Hybrid Heaven was hyped up a lot – while the PlayStation got Metal Gear Solid, Konami were also developing Hybrid Heaven for the N64 for its big action game featuring a complex plot. Hybrid Heaven didn’t perform anywhere near as well as Metal Gear Solid, though, and is not more of a cult classic, and even gets overlooked when people talk about RPG games on the N64 – as the game itself is a hybrid of action parts and RPG fighting.

The game starts off with a confusing cutscene, introducing what seems to be the main character before someone else shoots him. You start the game as Mr. Diaz before an early twist reveals that you’re actually the original Johnny Slater – the guy you killed in the opening cutscene while disguised as him.

An alien has betrayed his people and is creating improved clones to take over the world, however there’s a lot more depth and nuance, and your actions have the clones (called Hybrids) questioning various things about themselves and humans. There are many revelations and twists, and it’s a fascinating story. That said, I don’t think the personality of the characters shine through as much as they could – even the box art does a better job at that.

These Hybrids can look human, but most you encounter are various alien designs – using DNA of animals and other aliens to create “bio weapons”. All of them have been imbued with the knowledge of wrestling, as this is the main form of combat used – but it’s not like any typical wrestling game either, as it’s much more tactical and sort of turn based.

You move around in real time as a bar fills up, past a certain point you can start an attack, but wait, and you get more power behind your attack (later on in the game, you can store multiple full bars to perform combos or attacks in quick succession). There are a massive amount of punches and kicks for you to select, and if you grapple, you can perform other attacks like headbutts and suplexes. When an enemy attacks, the game pauses and you can select a form of defence you want to try.

It’s a fascinating system, and extremely in depth, but…each single fight takes 5-10 minutes. It’s exhausting, and you’ll likely enter the next room and have to do another. Each fight is very similar, and as pretty much every room is an empty square, the environment doesn’t change anything about the fight, either. Each battle feels almost the same, with the main differences being a few enemies with annoying habits, like ones that heal (you can’t see enemy health) and ones that turn invisible.

There’s an impressive amount of levelling up to do as well, each body part levels up independently (with separate stats for offence and defence), you have an overall level, and you have a chance to learn a new move when an enemy uses it on you. It’s all extremely well made – it’s just a bit too much.

The biggest problem with the game, however, is simply navigating the levels. It starts out fine, with a fairly linear structure, but it seems the developers use the level design to play tricks on you. In the second chapter, as you’re running away from a large creature, you encounter a narrow platform and a bottomless pit – the first in the game. As you’re running, the camera changes and you will fall into the pit. Luckily, platforming isn’t a huge part of the game, but this is the first example of the game messing with you.

When you have to hunt for the “navigator”, there are two nasty examples. First, there’s a section with a rounded area with lots of similar rooms. One huge problem in the game is that rooms look the same from any angle, and after a fight, it’s pretty much a guess if you’re going to pick the next door or the one you came in through.

So you go through this section with similar rooms, use a lift, go back and forth shooting switches, then use another lift. I then found myself in the exact same rooms as before and presumed I got turned around – but no, the entire section just repeats again.

There’s also a section where the camera suggests going through a door. There’s a lot of traps and enemies to avoid/shoot (with a camera positioned purposefully to make them hard to see). You then encounter a room with two locked doors. Go back to the starting room and there’s another door that was hidden behind where the camera was looking, here is where you get the keycard, but there’s also a locked you can now open door right next to the keycard – which leads right to the room you needed to get to. The long corridor with traps is just to waste your time.

Hybrid Heaven is a fascinating game. It has a great story and a very deep combat system – it just also comes with a lot of annoyances. I think the combat would be more special spread out more, and the navigation and shooting could have been much better,

Fun

However, you’ll find that Hybrid Heaven – for all its irritating faults – is a brave (and mostly successful) attempt at mixing 3D action-adventuring with RPG-style character building and some cinematic storytelling. It’s a rich and compelling mix, even if it is shot through with moments of irritation, and it’s quite, quite unique.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #33. Review Score: 83%

Remake or remaster?

This could be amazing as a complete remake. Alter the story a bit, make the level design make more sense, perhaps let people hotkey abilities to make the combat flow quicker, and perhaps up damage/lower health with more regular checkpoints so fights don’t go on for quite so long. And make the shooting much better, with multiple weapons.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Hybrid Heaven