20 Essential N64 Games You Must Play Before You Die

17. Body Harvest

Midway

Body Harvest is, for all intents and purposes, the precursor to that sandbox-style series we all know and love that names itself after the practice of irresponsibly jacking cars. The game's developer was eventually acquired by Take-Two Interactive and incorporated into the revenue-generating machine that's now Rockstar Games.

Before satirical jabs at American pop-culture and sociopath protagonists became the 'in' thing though, gamers were all about devouring copious amounts of science fiction stories about super soldiers, parasitic aliens and time travel. All of the standard 90s tropes, then.

Body Harvest ticks all of those boxes; Adam Driver's a genetically enhanced soldier who must travel to several specific points in mankind's history to eradicate an extraterrestrial force that's been harvesting his species for the last century.

Like its spiritual successor, the player has free reign to do whatever they want in Body Harvest's world - there's no set, linear path to adhere to. It's still worth a playthrough today, just for its legacy alone, but beware - it hasn't aged well aesthetically.

Contributor
Contributor

Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.