Knife Edge: Nose Gunner
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| Developed by and released on November 10, 1998 by Kemco, Knife Edge: Nose Gunner brings 3D rail shooter action to the Nintendo 64 |
The very "late 90's extreme" game description on the back of 1998 Nintendo 64 rail shooter, Knife Edge: Nose Gunner reads "Command to Nose Gunner. Radar's readin' an army of armored androids that are harshin' our Martian colonies. We're lookin' at boo-coo ground emplacements. Sulfur skies swarming with enemy gunships. F-f-f-four explosive gameplay modes for 1 to 4 players. And six super-vast battle stages with almost infinite paths to mutually assured destruction. It's a 3D shooter for N64 that makes the Big Bang look like a burp. So gimme full automatic cannons. Lock and load all Special Weapons. Set Autopilot for maximum warp. And try not to chuck your chimachangas. 'Cuz...we...are...goin'...in..."
This description is, by a very large margin,
the best thing about this game...cuz...Knife...Edge...Nose...Gunner...sucks.
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| That's right, Knife Edge, YOU SUCK |
One thing you'll notice after playing just a few minutes of Knife Edge is that this game looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger once described the Predator from the 1987 film of the same name. This game is ugly. It's dark, dim, the textures are bad, there's little detail, the color schemes are unattractive. Worlds are also covered in fog, making visibility extremely limited. Knife Edge just looks bad. The player sees everything from a first-person, cockpit perspective, though the there's little HUD to speak of, outside of the target reticle, and a couple meters for health and your special weapons. As for enemies, they're generally low-polygon nothings, except for the bosses, some of which don't look awful. There are a few random moments in the game that look okay, like some pyramids rising out of the ice in a wintry level. Those moments, however, are extremely few and far between.
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| What the hell is even that? |
Knife Edge's music is perhaps the game's only element that is not objectively terrible. It's not incredible by any means, but the up-tempo rock/electronic/dance music mishmash is pretty solid and deserves a better game to soundtrack. As for sound effects, I can't even remember them minutes after playing, so take that as you will. They're apparently completely unremarkable. There's also no voice-acting, as the game's story is conveyed via text.
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| Turn this game off as fast as possible, ensign!!! |
Knife Edge takes place on Mars. Apparently, humanity has melted Mars' polar ice caps and successfully settled the red planet, until a Martian force suddenly appears and begins to attack. You are the gunner on a cutting edge fighter craft, which is flown by a robot. This means that you, the player, have nearly zero control over your fighter craft except for its laser cannon, which you can aim and fire. Of course, this type of on rails gameplay CAN be fun, especially if you're using a light gun. The Nintendo 64 doesn't have a light gun, though. You're just aiming a cursor on the screen with the Nintendo 64 controller's joystick. Unfortunately, not even a light gun could save Knife Edge: Nose Gunner's gameplay.
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| GUTTER BALL |
Regardless of the ugly graphics, regardless of the lack of a light gun, there's one element of Knife Edge: Nose Gunner that cannot be overcome: your ship moves like a VHS tape set to fast-forward. Your ship flies about 1,000 miles per-hour through twisting canyons and tunnels, meaning that outside of the bosses, who park directly in front of you and mostly stay there, you'll be flying past most enemies before you ever have a chance to shoot at them. On rails gameplay already takes away a large portion of a player's sense of control. Being forced to move through the screen so quickly, there's not even time to aim, not only takes away what little sense of control the player has...IT'S NOT FUN.
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| This picture is metaphorical in the sense that THIS GAME IS HELL |
I think the ugly graphics and bad gameplay go hand-in-hand. Either the developers made the level environments as bare bones as possible so that the ship could fly through them at warp speed, or the developers realized that they had created hideous-looking, bare bones environments, and made the ship fly through them at warp speed, so that the player wouldn't notice. It's a lose-lose situation either way.
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| I'm out of sad captions |
The game touts several features that could have been enticing. Up to three-other players can join in, and four players can struggle to hit objects as the game flies by them. The cannons are weakened to compensate for more players shooting them. Again, the game isn't fun, so it gets old just as fast as it does with 2-4 people playing as it does with one. Each of the game's six levels also has many, many branching paths, which can be selected before the level begins. According to the developers (and the back of the box), this gives near infinite routes through each level, but all the routes look the same and the game is terrible.
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| Hmm, do I want to take the path where the ship flies too quickly through a foggy, ugly ravine, or the path where the ship flies too quickly through a foggy, ugly ravine? |
As for replay value, I can't imagine anyone wanting to extend their experience with Knife Edge unless this is the only game they can get their hands on. In that case, as stated, the game only has six levels, none of which are fun. As stated, you can drag your friends and family into the multiplayer mode, but they'll consider it torture. You can also experiment with the game's different special weapons, built up by shooting enemies with your regular old boring laser, but those are all very similar and barely functional. The game's controls also feature dodge buttons, which should assumedly give the game more variety and make it more fun, but which instead somehow make the game worse ("I should have dodged that thing the game didn't even give me enough time to see").
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| I feel like this moment is maybe a graphical standout, but then again, I'm not really sure what I'm looking at |
Knife Edge: Nose Gunner is a terrible game. It may be the only first-person on rails shooter for the Nintendo 64, but that doesn't mean you should play it. If you're looking for fun, on rails shooter action, unfortunately, you're going to have to look for it on a different console.
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| Pick which super weapon you want to use...or just turn this game off and play something better...i.e. 95% of the rest of Nintendo 64's catalogue |
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