 C... That's drunk. Video game history is littered with games that are remembered for their ad campaigns, rather than, you know, the actual game itself. The 16-bit era was full of stuff like this, with everything from Bubsy to Shaq Fu to brutal paws of Fury. But it didn't stop there, of course. I'm willing to bet a bunch of folks watching this only clicked on this thumbnail and said to themselves, �Uh yeah! I remember that cover with the lady that kind of sorta looks like a confused Kate Winslet.� Who is this woman? Is she the granddaughter of the confused looking old guy on the cover of Phalanx? Alright, so the name of the game is Forsaken64. Okay, so what is this game? Let's check out the commercial. Well, turns out this ad campaign was Forsaken because the game didn't really catch on all that well. Forsaken was originally developed for PlayStation and Windows by Probe Entertainment. The N64 conversion was handled by the UK arm of Iguana Entertainment who used to go by the name of Optimus Software. They also had a hand in the Shadowman series as well as various NBA jam titles, so the game was in perfectly capable hands. However, Forsaken64 is just okay at best, at least as a single-player game. You pilot a ship from a first-person perspective, and you can move in any direction, which is both good and bad. It's good because hey, making stuff go boom at all angles is pretty dang fun no matter how you slice it, but it's not so good because you're at the mercy of some really awkward camera angles where it's hard to see where you are, where you're going, and where your enemies are. As you can see from some of the footage, Forsaken is very, very much like descent, only the controls feel a lot looser and the game feels a bit more chaotic, for better or for worse. You hold A to move forward, B to go backward. You use the flimsy joystick to aim both your weapon and the direction you want to go since they're tied together. You strafe with the C buttons and the Z trigger fires your weapon. You get three lives and a battery save to get through 23 missions with a couple different branching paths depending on the manner in which you complete them. Some missions are as simple as just destroying all enemies, some have you protecting things and taking over enemy bases, some have you activating timed switches and finding doors before the timer runs out. It's a decent amount of variety and I appreciate that there's more than just shooting stuff here, but like I said the trouble here is that the camera kinda sorta sucks and it's very easy to get disoriented since a lot of areas look the same. I do like that you can go in any direction, that makes it really easy to find enemies and items, but the controls make it really tough to dodge enemy fire, so while you'll be causing lots of carnage, your vehicle will eventually pay the price sooner or later. These aren't just regular old enemies either, some actually defend themselves and you'll have to do some maneuvering to get at their weak spots. Speaking of, there's also eight different vehicles and playable characters you can pick from, but each of them have the same feel and handling. There might be some minor differences, but I wasn't able to find anything major to suggest one vehicle over another. You do at least have the benefit of collecting all sorts of weapons and power-ups, 25 to be exact, everything from projectiles that explode on impact, lasers that bounce off of walls, homing missiles, mines, gravity wells, and good old fashioned nuclear warheads. That leads me to this game's appeal that makes it worth playing today, multiplayer. Forsaken64 can handle up to four players at once and it's exactly like you'd expect, you just fly around and hunt each other down and shout expletives at each other and all that good stuff. This game lends itself perfectly to multiplayer, it's really where this game shines, it's always fun to learn the maps, learn the location of items, and make your friend spike their controller in frustration, that's good times. As for the story, it's your typical science fiction stuff where in the distant future mankind has gone too far playing god with sentient life forms and they end up destroying the planet, whoops. So Earth is just abandoned and the powers that be declare that the planet is just one giant yard sale, only everything is free. So Bonnie hunters from all over the galaxy come to claim any stuff that Earth is left behind. So what does that have to do with the gal on the box? Maybe she's come back to Earth to salvage her Rose DeWitt Titanic cosplay getup? Or maybe she's just looking for a Donkey Kong Country competition cartridge? Hey I'm sure it's held its value in the future, it's worth at least 4,000 Golden Grickles or whatever. So yeah Forsaken on N64 is worth playing today but with certain caveats, the controls take some getting used to and the maps aren't always all that user friendly, but hey as far as descent clones go, this one is solid, even on Nintendo 64, but especially with couch co-op. And hey, even if you don't want to bother with other people, there's also a battle mode you can unlock which pits you one on one with a computer opponent, and it should be said that the computer AI here wasn't just thrown together, there's actually some thought put behind it, and some enemies and bosses are really tough to take down. Forsaken has since been remastered for PC and Xbox One, I haven't played either of those versions, but as far as the N64 edition goes, it's surprisingly worth your time today. Alright, I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.