PixlBit

No, not the cookie, those are called 'Macaroons.'

Armorines is a first-person shooter that runs on a modified game engine that was originally used for Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. It isn't as polished or interesting as the game from which it borrows its engine, but it is more focused on action than exploration. I didn't really catch the details of the story as I couldn't be bothered, but it has to do with a lone soldier taking on an army of alien bugs because everyone else is either too incompetent or too lazy to take action. Whichever one sounds more realistic.

I played the first three levels in my short time with this game. The first level is a winter level which reminded me of Goldeneye's opening Dam level, and then made me long for playing a better game. It opens with a first-person viewpoint of one of the bugs, and then your character comes in on a helicopter and shoots the bug, and poof! You're now in control of your soldier. Awesome. I didn't get to make the first kill.

The second level takes "on-rails shooter" literally and has your character on a monorail car, manning a rocket launcher with rather underwhelming explosive power. The third level is a big dumb missile silo that has you traversing the same hallway several times, occasionally throwing a bug or two your way. I think there was actually more than one hallway but it's hard to say because it all looked the same. There are objectives to accomplish for each level, and though they sometimes sound complicated in their descriptions, they are nothing more than going from point A to point B.

Anyone who's played Turok will have the controls memorized already. Use the C-buttons to move and the stick to look around, use Z to fire and A to change weapons. The aiming with the control stick is overly responsive, and a slight push will have your head spinning. The game seems to try to compensate for the finicky control with an auto-aim system, but since it means your shots are usually aimed at the enemy, a moving target becomes difficult to hit.

The graphics have that famous fog from the Turok games, which seems even worse indoors than outside, for some reason. There are actually some lighting effects for when shots are fired, which help keep the visuals from being too generic. In the sound department, I wish I could remember the music. Or maybe I've forgotten it for a reason. The gun sounds may have a tinny quality to them but at least they're all present. The machine gun goes "pew pew pew!" and the laser goes "zap!" and the grenade launcher goes "boom!" The only thing unfitting is that the female selectable character still sounds like a dude...

I kind of wanted to put more play time into this one, to see if it gets more interesting. With no shortage of good shooters on the Nintendo 64, I don't see a reason to push through mediocrity.