Overall 9.1 Graphics 5 Sound 8 Addictive 9 Story 9 Depth 9 Difficulty 9
8
Buck Bumble Review TheFadedWarrior
Sup, dawgz. This is me with another fahhhhbulous review. Today, I'm reviewing a lesser known N64 game called Buck Bumble. Buck Bumble is a shooter game with a twist: You play as a bumblebee and your mission is to destroy wasps. You are Buck Bumble, the coolest bee that ever was. Anyways, time to start off the review.
Graphics - 5
Although this is an early N64 game, I still think the graphics are pretty bad. Crappy textures with bad detail, overuse of the same textures, and excessively small draw distance. You can't see very far at all in the game, and add that to the overuse of textures and you've got yourself levels hard to navigate. You'll be finding yourself trying every path to get back to where you want to be. However, the graphics aren't entirely bad. The animation is pretty smooth overall, and some of the graphics are pretty good. I give the graphics a fairly sad rating of 5.
Sound - inf
DAT THEME SONG.
The game has about 15 tracks that play throughout the game. Fairly small variety there. They're pretty good songs, but not something that would make rainbows spurt out of your ears. But then... DAT THEME SONG. DAT THEME SONG is so amazingly awesome that one time I started to fall into the sky. Then my ears started spurting Deca-Rainbows and I started rapidly hurling pixie dust out of my mouth. Then, all of a sudden, a huge swarm of bees covered my city. All because of DAT THEME SONG.
Here's the full OST (Official SoundTrack) starting with DAT THEME SONG (link).
You're probably all like, "DAT THEME SONG isn't even that good." Well, you're wrong. If you play it at full volume with surround sound on full bass with a subwoofer, you'll realize the amazingness. I give the sound infinity. Or at least 8.
Gameplay / Addictiveness - 9
This is where it gets interesting. You play as, yeah, a bumblebee and you, yeah, shoot wasps. So you fly around a small-to-large sized level and shoot wasps that try to swarm and attack you. It's a shooter game, so there's not really much to describe. It's just a really fun game overall I give the gameplay a 9.
Now, I'm not going to name too many, but there's a fairly large variety of enemies. There's mosquitoes, wasps, flies, ladybugs, ants, spiders, weevils, weird things that come out of the water, and the strongest non-boss enemy: the Gatekeepers, which are totally massive ship-like enemies that destroy you in the final level.
With the game being so fun, I'm going to give the addictiveness another snazzy looking 9.
Weapon Variety - 8
There are 11 different weapons that you can wield, some being fictional and some being realistic. Here they are:
1. The first one is the default weapon, the pistol, which has infinite ammo. It obviously deals minimal damage and is an overall sucky weapon.
2. This weapon, sometimes called the magnum, is a more rapidfire gun, but still not that fast at shooting. Each shot probably deals the same amount of damage as a pistol shot, but you shoot faster.
3. The next weapon is the rifle or shotgun or missile launcher or something. The site I went to calls it a shotgun, but it has the shape of a rifle and shoots missiles. But there's already a missile launcher. So I dunno what to call it. Anyways, it shoots rocket-like things and deals large amounts of damage.
4. Grenades are the next weapon. Possibly the rarest weapon in the game that you find naturally (not including the stun gun), the grenade is a large damage dealer. It spreads into 3 grenades after thrown, so it packs a powerful blow.
5. Another really rare weapon, the Uzi is very useful when fighting an enemy with lots of health, but not so much with a group of wasps. The reason being is that the ammo rapidly drops, and if you're fighting a group of wasps then you're going to be missing a lot of shots and therefore wasting a lot of ammo.
6. Possibly my favorite weapon, the homing gun shoots beams at a pretty fast rate that home in on your enemy and deal lots of damage. This is a very effective weapon for all types of enemies. Definitely one you want to use.
7. Possibly the strongest weapons in the game are the EMP Cannons. You put two cannons on your side and shoot large electric balls that deal massive amounts of damage. The problem? You only get 3 shots per ammo pack you get, so you need to use the beams wisely.
8. The next weapon is the stun gun. Oddly, this is only used in 1 level. It cannot be used on wasps, only ladybugs. You stun the ladybugs then pick them up. After you've collected all of the ladybugs, you advance to the next level.
9. The homing missile launcher is, of course, one of the strongest weapons in the game. It deals massive amounts of damage, but it's fairly hard to aim. It's very effective against the stronger enemies.
10. In addition to a homing missile launcher, there's also a guided missile launcher. You shoot the rocket, then control it with the control pad and fly it into an enemy.
11. There's also a laser gun. It's pretty much the pistol, but it deals much more damage (though still not a significant amount).
For an early N64 game, this has a pretty nice weapon variety. Though not huge, it's still pretty nice. I give the weapon variety an 8.
Story - 9
Heck yeah. An almost completely original story on a Nintendo game. You rarely see that. Anyways, the story takes place in England. There has been a chemical spill which has caused all of the insects in the garden to go evil. They have taken over the garden and made it their base. The queen bee has commanded these insects to take over the world when they are finished, and it's up to Buck Bumble to stop them! Because it's such an awesome story, and it's actually somewhat original, I give the story a 9.
Depth - 9
No doubt about it, Buck Bumble is a pretty large game. There are 19 different missions, some of them shorter in length, some of them in the middle, some of them longer. Most of them are in the middle, but there are a couple levels that are long and a few that are short. I give the depth yet another 9.
Difficulty - 9
This game is really hard, hands-down. When I was a kid at about age 8, I rarely got past level 2 because of those weevils dealing massive damage. The mosquitoes aren't any trouble, but the wasps deal an annoying amount of damage. Then there's the weevils which deal massive amounts of damage, the spiders that just walk around in circles slowly which are pretty lame unless they are on a web, and the mites. Gosh... those mites fling gross green stuff at you, which deal a large amount of damage and bring you to the ground. Then the whole herd of them fling the stuff at you and kill you. As long as you don't stay too close to the ground, you're safe. There's also a couple of other enemies that are really annoying, but I'm not going to bore you any more. First 3 levels? No problem. First 5 levels? Pretty easy. Every level past level 10? Agonizing. I give the difficulty a 9.
Overall - 8
Overall, Buck Bumble is a really fun game to play. It has bad graphics, but luckily the theme song makes up for it. It offers some awesome gameplay, an awesome story, and offers a good amount of difficult levels. I give Buck Bumble a rating of 8.
Thanks for reading!
Graphics 5 Sound 8 Addictive 9 Story 9 Depth 9 Difficulty 9
Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 01-04-14
Review Replies: 0
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