors to unlock or gimmicks to activate to keep you moving through the level, which are fine to break up the progression, but overall add to a lot of outright tedium that populates this game at seemingly every turn. Gunplay itself outside of the weak controls is fine, which makes for some okay options in multiplayer, if you want to tear yourself away from the several much better splitscreen FPS options on the system. But just about everything you do in-between shooting even once you get used to it is so damn tedious. Backtracking and running between the same handful of rooms in one area before you can move on to the next one, figuring out what sequence of buildings you have to clear out of enemies and activate which buttons to open the door across the way or unlock the gate out of the larger sector you’re working on. And though it’s interspersed with completely braindead turret sections, there was potential in the gunplay if the enemies were smarter and the controls better, but nothing ever feels as satisfying as exploding giant bugs in showers of goo should be over the course of the game.

Distance fog is embarrassing throughout, and yet Armorines still suffers slowdown when the screen becomes populated with explosions.

I don’t think much really turns you off quite like the presentation, though, which really starts off rough and never gets any better. It’s pretty shameful to fumble this badly with the Expansion Pak and the existing engine that’s been made available by this point on the N64. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter suffered from some of the worst distance fog on the system, but did so as one of the first titles on the console, offered lush and beautiful graphics in much larger overall levels, and even managed to play off of it with its otherworldly yet familiar environment of misty jungles and treetops mixed with desolate badlands, canyons, and caves. Armorines has arguably worse graphics on every front, with far less interesting environments. It can hit the same general types of area, while being entirely too large and uninteresting with no reason to go in 75% of the map. Textures are drab and legitimately bad, even in hi-res mode, and somehow the game is also rather dark and hard to see when you’re in any environment not hit by direct sunlight — I don’t know how we still have this problem in late ’99, and no in-game option to adjust the brightness. The music also fails to offer anything of value while you meander in and out of the subdivided sections of the game’s five levels. There are a few okay choices of instrumentation to add variety, but it’s not melodic enough to remember and clearly just there as background noise. Nothing interesting actually going on with the audio, really.

If 2002’s Eight Legged Freaks had gotten a forced video game adaptation, it probably would look something like this.

Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. is one of the true nothing-burger games on the system. Certainly offering potential in concept and basis, even if “space marines fight bugs on earth” hardly approaches anything in the realm of originality. Another Valiant Comics property for Acclaim to play with, though, it could certainly have added in enough intrigue with a rich source material were it so bad at earning player interest from the start. The FPS selection on the N64 is rich, rendering Armorines utterly forgettable for even the biggest fans of the genre.