With its jump from 2D to 3D, the Nintendo 64 offered a whole new way for developers to make games. That led to classics like Super Mario 64, as well as some stranger experiments with this new possibility for gaming. In September, Nintendo Switch Online adds one of these unexpected experiments that fans of old-school shooters need to check out.
Forsaken 64 isn’t as well remembered as shooters like Turok or GoldenEye 007, but what it lacks in popularity, it makes up for in originality. Technically, it borrows heavily from the PC and PlayStation shooter Descent, but that game itself is such an anomaly that Forsaken 64 ends up feeling original nonetheless. Forsaken 64 is what’s known as a six degrees of freedom shooter. At a time when other console shooters were extremely limited in their movement, Forsaken 64 featured free movement in every direction, with players controlling a mercenary riding a hovering motorcycle.
Along with most first-person shooters on the service, Forsaken 64 is coming to Switch Online’s separate Mature app, which exclusively features M-Rated games. Despite that, it’s pretty hard to see what could have garnered such a rating today. While its box art, featuring a woman in a wasteland with a tear running down her cheek, suggested to some players that it would be a post-apocalyptic horror game, nothing of the sort actually appears in the game. It certainly features violence — it’s a first-person shooter after all — but it’s nowhere near as intense or gory as other games that earned a Mature rating.
Being stuck in a special app might make Forsaken 64 easy to overlook, but it’s worth the extra step to give it a shot. Six degrees of freedom shooters have never been the most popular subgenre, so having one at all on Switch Online is a treat. And fortunately, it’s more than a novelty, as Forsaken 64 is an excellent shooter on top of its novelty. Like many of the retro games on Switch Online, Forsaken 64 certainly shows its age, but it’s clear to see even today how much of a technical marvel it was on the Nintendo 64. Its action is fast and kinetic, with extremely impressive lighting and other effects for its time. The freedom of movement it offers still stands out amongst other shooters, with challenging airborne firefights that feel like almost no other game.
Forsaken 64 is also a bit of an oddity, as the Nintendo 64 game features a different storyline from the original PC and PlayStation releases. The first two versions of the game put players in the role of thieves attempting to loot a hidden treasure, while the Nintendo 64 releases makes them into mercenaries sent to stop them.
Along with its story mode, Forsaken 64 also brings its multiplayer mode to Switch Online. As intense as the campaign can be, multiplayer brings the game to a whole new level of chaos, with human players making its aerial combat far less predictable than AI-controlled opponents.
It would be a stretch to say that Forsaken 64 is the best shooter on the Switch Online app, but it just might be the most interesting one. Despite how heavily it pulls from Descent, the rarity of six degrees of freedom shooters still makes Forsaken 64 an absolute standout among the Switch Online old-school library.
