First person shooters are nothing new to the Nintendo 64. Ever since Turok: Dinosaur Hunter started the genre out on the machine (and Goldeneye from Rare and Nintendo took it to new heights), it has prospered and developed to become a prominent part of the console library. Acclaim has been the main supplier of games in the genre, and their latest is based off of the slick looking, but prone to slowing down, Turok 2 engine, which was released around Christmas 1998. Similar to Turok 2 in ways, but featuring new innovations and features that separates it from the game engine that it is based upon, Armorines: Project SWARM has its ups and its downs.

Even though people have begun demanding more out of their shooters when it comes to story and character elements, Acclaim and Iguana have created a generic and boring story to start up Armorines. Enormous alien bugs from the outer regions of space have traveled to our planet in an attempt to take it for their own. Of course, the world does not exactly sit on its laurels and mope around while the world is slowly destroyed. A special elite group of soldiers called Armorines had been devised before the invasion of the bugs, but the government hoped they would never have to use such killing machines. Unfortunately, they must, or the world is doomed. Staying true to the "Earth vs. Aliens" video game formula, there are only two people in the entire world who can save us. And - guess what - you get to control them!

There are two characters that can be chosen from, which adds a bit of variety from the normal one person available. There is one male character, and the other, as you could have probably guessed, is a female. What sets them apart from each other is that they have a set of weapons that is unique to them, meaning that you might not go back and play the entire game through again with another character, but messing around with the other set of weapons is a bit of fun.

After having a lovely arsenal of deadly (and, at times, hilarious) weaponry in Turok 2, you would think that there would be an array of new gadgets to check out in Armorines that were unlike things found in other first person shooters. If you thought that, you thought wrong. For the most part, Armorines has everything that's become standard in the genre, except it looks a bit different. You can find a rocket launcher, standard laser gun (which has unlimited ammunition, though it has to be reloaded occasionally), grenade launcher and other uninteresting firearms that have been far overused. I was hoping to see something as entertaining as the Cerebral Bore or Nuke in Armorines, but no such luck this time around.

Being a decent game, Turok 2 was a disappointment mostly because the engine had not been optimized enough to fit what the game showed on the screen, and because of this, it slowed down to the point of frustration at times. Throw a couple enemies on screen and it became difficult to even start aiming correctly. With Armorines, the engine has been tweaked a bit, but there are still apparent problems on the edges. You can have around three or four of the smaller critters on the screen without too much happening, but in an expansive environment with two larger bugs, the engine starts choking. Part of this can be remedied by not using the Expansion Pak at all or running it in a letter boxed form. But, if you are going to support the Expansion Pak to make your game look better, don't you think you should make it run with it well at least? Oh, and this goes without mentioning the much use of fog to help cover up the fact that the engine can't run worth crap in open areas.

You will be facing a ton of bugs in this game, but it would have been nice of they had been rendered better. The designs for many of the bugs are very cool, but because of them being so incredibly black (and partly because the animation is not the greatest ever conceived) it becomes hard to distinguish them at times. I understand the bugs are supposed to be brought across as evil and foreboding, but a little sprucing up couldn't hurt. Not helping things is the bug's somewhat idiotic artificial intelligence. Some of the bigger enemies do not have trouble keeping tabs on you, but the smaller ones can be dumb as rocks at times. Shooting up a couple of the eggs scattered in the levels can reveal the tiny bugs, and one time three of them popped out and just stood there. I shot just to the left and right of them to see if they would react, but they did not.

There were not many complaints that I had with Turok 2, so since this was using the same engine I logically thought there would be no major problems here. Looks like I was wrong. The aiming has been changed so that it has become incredibly touchy. Slightly pushing the analog stick will cause the cursor to go way off target and it becomes increasingly hard to take down some of the bugs, especially since many of them are fast little buggers. Another nuisance was how reloading was handled. For some odd reason, you have to double tap "B" in order to have your default weapon reload. Er, why? In the middle of a tough battle having to hit B twice can allow the bugs to get the best of me.

A few other quirks with Armorines that bugged me through the experience were that the character took no damage from falling. You could jump from the rooftops and unless there was a bottomless pit there, your character would be standing tall and healthy just as he/she was before. Other than that, there is the fact that the game allows you to go into the exit without informing you that all your objectives aren't completed. This means that if you somehow forget to complete one and go into the exit you get to start the whole level over again! Yay! Finally, some missions have soldiers who are supposed to "help" you out, but usually end up standing in front of you, getting in the way and not shooting. Although, that problem is easily remedied by giving the soldiers a quick blast to the head.

The cooperative mode that I was looking forward to in Armorines is nothing special and the frame rate and control problems simply hinder it from being any fun at all. Deathmatch is ho hum, and nothing there will pull you away from your Goldeneye or Turok 2 battles any time soon.

Now, you are probably thinking "Geez, this Armorines game must be a huge pile of steaming crap!", but it isn't all bad. The graphics are foggy and they do slow down sometimes, but some of the environments are incredibly well done. The railed events included are a little slow, but holding a huge, powerful gun that is able to blast away bug after bug with a single blow is wildly amusing. This is a game that would have been more suited to a next generation machine like the Dreamcast or PlayStation 2, but, as it stands, Armorines is barely average.