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.