When it's at its best, it's great. You're just destroying buildings all willy nilly and all you gotta do is make sure this little car carrying a nuke doesn't get touched or run into a building. A simple run of destruction while you have an objective to check in on. Sure the camera is a bit too close for my liking but when it's mindless fun it's not really an issue.

But then you have to use the Backlash and its unbearable controls, to the point where I utilized bugs in the last couple missions with it (the game LOVES giving you this hunk of junk in the second half even though from a practical standpoint it'd be better to use the bulldozer in every situation).
Then there's Oyster Harbor, a real bastard of a level that demands perfection, understanding of mechanics that aren't told to you (what do you mean I have to drop the TNT block in the middle to destroy the set, otherwise start over?) or kept out of sight (I really hope you didn't put that first diamond block into the first diamond hole that's actually visible, should have looked for the one a bit out of sight that hides the two diamonds needed to complete the puzzle), all finished off by demanding perfection with a TNT block carried across a boat puzzle. It's hell.
Then you have to find the scientists in these cryptic puzzles, which while it's nice that you don't have to worry about the nuke car and are free to explore, this is where the camera being too close gets to be a real problem, as it's hard to gauge your environment when you can't see too far off. It's relaxing compared to those hellish previous things I mentioned, but it was a bit off.

So when Blast Corps wants to be good, it's real good. But when it wants to be hard and demand perfection from its awkward collisions and controls, it can be a real pain in the neck. It has good music the whole way through and I definitely wouldn't mind the concept ever being revisited since it issues here are absolutely fixable, and the core idea of just destroying stuff with cars and robots is always a cool one.

I used to see my cousins play this game a lot as a kid, but it looked fairly generic to me. All I remember is it had some funny sound effects for some reason.
Years later I find that this was made by Rare, so I wanted to give it a shot considering their reputation on the N64.

Blast Corps is a 'turn your brain off and wreck shit' kinda game. You're given levels each with a time limit to complete the objective, the objective mostly being wreck all the required shit before time runs out. The variety comes in the type of vehicles you are given each mission. Sometimes you are given a bulldozer and other times you are given a giant mech amongst other things. Something it will switch up and you will need to use multiple vehicles in a sigle level.

The gameplay is satisfying and easy to pick up. But once you've completed the first couple of levels, you've basically seen everything the game has to offer and the rest of the game provides similar challenges, just much harder. If you wanna complete this game you will be retrying a lot of the later levels over and over again.

Blast Corps is a fine time waster if you wanna just crumble the fuck outta some 1990 lookin-ass buildings with some big machinery, but once your fun runs out the game does not have much else to offer.

The first of Rare's illustrious N64 career is... not the sort of game I would've expected. Not bad by any means, though. A very high-concept vehicular puzzler where the name of the game is usually to destroy everything. Sometimes, to race, too. But mostly destruction.

Let's get the main criticism out of the way - I hate the Backlash. I never felt confident using it. Like I know it's drifting, the trick to using it effectively is drifting, but the hitbox is so far back on the body that you have to overextend even beyond the amount you normally would for drifting. Even by the end, when I was fairly consistently nailing the timing of moves needed to clear "Diamond Sands", I felt like I knew how to perform, but not the principle behind why my buttons were working this time. Super frustrating.

In any other vehicle, though, the game's a good time. Especially in those mechs, there's something inherently satisfying to leveling buildings, figuring out the way the game wants you to think through its puzzles. I especially like the sheer amount of secrets meant for the player to uncover, especially in the midgame. There are a surprising amount of interlocked systems for the player to navigate, with secrets revealing secrets. So much of the game feels like you're a kid messing around with toys, it's great.

This even extends to the story. You have to love how overwrought the narrative is, trying to figure the safest way to dismantle a nuke truck and somehow that involving plowing through buildings to prevent it from detonating. Like, that's such a little kid sort of narrative, it's great.

It does kinda feel like the game doesn't know when to stop taking curtain calls, though. Sort of a minor complain, especially if you're someone who got super into this game. But, like, you roll credits, then find out you succeeded, THEN have another scenario, then another, then you have to get all the gold, then a few more scenarios, and then you get to the Platinums, then... personally, I called it after the second post-credits mission, since I'm not completely invested in getting all the Golds. Nice that the option exists, though.

Blast Corps is one of those evergreen game premises. It's sort of weird to me that it doesn't have some sort of follow-up. At the same time I don't really know how you would follow it up, since they pretty much exhausted every idea they could with this premise. Sort of a Punch-Out issue, where a franchise would largely consist of updates rather than sequels. This incarnation feels like a fairly natural expression of early 5th generation gaming, finding things to do within early 3D space akin to something like Pilotwings 64. A modern version would probably look a lot better, but it'd have to be a huge resource hog to convey similar ideas on modern tech. Is this a game that could come back? I dunno, but I think there'd be something satisfying for folks if it did.