Disclaimer: The language in the following article is not
suitable for children under 18, adults 18 and up, fish, or small furry mammals.
Quest 64
Timing is everything. And Location. Timing and Location are everything. And boobs. Okay, Timing is most of everything, Boobs and Location run a close second. At the time that Quest 64 was released it was the first true RPG to hit the N64 system and it fought head to head against Sony’s RPG giant FFVII. Go into any game store and ask as many people as you can how many have played Quest 64, and how many have played FFVII. You’ll get a pretty good idea of how Quest 64 fared.
Ignoring that Cloud is a pussy¹, FFVII had everything. It had the timing: It was out first, the location: It was on CD format, and the boobs: Tifa’s. Quest 64 really didn’t stand a chance. It was out last, it was a cartridge, and chest pyramids don’t count as boobs. But, even assuming that in some parallel dimension FFVII had been delayed due to bad weather, Quest 64 couldn’t have stood on its on two pixilated feet anyway.
The game starts with Brian standing in front of what can only be described as a pile of clothes with a beehive haircut. Brian tells the laundry that he must venture out to find his father. This would make since, only his father has been missing already for quite a bit. Hey, our yellow-gloved midget is a busy man.
Once Brian finishes his acid trip about talking to the wash, you head out of a door and into a hallway lined with more doors. This is where you find out about the great door system. In Quest 64 if you want to walk through a door, brush up against it accidentally. You’ll open it up and walk through it. That’s it! You didn’t have to go through a menu or press any buttons. You didn’t even have to WANT to go through the door. The game decided for you!
And what is behind most of the doors? Nothing! Its the same room that you’ve seen behind the past 12 doors. Except it just might have one person in it that will give you the same useless information about how to operate your start menu that the last 5 people gave you. There’s a difference between giving someone help, and beating them to death with it.
After you’ve finished the twelve tutorials on how to open a chest with the Z button, run down three flights of stairs and you’ll reach your fist town. Don’t bother taking any time to check it out, they’re all the same 10 buildings in a different order.
In the first town, you’ll meet a group of children trying to kill wear-rabbits with dild*s. It is clear that there is evil here. I tried to kill them with my brownish turd-stick, but every time I told Brian to do something he shook his head. I figured that this was probably one of those games where your character starts off bad and then becomes good as the story progresses. I’ll be back for those kids later.
At this point we get into the Quest part of Quest 64. Since every quest is identical I’ve created a Mad Libs so you can enjoy the fun² of playing Quest 64. I’ve made this in case you are in some third world country where N64s are banned because they are of the devil, like Arabia or Utah.
1. A name for a Town
2. Pick a profession (fireman, ninja, hooker)
3. A name for a villain
4. A name for a forest
5. A name for a Town
6. Magical Element
7. Name of a King or Lord
8. An animal
9. Something that everyone can do (verb)
After entering ___1___ talk to the ___2___ where you’ll find out about ___3___ who is making it impossible to get through ___4___ forest so no one can get to ___5___. Also ___3___ has stolen ___6___ element from Lord ____7___.”Please Brian, kill ___3___ and bring ___6___ element back to Lord ___7___.” Next go and complete the puzzle/maze which will require you to ___9___ and then kill ___3___ to get ___6___ element and take it to Lord ___7___ where you’ll be rewarded with a/an ___6___ item. Then scream “This game sucks fat ___8___ nuts!”
Of course to get to any of the uninteresting places to meet the even more uninteresting people do the yet-even-more uninteresting quests, you’ll need to fight at some point. Your first couple of battles will consist of running around getting your ass kicked by rejected Super Mario characters while you vainly try to determine why you keep skipping your turn. Since all the training budget was spent on the fifteen tutorials within the castle, there won’t be any fighting instruction readily available. You’ll pretty much have to figure the clumsy fighting scheme out on your own or use the fantastically useless manual.
In my first fight I was attacked by two pink/purple hellhounds. This makes perfect sense. When I think of hell I think of massive amounts of pink and purple. My first notion was to run up and thunk Barney’s dogs on the head. This is where this game gets aggravatingly different than most other RPGs.
In order to do the puny amount of damage that you do with your staff, you’ll have to run up to them and press the A button when the staff icon appears at the top of your screen. If you press the A button and the staff icon has not appeared, you forfeit your turn. If you press it and you are 50 feet away from them you forfeit your turn. If you select magic, and then back out of magic and hit the A button, you forfeit your turn. If you press A anytime when the staff icon is not at the top of the screen in a battle, you forfeit your turn. Needless to say, my first few battles were more swearing than playing.
Movie: Fighting Wererabbits and the Camera - 861 KB
To complicate matters, the camera hates you. The camera, for no apparent reason will decide every once in a while to go bird watching and swing into one of the many cardbord trees. So not only are you skipping all your turns, you don’t even get the pleasure of seeing your ass getting kicked. And don’t bother with the rotate view button, because once you let go it’ll swing right back to behind the tree. Godd*mn foliage.
So back to my battle. After I had won, I ran to the town nearest to me, which was a surprisingly short distance away. I found out that the reason for this was that in my battle I had gotten turned around the other way. I was back at the town I started in. I had effectively spent the last 15 minutes of my life reaching the town I had just come from. It was kind of like jerking off, but I didn’t feel any better.
As this super-scientific chart shows, Brian sucks
Speaking of jerking off, what the hell was the composer doing? Pick four notes and play them over and over again. Great job Mozart. The only good thing about the music was that it drowned out the horrid sound effects like the footstep. I say “the footstep” because it was only one, repeated over and over. For everybody.
Movie: The BEST of Quest64′s camera – 1.8 MB
Lastly, I’m almost obligated to mention the day/night cycle… thingie. It functions exactly like the one in Zelda:OoT except the one in Quest 64 doesn’t mean anything. The same people are out during the day and night and they say the exact same things. Also, there’s no gradual lighting change from day to night. Voila! Light! It can’t really be called a game play mechanic because it doesn’t affect game play. At best its just a mechanic, butt crack and all. The whole game is just one big, poorly animated, pointless butt crack.
Pain-O-Meter: 5 Aspirin. I really didn’t have as much trouble sleeping after this one as I did the other 9, but my dreams were still filled with fanny packs and purple Hell Hounds.
Best Spell: The lower level fire spell. All of the spells were spectacularly bad, but the fire spells take the cake. It just looked like you were spraying them with sparkles and potpourri. I guess it was designed to confuse the enemy into thinking that you were throwing a party.
Fact of Life:
Shoes sound the same on grass, carpet, and even dirt. I didn’t know that.
¹ If you feel the need to tell me how much Cloud rules, please email me so I start ignoring you immediately.
² Not to be confused with actual fun.
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