Celebrating a gaming legacy with one of the best-value compilations of all time
Something of a hodge-podge, is this Xbox One exclusive. It’s a collection of 30 notable offerings from one of British game development’s most enduring names, returning all the way back to its origins as Ultimate Play The Game. But it’s an incomplete picture, missing several of the games for which Rare is most fondly remembered. Its piecemeal delivery is an awkward fudge, with some games unchanged, others emulated, and more appearing as high-definition updates. Yet it’s also a wonderfully generous package, valuable both for its historic significance and for its sheer volume.
What you get, then, is most – but not all – of the studio’s output between 1983’s Jetpac and 2008’s Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. That XO-exclusive status means some of its best games are missing due to licensing conflicts – most notably Donkey Kong Country and GoldenEye. Unavoidable perhaps, but disappointing nonetheless. What’s left covers three distinct periods in the company’s history, comprising 16 games from Rare’s classic arcade era, a further seven from its N64 years, and six Xbox 360 games. Then there’s original Xbox effort Grabbed By The Ghoulies, which somehow manages to feel as out of place now as it did upon release in 2003. That’s despite it being one of the most kindly treated of all the games featured here: it looks sharper and runs more smoothly than ever.
Many of those early games are more interesting as museum pieces, but some still hold up well – though if there’s a single common thread running through them all, it’s their high difficulty level. Happily, Rare Replay includes optional cheats to make certain games – we’re looking at you, Battletoads – more tolerable. Still, you’ll have to grit your teeth through the likes of Sabre Wulf and Cobra Triangle, while slower-paced isometric titles such as Knight Lore are unlikely to be revisited after the first few goes. Jetpac is still a superb single-screen arcade game, while RC Pro-Am and its sequel are as moreish as they are challenging. (Which is to say, very.)
Others are more enjoyable when presented in the snack-sized format that is Snapshots mode. Seemingly inspired by Nintendo’s NES Remix, this sets you five discrete tests to complete for each game, while themed playlists give you limited lives to beat back-to-back challenges across several games.
Having a blast
Of the N64 titles, meanwhile, four appear in emulated form, with another three in their upscaled Xbox 360 incarnations. Killer Instinct Gold doesn’t really stand up to close scrutiny, while Jet Force Gemini suffers badly from a baffling control scheme. Foul-mouthed platformer Conker’s Bad Fur Day, by contrast, is still wonderfully irreverent, despite a few questionable gags. But the brilliantly barmy Blast Corps, whose eccentric conceit asks you to demolish buildings before a runaway missile carrier can reach them, is the undoubted highlight here. It’s not much of a looker these days, but remains a thrilling one-off, quite unlike anything we’ve seen since. If there’s one classic Rare game that warrants a sequel on Xbox One, it’s this.
While the rest of the games are presented as being part of the same package, you’re whisked away from Rare Replay to play them. This includes Banjo-Kazooie and its sequel, as well as Perfect Dark, which are treated like the other Xbox 360 games, as your Xbox One temporarily pretends it’s a generation older.
If the three older games are still considered fan favourites, there’s much less affection for Rare’s last-gen output. In some cases, that’s understandable. Kameo: Elements Of Power is a serviceable adventure but nothing special, while Perfect Dark Zero felt dated at the time and is even more so now. But despite a gardening sim featuring candy-filled animals not being quite what people may have wanted or expected from Rare at the time, the two Viva Pinata games are a gaudy delight.
The final game, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, highlights the tensions within the studio at the time. It’s a flawed but inventive and characterful vehicle-building game, that nonetheless feels like a compromise between developer and publisher. It’s particularly fascinating to read the self-mocking dialogue in light of what’s happened since, with many Rare alumni having joined Playtonic Games to make Yooka-Laylee – the spiritual successor to Banjo Tooie it’s evident they yearned to make here. Nonetheless, while Nuts & Bolts has a little too much to say for itself, and is often needlessly convoluted, at its heart it’s a clever idea executed with no little charm and skill. In other words, exactly the kind of game upon which Rare justifiably earned its reputation.
Curtain call
All of this is tied together with some charming presentational touches. Load Rare Replay up and you’re invited to enter an old-fashioned theatre, with each game displayed as a piece of art in an ornate frame. Circus-style posters act as menu transitions, and converging drapes mask the brief load times when you bring up each new game. And if that wasn’t enough, a series of bonuses give you a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes, with concept art, making-of featurettes, and even a host of unseen ideas and unreleased music.
It’s just a pity that these extras won’t all be accessible to most players: you need to amass enough stamps, earned by achieving specific objectives within the games and in Snapshots mode, to unlock them. That’s fine when it’s just six stamps for something new, and you get one for simply playing a game for the first time; less so once it’s 12 to level up, and you need to complete Battletoads or Sabre Wulf to make progress.
While it’s easy to quibble about the omissions and inconsistencies, not to mention the debatable quality of some of the games, Rare Replay is still a rich and eclectic compendium – one which delicately preserves the heritage of a great British studio. What makes it even more exceptional is the price: we rarely factor that into reviews, but £20 for everything you get here is astonishingly generous. As such, this sizeable chunk of gaming history comes highly recommended to all Xbox One owners. It might be a bit of a ramshackle assembly in places, but so many games for so little dosh? Why, that is a Rare treat indeed.