This review was originally published in 2013, and we’re updating and republishing it to mark the game’s arrival in the Switch’s N64 library via the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack.
Nintendo 64 and Rare go together like Banjo and Kazooie. The developer was behind several stellar titles found on the system, many of which were some of the most original games in history. One of the most unique titles released by the UK-based developer was the 3D action shooter Jet Force Gemini, which launched in 1999. While Rare had many successes in the first-person shooter genre with titles such as GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, decided to take a different approach for this title and set out to create a third-person experience.
You play as three members of a galactic police unit known as Jet Force Gemini. First there’s Juno, a male cadet, Luna, his female counterpart, and Lupus, a dog with a cannon on his back – yes, we’re talking old-fashioned Rare here.
Each team member has their own set ability that only they can use and this becomes an important element of the game, especially in the long run. For example, during one of the earlier levels where you play as Juno, you’ll see an area on the other side of a large gaping chasm that you just can’t get to. In order to get there, you’ll need to rescue Lupus, who has a hovering ability that can see him jump much further than the others.
You’ll also encounter water segments that only Luna can cross, and if you find lava, Juno will be needed as she’s completely resistant to heat, which, since the characters don’t have much backstory, we can only assume was acquired through years of extensive walking on hot coals that cadets are often subjected to.
This intertwined nature is typical of Rare and adds so much depth to each individual world. After completing a level, you’ll have to come back as a different character to find everything, but you won’t be able to do it right away because Luna and Lupus have to be unlocked first, meaning they don’t become repetitive and old levels become new later in the campaign.
One thing that hits you very early on is the difficulty level itself. Jet Force Gemini is an extremely difficult game from the start, and the learning curve is so steep that you’ll need all your hiking gear. There’s no tutorial level at the start, no guidance, or even much in the way of plot. It just gives you a gun and throws you into an alien world full of baddies to shoot. This is actually very refreshing considering that many games in the modern age now hold your hand from start to finish and you’ll end up dead a few times before you figure out the control scheme. That being said, it’s a little hard to get used to and a little guidance would be nice.
For starters, the controls aren’t easy to get to grips with and aiming can be an indescribable pain, especially considering you often have to be precise with your shots, and the method used isn’t exactly conducive to that. For example, the ant-like enemy drones are easy enough to kill, but after a while they’ll start using their legs and bring full riot shields with them, meaning you’ll only see their arm and a very small part of their head. You can put a ton of lead in that shield and it will still stay intact, so you’ll have to hit the drone in areas where it’s exposed, which means you’ll have to be precise. Holding ‘R’ locks the camera directly behind your character and you can then aim without running. You’ll have to go in and out of this mode a lot and it can get very frustrating, especially when you get the perfect shot only to have the drone run away or veer off to the side.
Frustrating is a word that often comes to mind when trying to describe Jet Force Gemini. If you play this game from start to finish, you will get killed a lot and the whole series of levels will be replayed. You will get angry, hearts will be broken, controllers will be broken.
Completing Jet Force Gemini requires a lot of patience in a bucket, moreover, in an industrial barrel. It consists of nine main worlds, three for each team member, each ending with an unyielding boss. Each level is filled with countless enemies and several bear-like creatures known as Tribes that need rescuing. When you complete these routes, you meet up at Mizar’s Palace to defeat the end-game boss – or so you think.
Unfortunately, to complete the game you have to go back to all the previous worlds to find several broken parts of the ship. It sounds simple enough, but there is one more requirement that will bring you to tears – you must save all the tribes, down to the last one.
Tribals may seem like boring work; each level has cargo to find within them and they are so well hidden that you will need several passes just to locate them all. What makes this a truly difficult task is the fact that you must collect them all during the same playthrough, otherwise the game will not save your progress. If you get to the end with nine out of ten, you may not have found a single one — that’s punishing to say the least.
Additionally, Tribals will hang around in unsafe locations, such as between craft or right next to explosive objects. Enemies don’t just ignore them, and given the chance, they’ll shoot one, which means you have to be quick and accurate – and yes, friendly fire is involved, so watch what you do with that machine gun. The idea behind this seems to be to increase the longevity of the game, but it just becomes a tedious task and searching for all the tribes forces you to finish it instead of continuing the game.
Another major drawback that is definitely worth noting is the frame rate, which can be terrible at times and adds to the accuracy problem. Because there are sometimes many enemies on screen, the action can randomly slow down, causing you to struggle even more with the already broken controls. It’s not the worst framerate issue the world has ever seen, but it definitely has an impact on gameplay.
But aside from all those negative points and Jet Force Gemini is pleasant experience and has a lot of fun. As a third-person shooter, it feels almost ahead of its time and has certain mechanics that are really nice to see.
The weapons are fantastic and there are plenty of weapons to find and upgrade along the way. Something that happens a lot in modern shooters is the amount of unnecessary weapons you can have. However, this is not the case with Jet Force Gemini and each gun has a specific purpose that can injure a specific enemy with great effect. Your main blaster is a pistol, which doesn’t run out of ammo but has a slow rate of fire, there’s also a machine gun that’s very useful up close and against flying enemies, and of course a range of heavy weapons that can be used to devastating effect. Those aren’t the only ballistics in the game, there are plenty of others to tackle, and it’s fun to experiment with them all on a variety of different enemies. Again, there are no weapon guides so it’s pretty fun to figure out for yourself which opponents each is effective against.
The enemy AI is actually very good and will change tactics on the fly while fighting you. There are even times when they will drop their weapons and throw their hands in the air, surrendering to your power if their situation becomes completely hopeless.
There’s also a multiplayer mode that’s generally lacking, but has a fun co-op element. During the single-player campaign, you will encounter a hovering droid named Floyd, who resembles Dr Carroll from Perfect Dark. Once he’s on your team, another player can take control of him and help you fight your way through waves of drones; it’s a nice detail and gives you a lot of tactical advantages in certain areas of the game.
But one of the best things about Jet Force Gemini is the truly spectacular soundtrack. It’s one of the best on the N64 – and that’s saying something. Each level has a great score and the variety in music is quite impressive. They’re all worth listening to – the character select screen alone is enough to get the blood pumping.
Jet Force Gemini is by no means perfect, but this is a rare title that deserves praise. You get the feeling that the developer let their hair down a bit with this one — while it can look cute at times, some of the ways you can kill enemies with a choice of weapons are almost comical, over the top, and brutal.
That typical Rare humor is also present at all times and while the game doesn’t have much depth in terms of plot, the characters are as bizarre as you’d expect. There’s the tribal leader King Jeff, whose name says it all, and there’s a poor frog-like creature named Gimlet who lost his pants in a tree. We don’t really want to know how they got there.
All in all, Rare may have gone a bit overboard with tribal collecting and the controls can be difficult, but Jet Force Gemini is an absolute blast and worth getting into. You can easily rack up 30 to 40 hours of gameplay if you finish the game, and even if you don’t, you’ll still have a lot of fun.
