Being a huge Rare fan growing up, this one was a disappointment to me and yet another sign of the start of Rare's decadence in terms of quality and enjoyable games. Main characters were uninspiring, the story was decent and had interesting bits such as the mid-game happenings but overall this game kept falling short of my expectations.

Graphics were excellent and top notch at the time but I was not a fan of the art direction of the game. Gameplay was solid and responsive, but the game and level design did not stand out too much and the game became more of a choir the more I played it.

A fun mental hack I sometimes like to employ while playing a bad game is to pick up an even more miserable game so that it encourages me to clean my damn plate. In the case of Jet Force Gemini, its most positive quality is that it's making me want to get back to Xenosaga. This is great for my disposition and makes me very pleasant to be around.

I bought this. I worked a job, got a paycheck, parlayed that into a purchase of a genuine cartridge which has sat on my shelf for the last four years, a monument to my wastefulness. Every now and then I catch it out of the corner of my eye and think "oh god, why? You played this once or twice at Greg's house when you were twelve." Greg liked to bully me in public and act friendly in private, but after revisiting Jet Force Gemini, I'm not so sure about that. You don't make a friend play this game with you, that's something you do to an enemy.

It is downright tragic that the team responsible for Blast Corps worked on this game. Lead engineer Paul Mountain was previously credited on Diddy Kong Racing, so like, there's a pedigree here. And yet, we've gone from two of Rare's best entries in their Nintendo 64 catalog to arguably their worst. Despite all this talent and innumerable inspirations, Jet Force Gemini is a bare, basic third person shooter with light search-action elements and one of the worst control schemes of the generation. The insistence on vertical design results in a need to aim freely, which you might note is a little difficult to do on a controller that has only one analog stick. The solution is to force the player to stop dead in their tracks and hold down the right bumper to enter into a manual aim mode, similar to GoldenEye 64. At least in that game it was optional, but Jet Force Gemini is designed around this feature, and it just doesn't work.

Consider how much we've refined secondary analog movement in games over the last two decades. It's practically an extension of your own body, something you're likely not considerate of until it doesn't work. It's just expected that when you tap the stick in a direction you want to look, the camera smoothly moves into position. In Jet Force Gemini, the camera is a foe who you must engage in mortal combat every time fifty fucking flying enemies swarm onto the screen to pelt you with rockets. It is constantly fighting you, so eager to spring back to the center of the screen with twice as much tension than you're able to push against it. Almost every open area has multiple sniper perches or groups of flying enemies, necessitating constant engagement with manual aiming, and it feels awful. Jump is on up-C, by the way. A and B cycle your weapons up and down, but A is also confirm, so sometimes you just swap guns when you're trying to open a crate because you're not perfectly aligned. So, that all sucks, too.

To quote Mr. Mountain about the way this control scheme was designed around the Nintendo 64's unique limitations: "The solution we ended with is a beautiful thing. It feels very old-school to me; difficult, unforgiving, but ultimately precise."

Was there a gas leak in Rare's office?

I think CRTs help tremendously with the readability of Nintendo 64 games, but Jet Force Gemini is so muddy that it looks incomprehensible regardless of your display. Dog vomit looking game, just a swirl of greens and browns and yellows and enemies that mesh almost so perfectly against these soupy backdrops as to be camouflaged. You also have to keep an eye out for Tribals to save-- or blow up, if you'd like. As far as I can tell, there's no penalty to murdering them, which I like to do because this game has turned me into a loathsome creature. This drabness permeates into the story, which is treated with more self-seriousness than your typical Rare game, what with its depictions of things like firing squads. That's not to say you won't get some motherfucker named Gimlet rollin' up on you going "ho ho, I lost me pants~!" but even that classic Rare humour feels restrained when it does pop up.

About two hours in, I looked up the completion time on How Long to Beat and saw that an average playthrough is roughly 15 hours, so I knew I wasn't going to beat this thing without a Gameshark, and wouldn't you know it, mine is incompatible. Thank Christ. I see no reason to let Greg's abuse continue to influence me well into adulthood, so I'm putting this one back on the shelf where I will occasionally glare at it, perhaps even picking it up and muttering some curse words to it from time to time. If you ask me, that's the best way to enjoy Jet Force Gemini.

Stinky game. Don't play.

A third person shooter from the age before dual stick controls and gyro aiming, Jet Force Gemini is... not very good. It has 2 different control modes, a "free roaming" one where you can move, uh, freely but can't aim and an "aiming mode" where you aim with the control stick and can move with the C buttons... it's as awkward as it sounds, but mostly because the aiming itself controls terribly, as it's very imprecise.

Other than controls, JFG has a whack structure, being separated into 2 halves: a first one that's somewhat linear and kinda fun and a second one that's basically massive backtracking. Essentially, to beat the game you have to re-explore 95% of the levels you have already beaten (some more than once) to find spaceship parts and rescue NPCs. It's extremely tedious and basically requires a guide if you don't wanna spend an eternity on it.

Overall, I found this game to be very "meh". I wish I could say I liked it more since it has some charming aspects like a cool art style, nice graphics, interesting level design and good music but it just doesn't play well.

No hay duda de que Rare tenía buenas ideas. Trabaja con un mando imposible para un shooter de tercera persona 3D y, de algún modo, lo logra. Y no se queda ahí: añade plataformeo a la mezcla.
Lo malo es que no estaban preparados para un juego así. La primera parte es más jugosa, pero la segunda se hace tediosa. Los malísimos controles dificultan la jugabilidad. Y faltan muchísimas cosas que, a día de hoy, sería impensable que no estuviesen: mapas, pistas para encontrar los objetos, etc.
Sin embargo, es un juego que jugado en otras plataformas (en xbox con doble stick por ejemplo) gana mucho. Y tiene suficientes buenas ideas y potencial para merecer una secuela o remake.

One of the great games of all time. Among N64 games I place it behind only the two Zelda adventures. Every few years for twenty-five years now I've tried to figure out what exactly it is that made J.F.G. a masterpiece standing so completely outside of time despite being on the surface a game mostly about mowing down giant bipedal ants and collecting cutesy monkeyfolk. One key seems to be the score combined with the many vast landscapes and technoscapes, which together often speak what seem odes to a great and lost splendor. Sekhmet, Anubis and the Lost Island are among the best examples of this.

Another key is simply the scope and sheer beauty — often majesty — of its worlds. I don't know how it is that Rare excelled in lighting details, gradations and effects so far beyond any other gaming company and regardless whether they were working in Super Nintendo, N64 or their famously unparalleled promotional renders, but excel they did. And never more than here. They put in the extra grief and sweat to make every last hidden nook look totally unique. The game is a meditation on light and shade. I've also never seen lens-flare effects used anywhere skillfully as here. The Lost Island area alone should've won some sort of Oscar for breaking new ground in video-game beauty.

This game is one of desperate few games I can think of that were known well to everyone when they came to us, but now seem very nearly forgotten. And this a profound travesty, Jet Force being so much greater an achievement than the Banjo games and all else Rare made for the system. I've always thought a sequel made on GameCube graphics would've fit its fabric so well. May it be accomplished one day.

More would I, but life is short and words are cheap and great works like this one beckon us on in our shrinking time. Boom shanka.

Jet Force Gemini was the last out of the five N64 games I have wanted to complete for years. I remember starting my first playthrough around the same time I started most of the other games, but due to the rather ridiculous requirements necessary to beat the game, I decided to give up despite enjoying it. I did also play Jet Force Gemini on the Rare Replay collection but deliberately quit after the first half of the game. Even when I decided I would go back and beat all of them, I wasn't totally confident that I would beat this one. However, it turned out that rescuing the tribals wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. I would say that Jet Force Gemini is pretty underrated in comparison to Rare's other N64 releases.

In your adventures as galactic pest control, you play as three characters. Juno, his twin sister Vela, and their dog Lupus. The three of them each have their own special trait that makes each of them useful by allowing them to access different areas. Lupus can use his jetpack to fly across the area, Vela can swim, and Juno is immune to damage while walking on hot surfaces. All three of them are vital in getting every ship part and tribal necessary in beating the game.

Like a majority of N64 games it seems, it does take a little bit to adjust to the controls. Every time I started a playthrough, I would die at least five or so times before finally getting the hang of how to shoot and aim. Once I adjusted, I didn't have much trouble mowing down enemies despite not being the best at shooters. The only exception being those stupid ants with the shields. I hate those little bastards so much!

The actual gameplay itself is pretty fun. You'll unlock a wide assortment of weapons and each of them feels great to use. I found it incredibly satisfying to mow down enemies with the pistol or machine gun, blast them with the rocket launcher or by throwing grenades, and occasionally snipe some of the enemies when necessary. If you collect enough ant heads over the course of the game you can unlock some cool bonus features too such as multi-colored blood and having the ants turn into Mr. Pants. There is a multiplayer mode, but I haven't played it so I can't comment too much about it other than mentioning that you will unlock content for it throughout playing the game. It may have some fun gameplay and cool extras, but its biggest flaw is one that can be a huge turnoff to anyone even slightly interested in playing this game and the reason why it took me over a decade to beat it. You have to rescue EVERY single tribal and collect twelve ship parts scattered across the worlds you visit.

In each level, there are these white bear-like creatures known as tribals. The way rescuing tribals works is that once you rescue all of them, you won't need to re-rescue them. However, you need to rescue all the tribals in an area in one go. If a tribal dies or you miss one, you'll have to redo the whole level which makes them a pain in the ass to deal with sometimes. While you can rescue them as you play through the game's first half, I would advise not focusing on them too much as some are inaccessible until the latter half of the game when you have all the necessary equipment to do so. Luckily, most of them are in places where you shouldn't have too much trouble rescuing them but in addition to having to collect twelve ship parts needed to fight Mizar again, the tribals make the backtracking a lot worse than what it could have been.

If you're willing to put up with the heavy amounts of backtracking and slightly cumbersome N64 controls, what you get is a 3rd person shooter that is heavily underrated in comparison to some of Rare's other N64 classics. Between DK64, Quest 64, Mischief Makers, Glover, and this, I think beating this game was the most satisfying and waiting till last to complete this made it all the better.

Afterthought: This is probably the longest review I have made on here so I'd like to thank anyone who managed to read this whole review.