The Re:Retro Top 100 Games Of All Time, No. 74: “Mistakes Were Made”

And this is Blast Corps, one of the funner games available on the N64 back in the day:

That video should tell you all you need to know, really. Here’s the premise – there is a truck containing some leaky nuclear bombs that will go off at the slightest jolt. However, the robot truck has decided to take a direct route to the defusing place, which happens to be through various incredibly built-up areas! Now you must destroy the homes of thousands of innocent families and businesses. When you are done, those whose houses you have ruthlessly smashed will envy the dead and wish that you had allowed the nuclear bombs to obliterate them. At least it would have been quick, as opposed to their slow death of sobbing the the ruins.

I’m assuming that they even bothered to evacuate the houses first. They may have done.

But never mind that, because the fun of destruction awaits! Blast Corps essentially involves driving vehicles or occasionally robots into buildings so that they blow up with a lovely sound. Some of the robots and vehicles are useful and good – some are wrong and bad, like the dumper truck you can see in the video. The only way to make that work is to spin it around and hammer the tail end into things. Nine times out of ten you don’t manage it and everything is melted by the thermonuclear detonation. Faithful reader Simon thinks that this makes the Dump Truck the best vehicle, but he is wrong.

This is a game I played recently, so I can actually draw on some personal recollections – unfortunately they’re all recollections of failure. Faithful reader Nick, in particular, seemed unable to negotiate any of the courses, choosing instead to lose control of his vehicle and ram it directly into the runaway missiles, thereby causing the very holocaust he’d been tasked to prevent. “Mistakes were made!” was all the explanation he could bring himself to give. Hilarity ensued as he did it again and again, or at least that’s my story and he’s off in the arse end of nowhere now so he can’t deny it.

Blast Corps finishes, once you’ve delivered your nukes, by giving you a tour of space, just because, and allowing you to ravage various alien worlds as you ravaged your own. It’s pretty much the perfect insane ending to an already insane game, and proof that there are still games that prize gameplay above the need to provide a detailed plot – in this case, far, far above. Fun stuff.