Rocket: Robot on Wheels - Nitro Rad

[Music] whenever I find myself interested in a platformer it was usually the character design that hooked me a lot of platformers designed characters that are representative of the abilities you'll have in the game or a man's detached limbs let him literally throw his punches lovers all about bouncing and throwing balls and kazooie uses her wings to give banjo extra airtime whenever I used to browse games at the store as a kid I would always pick something with a character that looked fun to play as which is probably why my eyes brushed over rocket without much thought each and every time unicycle robot thing with no arms you know come to think of it it's not really a robot on wheels as much as it's a robot on a wheel but I guess it doesn't really roll off the tongue as well huh I don't know I just never really thought much of this design because it never really communicated to me what it can do it never really painted an interesting picture of what I would find myself doing is this character a classic case of judging a book by its cover I guess but you'd be surprised who wrote the book sucker punch yeah the guys behind the Sly Cooper series even going on to become a first-party Triple A studio with Sony making the infamous games well after these are games I do really like the Sly Cooper series is fantastic and the infamous games are really good too it's a wonder why I never went back to their original project and then 64 to see what it was all about as popular as sly and infamous are I rarely see people talking about rocket I don't think it's sold super well and it's a little bit more pricey than your average n64 cartridge so it's not incredibly easy to get your hands on it these days but despite not being too popular back in the day it does seem to be highly regarded in their August of 2008 issue volume 131 Nintendo Power counted down the 20 best games from each console for their 20th anniversary and they ranked rocket the 18th best n64 game of all time oh wow they ranked it above pokemon snap i guess this game isn't really that remembered by many but the people that do remember it seem to think really highly of it I mean it has to be at least good right it was made by Sucker Punch after all but maybe that's a little bit naive to assume not everybody's first games are really good one but I don't know why don't we check this thing out and see for ourselves the title screens got this big sweeping shot of an amusement park it looks really nice especially the colors they look really good so the story begins with the park owner explaining that as the night before the grand opening of a whoopee world the happiest theme park in the galaxy he leaves the control room in the hands of rocket this like service droid I guess overnight so he can attend a party everything's automated wait wait are those subtitles freaking Comic Sans yeah Sonic you would know anyway everything's automated so all rocket has to do is keep an eye on off the tokens and tickets and feed the parks mascots the titular Whoopi this big lazy walrus and Jojo the little raccoon dude with a he's got like a hat and tie I like that a lot wait a minute Rocket Raccoon I know these guys did draw a lot of influence from comic books for sly and infamous so that makes me wonder if that really was a coincidence or not this little raccoon is sick and tired of living in Whoopie shadows so we hatched a plan to take over the amusement park and make it Jojo world instead I mean why should this lazy walrus be the star of the show when the raccoons the one who does all the work I mean that could be a little assumptions on my part but he seems to be pretty mad so that's probably his mindset bye bye be good happy good my ass Jojo escapes kidnapping whoopee and taking all of the tokens and tickets to the park can only open on his terms it's now up to rocket to make his way to reach theme park world we collect all the tokens and tickets and stop Jojo by tomorrow morning to the park can open like planned I really like the plot it's really silly which is really fitting for a game about a theme park and the characters are really great too a Jojo probably looks a little bit familiar doesn't he I mean it's a raccoon drawn by the same character artist as Sly Cooper right Sly's original concept was actually pretty close to JoJo's they practically reused the design they even had a wait um Keir more raccoon like at one point and as a little callback slide 2 has a number of rocket references including a gravestone that says rest in peace rocket they also hit JoJo's and Rockets character models in this Crypt here if you destroy everything in the room and stand right here and look over here the model will magically spawn in that's really cool I always love it when developers give their previous works a little shout you might remember infamous having a bunch of Sly Cooper Easter eggs they hinted that sly for being a thing long before that announcement and Cole's got a little Sly Cooper button on his backpack infamous 2 in second son were also no stranger to Sly Cooper references I guess when developers really love their own work that's a pretty good sign that there's some legitimate passion involved so let's see if that passion made a good game here the very first thing I notice here is how good the physics feel like when you jump there's this defined weight to it it's kind of hard to explain without having you actually hold a controller and hitting the buttons for yourself but the way the character pulls his legs up when you reach the peak of your jump and how he bobs downwards when you land there's there's like this buoyancy here that feels really good and this carries on over into performing jumps whenever your platforming I was really surprised but I was able to make really accurate jumps with total ease and the momentum from your prior movement it carries on over and each jump exactly as you'd expect it to there's no guesswork here I always felt like I was in total control of how far I'd go I talked a little bit about the character design being a representative of the characters abilities at the start of this video but now that I've got my hands on this thing I'm starting to understand that this character was not designed with the abilities in mind but instead with the physics in mind but that doesn't mean that rocket doesn't have many abilities aside from jumping around you've also got a tractor beam you can use to pick up and throw objects which again is a mechanic designed with physics in mind there's a lot of Chuck and objects around and pick it stuff up and bringing it somewhere else like maybe bringing screws to an object you have to fix or chucking bombs at walls you'll have to blow up be careful with the bombs though because if they pump something it's gonna blow up in your face whenever you're holding something it'll Bob around a little bit as you move once again taking advantage of the physics and because of this they're able to have the bomb bump into stuff if you're reckless movement makes it weave away into something it feels really natural it's kind of cool you can also use the bombs to take out enemies but I was having a real hard time landing the throw so then I thought wait a minute instead of throwing the bomb at the enemy I'll throw the enemy at the bomb and it worked I felt like a genius after figuring that out and then I felt like an idiot after I remembered you can just grab the enemy and use a ground pound move sometimes they get pretty creative with what you'll do with these grabbable objects like this sequence here we have to hit a button to magnetize the wall and then toss these metal boxes added to create platforms within a time limit it's fun as hell to do as you make your way through the game you'll pick up these tinker tokens which you can trade in to get new abilities these range from the before-mentioned ground pound move to an ice beam you can use to freeze things a grappling hook and a simple double jump I feel like double jumps are one of the least interesting moves you can put in a platformer so many freaking games have this exact same move I don't know I'd rather something more interesting and I feel like being able to cancel all of your momentum mid jump to always land exactly where you want takes a lot of the challenge away like in mario 64 for example the dive gives you more distance but it's risky you can overshoot something which makes getting good at using it all the more satisfying thinking back to a head in time I'm starting to realize how challenging that game isn't because you can just cancel that dive immediately with a double jump and just land it every time I'm not like trying to mark this as a take against the game or anything I don't think double jumps are inherently a bad thing I would just personally prefer something a little bit more interesting that's all what I do really love about this game's move set though is how the game never forgets about any of your moves later on into the game they still create obstacles that require using everything in your arsenal often and more challenging ways than before the ice beam for example you use it to freeze chunks of water to create platforms you can jump on but later on you're not doing just that you're also avoiding electric fences at the same time or you can just figure out you can make one at the bottom of the pool and use it to float to the top and skip the whole thing each world offers unique gimmicks and stuff too and there's a really good variety in both that and the themes of level sport whoopee world is the game's hub world and from there you'll access a variety of theme parks starting with a typical amusement park called world there's an ancient Greece theme park there's a mine and Arabian world and Aztec level and a Halloween Park the levels themselves are all fairly open-ended instead of being linear stages so it's closer to something like Mario and banjo than something linear like Rayman 2 or Glover or whatever you'll explore around freely looking for any puzzles or objectives and stuff you can complete in the clown world there's a part where you play this little ball tour when carnival game for a ticket this one's awesome you got to build a roller coaster that makes it through all of the numbered rings and then you get to ride it that's cool as hell I'm really glad the game follows on banjo steps by not booting you from the level every time you get a ticket a rocket just does a little celebration animation and then you get to go right back to exploring these are what you'll use to unlock more levels which kind of makes a lot of sense it fits the whole carnival theme so this is pretty much you know the game's equivalent of stars or gee-gees or whatever in addition to getting one ticket per objective completed there's also an extra ticket in every world if you can collect all 200 tokens these ones are a big pain in the ass but at least they don't respawn every time you leave the level or die so thankfully you don't have to get them all in one run God that was irritating as hell in some of those levels you're probably gonna skip out on these ones because hunting down every last token in a level is really freaking tedious and hey you can do that because you only have to collect so many tickets to unlock the next level there's plenty of wiggle room here so if there's an objective you don't feel like doing or a ticket you're having a hard time finding you'll still be able to make do with the ones you have this of course is the same wonderful structure that Mario 64 inventor used which is for a good reason because in my opinion it's the ideal way to progress and a collectathon giving the player the freedom to pick and choose what they do and don't want to do you know what you are probably gonna want to do though is drive these vehicles every single level has one or two unique vehicles you can drive and again these feel really good to operate because the physics and the controls are both really good the first ones this little buggy car thing you can use it for just to getting around the level faster but there's also a race you can I just realize this cars a hot dog I like that other vehicles include this robotic dolphin dude for swimming around you get a forklift thing for moving these big blocks a magic carpet for a flying around a level they all feel totally different from one and they're all really fun to drive incomplete objectives within their own right but the best one by a mile bar freakin none is this motorcycle that sprouts wings and can glide around the stage using the momentum you got from driving so there's a really good balance between gliding landing picking up more speed and taking off again there's a really good flow to it and again the controls in this thing are surprisingly good and it's so much fun to use like I really love this thing I would just fly around not even getting anything done because of how much fun it was just a DES fly and glide and land and get grand theft auto have a thing like this please I need an open-world game that has a vehicle like this some of them are more puzzle oriented instead of getting a round or hinted I like this one that launches paint at stuff this level is really cool it's an ancient Greece steam level or maybe it's ancient Rome I can never tell the difference because I'm dumb as hell but uh yeah there's also like these paint cannons or you can fire paintballs at stuff so it's kind of like a Greek or Roman paintball course which is something you could very well find at a real theme park and they do some really cool stuff with it this one puzzle here has a guard not letting you in because you're not wearing the proper Imperial colors or whatever so you've got to dip yourself in these pools of paint combining colors to make other colors and jumping in the right sections of the pool to decide whether you want to cover your head or just your body the Aztek level has this light world and dark world thing going on the dark world is like a volcano with rivers of lava everywhere and some puzzles and some platforming sections requires switching between the two this one puzzle here has you figuring out a combination in the dark world and then going back to the light world to enter it one detail here I really did love is how when you're in the dark world all of those illustrations of Jojo change to show is true nature this is one of the many things that you have to first activate by collecting all of the parts to a machine every level has a bunch of these machine parts scattered and once you find them all you can unlock a massive chunk of the level these levels are surprisingly easy to navigate to I feel like they're the perfect size like instead of making a giant world they instead opted out for medium sized maps that are all tightly packed with landmarks and things to do each and every area also looks very unique with a lot of memorable set pieces to keep your bearings with like I kid you not I only spent maybe like two hours and each of these levels yet thinking back to them I can remember all of them like the back of my hand that right there is the mark a really good world design the presentation overall is super good like the attention to detail and the choice in color and not only makes each area unique and memorable but it all looks really good too now if there's one fairly sizable problem I had with the game it's definitely the camera controls it's not as bad as some other games but it's certainly not super grade I found it getting caught on some stuff sometimes it just doesn't really know what to do when there's a wall in the way I mean actually controlling the thing is really responsive at least if there's nothing in the way of it and the three levels of zoom you have to choose from are perfect and no matter the situation there's always one of the three that'll give you a perfect view of everything you need it's just the rotation it gets stuck on stuff sometimes and I guess they could have picked a better sound for it too it's not as annoying as say tonic troubles camera sound but like I don't know it sounds like a freaking laser beam every time you hit the button once you've collected enough tickets it's time for the main attraction the showdown with Joe Joe raccoon rather than having a final boss fight he'll instead tackle a long and challenging platforming sequence and it tests all of the abilities you've learned throughout the game while having a series of set pieces themed after every level you've gone through it is quite long and difficult though and you will have to go back to the very beginning if you run out of health but it is pretty fair it's also really satisfying to learn each section and get progressively better until you can fly right through it except this paint area god I hated it so much you got to paint yourself the right colors and make your way to the door without a paint ball hitting you which is a really cool idea but using these spouts to paint yourself with instead of the pools from before is just a paint in the ass aside from this though it was a pretty great final challenge I love how Jojo reacts when you start getting close to the end he starts panicking and tries to barter with you so you don't wreck his plans once the raccoon is done for the park owner comes back and thanks for all kit for stopping JoJo's plans there's still tickets and tokens to find oh dear oh dear wait what there's there's no credits wait what do I have to get everything to get the credits yeah you do this is the one big thing I really don't like about this game I mean you can just settle for the standard ending after finishing the final level but the thing is without a credit sequence it just doesn't really feel like you beat the game you know if you want to get that you have to get everything I guess it's not so bad getting all the tickets is pretty fun actually it's no more taxing than getting all the stars in a Mario game they're all pretty doable I didn't really find any of them to stick out as tedious or a chore to do except you know the ones you get for finding all 200 tokens at a level remember those ones God these last couple of tickets drove me up the frickin wall I was running in circles looking for the last couple leagues in each level I must have been combing this level for two freaking hours before finding out it was way up here how is anybody supposed to find this with the short distance once you finally have everything the park is ready for its grand opening but the park owner decides to rename the park from whoopee world to rocket Land I think a little robots earned it after all it's brief but it's a nice ending but I really don't think you should have to collect everything just to get it I'm all for a fun bonus to reward players for getting everything but requiring it just to get the credits that just ain't right at least the credits are pretty interesting it's not your traditional text role instead you land in a room full of portraits of all the developers and you can pick them up to learn their name their expressions even change when you grab them that's kind of neat but yeah aside from that requirement for getting the ending I'd say this game really shattered my expectations I totally see why people seem to think so highly of it honestly I'm kind of blown away by how good this thing is because like I often come away from these older platformers looking for qualities that I find interesting even if the execution isn't all that great I try to appreciate the ideas while still outlining its flaws but this isn't really a situation like that this is just a straight-up really good game honestly I think out of everything I've gone into blind in this channel this is my favorite older platformer since Sphinx in the cursed mummy the controls of physics are great the level design is digestible and interesting and the objectives are creative and a ton of fun to do not to mention the character designs are really appealing I didn't really think a whole lot of rocket when I first saw him but it's not hard to let this cute little robot dude growing yeah I never really thought much about sucker-punches humble beginnings but good lord dude they really got a home run right out of the gate here rocket robot on wheels is easily one of the best platformers on the n64 right up there with Mario banjo and Rayman it's a dang crime that this game isn't as talked about as those three if you're a fan of platformers you gotta do yourself a favor and play this game though it is a little bit harder to get your hands on a cartridge these days so emulated I guess I don't know they really got a re-release this thing so people don't have to resort to that I mean like Sucker Punch is one of Sony's biggest first party developers right now give us an HD remake or at least a port Tomb on our platforms I mean a lot of games I have talked about in the past did get HD ports after I talked about on like Sphinx and voodoo vents so maybe we'll get lucky again who knows let's hope hey so like sorry I kind of looked like a sweaty ball sack this whole video it was like really hot and of course I had to turn off all of the fans for the audio recording so it wasn't really much to give you about that but yeah thanks for watching if you want to support the show I have a one-dollar podcast on patreon yeah hey thanks

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 269,595

Keywords: nitro rad, review, rocket, robot on wheels, sucker punch, sucker punch productions, infamous, sly cooper, platformer, n64, nintendo 64, underrated, hidden gem, robot, physics, nintendo power, top 20 games, easter eggs

Id: QuXE1rTY1q8

Length: 18min 58sec (1138 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 22 2019