Like its descendant, the Wii, Nintendo's Gamecube was frequently derided as being too family friendly to offer any gaming sophistication, and, like The Wii, the charge was unfounded. Yes, you have to dig through an awful lot of swine before you find the pearls, but as part two of our rundown of the ten best Gamecube games shows, the pearls are most definitely there.
Eternal Darkness Sanity's Requiem
Another game that could arguably be placed at the top of this list, Eternal Darkness stands out as game that gets all the basics of survival horror right, the builds on them, as you take the role of a dozen members of the same family at different times throughout history and attempt to unravel a centuries old Lovecraftian conspiracy. Oh, and did I mention, you’re going mad? No, really. As you’re exposed to more and more of the game’s horrors, you’ll find your grip on reality becoming ever more shakey, and unless you find a way to settle your nerves you’ll soon find the world starting to twist and distort in endlessly inventive and disorienting ways. While the need to maintain mental health as well as physical strength is a new one for games, and brilliantly illustrated as well, Eternal Darkness doesn’t stand or fall on one mechanic-its action-packed debt to Indiana Jones is enough to carry it.
Gun
Ok, so you could play this on the Xbox 360 if you wanted, but it looks like a relic when played on up-to-date hardware. No, Gun’s natural home is on the Gamecube, where its simple graphics and bright colours can find their natural home alongside the smiling mushroom people of Super Mario and the Ocarina playing fairy boys of HOLY SHIT! Did that preacher just kill a hooker with an axe?!? Make no mistake, for all its bright colours, Gun is a brutal revisionist western in the mold of Unforgiven or Once Upon A Time In The West, rather than the lurid technicolour romp of the Magnificent Seven. An early entry into the ranks of sandbox gaming, Gun presents you with an open world to explore, and while it’s populated with little more than a set of identical side missions and collectibles, you’ll still want to explore every inch of it. Once you’re done, you can get on with the job of taking down the bad guys using an array of upgradeable weapons and skills and a thoroughly enjoyable slo-mo mechanic from back in the days when such things still felt new and inventive.
Resident Evil II
If Resident Evil (or Biohazard as it’s called in Japan) perfected the tension generating mechanics of the survival horror genre, Resident Evil II married them to a compelling setting. In place of the hokey old mansion, Resi II takes place in a zombie infested city, a besieged police station, a dark, dripping sewer and a pristine yet corrupted lab. It felt like a set of real places, and the sense of progress as you criss-crossed environments solving puzzles, unlocking doors and opening up each new environment gives you a sense of progress and achievement that will make you keep playing well into the early hours.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
I’m tempted to shove this to the back of the list out of spite - hugely difficult and frequently frustrating, the only thing that stops you from swearing at the screen is the bright, sparkling innocence of Link and the gorgeous Kingdom of Hyrule, a cartoonish fantasy world so beautifully realised that you’d feel barbaric for letting slip with curse words as you yet again fail to negotiate the dive in the water dungeon, or are again incinerated in a volcano. Another game in contention for the greatest of all time slot, Ocarina of Time is huge adventure, full of cleverly diverging and recombining timelines and a slowly aging hero who will need to grow into some his greatest challenges. The joy of exploring Hyrule is enough to make this a worthy addition to your games shelf, but the immense satisfaction you’ll feel if you actually finish it? Well, I imagine it must be immense...
Resident Evil (REmake)
Incredibly similar yet obviously different from the original, Resident Evil on the Gamecube is the definitive version of the game that kicked off the Resident Evil series.Yeah, that’s right, up yours PSOne! It trades the original’s awful low-res video cutscenes for some superb graphics that would almost pass muster an entire console generation later, it adds new rooms and subplots, but keeps the original storyline and scares, and while it has the traditional and occasionally infuriating tank-style character control that the series is well known for, it does at least incorporate the quick turn option seen on later instalments. The improved graphics and controls bolted to an expanded version of an already brilliant adventure make REmake an utterly addictive game. The tension levels built up by limping back and forth around a mansion, half dead, pursued by Zombies, rotting Dobermans and cruelly deformed children as you look for the next piece of a puzzle and wonder if your three remaining bullets will get you to the next save point...its breathtaking and bordering on being genuinely scary.
Another game that could arguably be placed at the top of this list, Eternal Darkness stands out as game that gets all the basics of survival horror right, the builds on them, as you take the role of a dozen members of the same family at different times throughout history and attempt to unravel a centuries old Lovecraftian conspiracy. Oh, and did I mention, you’re going mad? No, really. As you’re exposed to more and more of the game’s horrors, you’ll find your grip on reality becoming ever more shakey, and unless you find a way to settle your nerves you’ll soon find the world starting to twist and distort in endlessly inventive and disorienting ways. While the need to maintain mental health as well as physical strength is a new one for games, and brilliantly illustrated as well, Eternal Darkness doesn’t stand or fall on one mechanic-its action-packed debt to Indiana Jones is enough to carry it.
Gun
Ok, so you could play this on the Xbox 360 if you wanted, but it looks like a relic when played on up-to-date hardware. No, Gun’s natural home is on the Gamecube, where its simple graphics and bright colours can find their natural home alongside the smiling mushroom people of Super Mario and the Ocarina playing fairy boys of HOLY SHIT! Did that preacher just kill a hooker with an axe?!? Make no mistake, for all its bright colours, Gun is a brutal revisionist western in the mold of Unforgiven or Once Upon A Time In The West, rather than the lurid technicolour romp of the Magnificent Seven. An early entry into the ranks of sandbox gaming, Gun presents you with an open world to explore, and while it’s populated with little more than a set of identical side missions and collectibles, you’ll still want to explore every inch of it. Once you’re done, you can get on with the job of taking down the bad guys using an array of upgradeable weapons and skills and a thoroughly enjoyable slo-mo mechanic from back in the days when such things still felt new and inventive.
Resident Evil II
If Resident Evil (or Biohazard as it’s called in Japan) perfected the tension generating mechanics of the survival horror genre, Resident Evil II married them to a compelling setting. In place of the hokey old mansion, Resi II takes place in a zombie infested city, a besieged police station, a dark, dripping sewer and a pristine yet corrupted lab. It felt like a set of real places, and the sense of progress as you criss-crossed environments solving puzzles, unlocking doors and opening up each new environment gives you a sense of progress and achievement that will make you keep playing well into the early hours.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
I’m tempted to shove this to the back of the list out of spite - hugely difficult and frequently frustrating, the only thing that stops you from swearing at the screen is the bright, sparkling innocence of Link and the gorgeous Kingdom of Hyrule, a cartoonish fantasy world so beautifully realised that you’d feel barbaric for letting slip with curse words as you yet again fail to negotiate the dive in the water dungeon, or are again incinerated in a volcano. Another game in contention for the greatest of all time slot, Ocarina of Time is huge adventure, full of cleverly diverging and recombining timelines and a slowly aging hero who will need to grow into some his greatest challenges. The joy of exploring Hyrule is enough to make this a worthy addition to your games shelf, but the immense satisfaction you’ll feel if you actually finish it? Well, I imagine it must be immense...
Resident Evil (REmake)
Incredibly similar yet obviously different from the original, Resident Evil on the Gamecube is the definitive version of the game that kicked off the Resident Evil series.Yeah, that’s right, up yours PSOne! It trades the original’s awful low-res video cutscenes for some superb graphics that would almost pass muster an entire console generation later, it adds new rooms and subplots, but keeps the original storyline and scares, and while it has the traditional and occasionally infuriating tank-style character control that the series is well known for, it does at least incorporate the quick turn option seen on later instalments. The improved graphics and controls bolted to an expanded version of an already brilliant adventure make REmake an utterly addictive game. The tension levels built up by limping back and forth around a mansion, half dead, pursued by Zombies, rotting Dobermans and cruelly deformed children as you look for the next piece of a puzzle and wonder if your three remaining bullets will get you to the next save point...its breathtaking and bordering on being genuinely scary.
Agree/disagree? Leave a comment...
(Photo credit: Beto sound!)
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