Eyyy, it's your old pal Pengu here once again with another review after leaving you all hanging since November. Today, I'll be reviewing an older title on the Sega Dreamcast, known as Blue Stinger.
I remember when I got my hands on this game around the time the Dreamcast had launched. I was surprised my parents had gotten me a shooter type of game since I was only 12, almost 13 at the time. Not to mention, it was a horror themed shooter supposedly in the same vein as Resident Evil. But, it was a game that I fell in love with very quickly, although I never completely understood why. The story was very average, the graphics were on par for a launch-title for the Dreamcast (although in some ways even Sonic Adventure looked better at points), the soundtrack was surprisingly short from what I noticed in a re-run, and overall it was an incredibly basic game. Granted, it was a basic game that I was never able to beat when I had played it on the original system.
But despite its basic nature and shoddy lip movements and timing with the English dub...what was it that made me so interested in this game to where it was my first choice many years later to finally beat on a working Dreamcast emulator?
I think the answer is actually within its flaws. Sure, the game was basic and had problems, but there was just a sort of charm to it within that basic nature that actually made it a bit more endearing to me. Some of the areas were enjoyable to go through, and it was sort of that easier difficulty to where anyone could jump in that made the game just...fun. At least in parts, and to a very certain extent. It was basically a Resident Evil knockoff with Dino gene mumbo jumbo instead of zombies, sprinkled in with some bad 90s humor and tropes, and given some Yakuza style fighting as an alternative to using guns or melee weapons. It was just damn good fun even in its most frustrating moments (Anything that involves your character balancing to not fall down a pit gives me anxiety), except for the consistent backtracking and other things I'll get into more in depth.
So that's really it. With that out of the way, let's get right to it.
Story65 million years ago, a meteor crashed into the Earth into the Yucatan Penninsula...the meteor that killed the dinosaurs and started the wheels for humans to be able to move forward. In the year 2000 AD, a small island known as Dinosaur Island appears where the meteor was thought to have landed, and a biotech industry known as Kimra Inc takes it over, turning the island into a vast research facility and small town for the island scientists.
On Christmas Eve of 2018, Elliot Ballade (pronounced Bah-lahd) is on vacation coincidentally near the island, fishing on a boat with his friend Billy (or Tim, the game gives him two names) as another meteor crashes into the very center of the island...and somehow causing an impenetrable dome to surround the outside just enough to trap Elliot inside (but trap his friend Billy on the outside in an unknown state since his arm gets caught on the same side as Elliot). A mysterious blue light flies over to Elliot and takes the form of Billy's good luck charm (a character named "Nephilim" from a game. With her silent urging (since she never talks) of his help, Elliot, an Emergency Sea Evacuation and Rescue officer, takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of Dinosaur Island.
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Now, in a way the plot is very cut and dry. Make your way through the island (with help from occasional people), kill monsters and people turned into monsters, figure out the mystery of the island and the meteor, kill a giant monster at the end.
In reality, it really doesn't stray from that plot at all. Everything in the game itself, even little detours in places you take, all are just to feed the main plot of getting to the meteor and finding a way to kill all the monsters. There's really no sidequests (aside from backtracking to a place or 2 for extra items), and the only subplot involving the characters Janine and Dogs is very much to the sidelines most of the time to keep the focus completely on Elliot and the meteor.
The only two detour areas that focus outside of the plot are the Power Plant (getting the power back on to the main Brain area (or basically the information tower where you backtrack to a few times), and the Biotechnical laboratory (where more of the focus is on saving Elliot when he gets infected). However, even the latter quest is all about learning how people are getting turned into monsters in the first place.
I will say one thing though: As basic as the story is, I absolutely loved the twist ending (which I recommend watching on Youtube all the way until the end).
GameplayThis is probably the bigger strength of the game in a way because of all of the sources it takes from, although it still has problems. You walk around, you pick up items, you buy items from vending machines, occasionally run into someone that needs help, and you fight. Again, on its own, it sounds incredibly basic, because it is. UI for buying weapons from the vending machine is straight out of Tomb Raider. The way weapons are handled and the enemies you fight? Straight out of Resident Evil. The way unarmed combat works? Very reminiscent of games like Yakuza. The atmosphere? Somewhere it's a cross between Resident Evil, and games that tend to use this odd futuristic-but-more-really-basic-"military base" types of looks. It's hard to describe, I'll post in more in screenshots. The only doors in this game are ones you'll be able to go through eventually, whether they start out unlocked, you unlock it from the other side, or you use a card or key (normally a card) to get in...basically reminding me of how games like Doom handle special doors...only this is quite a few doors.
The game itself as 2 difficulties: Normal and Easy. Normal itself is by far not challenging enough to ever warrant switching to Easy mode. Playing this on the Dreamcast for the first time, I basically breezed my way through up to the final boss on Normal Mode.
However, the game has an almost odd difficulty spike that doesn't spike until...well, the last boss. Throughout the game, you'll fight quite a few boss-like monsters, and they're normally not too bad. They're easy to dodge, and their only fault is that they can take a lot of hits with most weapons. The last boss, you'd expect to follow that pattern, right?
Nope. Unlike the others, not only is the boss even more of a tank (unless you have the game's best gun, aka the Ray Gun), but it's incredibly easy to get hit by the last boss and take a lot of punishment. Even if you're stocked up pretty well on healing items (which they can still hit you while you're using them since your character has to eat/drink the items), the difficulty level is pretty ridiculous. I actually had to wait until my most recent re-run with cheats to finally beat the last boss...which at the time I didn't realize that it was the final boss (since they never really note it and you're fighting a "clone" of the big bad monster rather than the actual one). So yeah, I was happy that I made it to the last boss with no cheats my first time around, but I wasn't happy that I had to rely on cheats just to beat it.
I'll also mention that after being spoiled with scene skips and pushing through dialogue with games nowadays, I absolutely loathe having to wait for dialogue and pauses until the game finishes with it. Normally games don't bother me that much (such as Sonic Adventure, which seems to even hurry through it sometimes). Blue Stinger, however, has a lot of problems with pauses. A character or terminal will stop talking, and the game will wait for 10 seconds (sometimes longer) before it moves on to even the next character talking.
This, admittedly, is probably the dubbing issue. While not terrible on a voice level, there were obvious problems when it came to timing. An American VA would stop speaking when it was obvious that the character originally talked a bit longer, so there would be this awkward pause until it cut to the next character or let you get back to the game.
And that brings me to a problem I didn't think about in my first playthrough: There are so many interruptions in gameplay. Your character carries a Metal Gear sort of comm device (oh look, another game rip off), and you're constantly...
constantly getting paged on it and don't have the option to ignore it. And before you ask, no. You can't get through an entire level area (like the Power Plant) without at least 2 or more interruptions by that stupid comm.
I did also mention that the game has backtracking issues as well to an extent. When you start the game, your objective is to get to the Brain Area...or the information control tower. After that, you're to go through the town, make your way to a bar by cutting through the marketplace freezer (after cutting through the marketplace itself)...and then you have to backtrack to the tower. Once you've done that, you have to head to the Power Plant to turn on the power...and then you have to backtrack to the information tower. After that, you have to go to the Biotechnical facility and go through that area...and then you have to backtrack to the information tower (now with destroyed roads on the way leading to certain death if you make a wrong step across some pipes). After that, you have to head to Janine's Apartment to get a sniper rifle...and then (say it with me) you have to backtrack to the information tower.
It's funny, because in a way each area you go to is basically fetching things for this character that stays in that tower. It's basically a game of fetch quests hidden behind killing zombie-like monsters and other creatures. And this back and forth goes through the entire game all the way up to all of the characters leaving for the final area.
The kicker? There's no fast travel. You don't immediately pop back up at the tower at any occasion whatsoever, and have to walk the entire way every time. The only exception is using the jeep to get from the tower to the biotechnical research lab near the end of the game...and even then it's entirely useless since you have to hoof it back on foot to the tower once you're done there.
You do unlock a completely useless shortcut between two parts of the town at one point. I say useless because after you've unlocked it, the only reason to even head back is to get a small amount of extra cash from debit cards you pick up on corpses, and unlocking the Omega Club (using a key you find in the power plant) for some minor health items and a Ray Sword which most people would have already bought near the beginning of the game.
Overall, the gameplay isn't bad, but it could have been a lot better than it was. I did like that you could choose at any time between Dogs and Elliot (Elliot who was quicker and could dodge a little easier, Dogs who was slower, but had stronger attacks). My only gripe with
that however was that there were points in the game where Dogs or Elliot would say that they'd stay behind...and yet you're still able to choose between them in that area, so the dialogue of them saying it made absolutely no sense.
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Music and SoundAgain, for the most part the music was absolutely nothing special. Aside from the Power Plant/Apartments and Lab Town, the music had one specific type of theme and feel and it all sounded the same. I don't know what to call the genre specifically, but it's that music that plays when your character is running out of time to save the world, or something like that. It tries to sound super intense and get you pumped to kill things, but it's so bland and forgettable that it more or less is just background noise.
The only 2 exceptions to this rule, as I said, are the Power Plant/Apartment and Cinema areas, and Lab Town. The Power Plant (and by extension the Apartment and Cinema areas since they use the same song) slows the music down quite a bit and turns it into a type of horror sounding piece...like if you were to pop around the corner, something might pop out and kill you in a quick instance. If anything, I actually liked this style a bit more, and wish it was better mixed into the game, since even musically it seemed to struggle with finding its own identity.
Lab Town has my absolute favorite music. Okay, so it's Christmas Eve, and the town you're going through is absolutely littered with Christmas posters and advertisements. Even the Marketplace has a fun sort of cheer to it normally. Now throw dead bodies, destroyed set pieces in buildings such as fallen barrels and broken mirrors, and toss in some 4 armed mutant monster people (and occasionally annoying flying beasts as well).
What in your mind would be the perfect music to be playing through that type of area and marketplace?
If you guessed upbeat Christmas-y music that you'd expect in some cheesy corporate Sales ad from like the 1920s...you're right! Lab Town (And by extension Hello Market) was always my favorite part of the game, because nothing beats fighting monsters while this song is playing:
And to this day, THAT was what I was really looking forward to with the game re-run. It's such a catchy little song that even to this day, after not playing it for 17 years I STILL remembered it bit by bit. The only other game to have a song that I remembered exactly after that long of a playthrough was Time Stalkers on the same system (the main hub area when you're not in a level).
Sound wise, nothing special. Voices were fine even if dubbing was off pacing wise for the rest of the game, and sounds were never too intrusive or annoying.
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GraphicsAs I mentioned earlier, this is pretty on par for a launch Dreamcast title. It doesn't look bad by any means, but nowadays it does look a bit dated (as most early 3D games do at some point). But for what it was...at the time I first got the system it looked gorgeous despite its basic nature. My only main gripe aside from occasional graphical glitches were the CG videos...which for the most part were ugly and did nothing to make the characters look better.
Regular graphics:
CG graphics example
Overall, the differences were incredibly minimal and had no point.
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ReplayabilityNone. There's no sidequests, no real reason to play again...and in all honesty it's not interesting enough to make you want to play through a second time unless it's many months/years down the row.
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OverallOverall, it absolutely has issues. It definitely suffers an identity crisis because it takes so much from other games, and the original coating is so incredibly bland and dull. It does have its endearing bits such as a whimsical sounding Christmasy-ish song playing while you're killing things, and I actually did enjoy walking through some areas as well as some of the gameplay aspects (believe it or not, I actually like the finding-cards-to-unlock-doors bit). But it's so bogged down by bugs, awkward pauses due to bad dubbing (the way it was done, not the VAs themselves), and such a middle of the road boring story most of the time that it can be hard to recommend.
Yet, I will say that there's just something to it, whether it IS that upbeat Christmas music hiding in all of the super-"intense" bland music, or just the little things like how easy it is to get through (for the most part) that don't make it an absolute chore (and in some ways a little endearing) to get through. While I absolutely loved it for the little stuff back then, recently I still enjoyed it to a smaller extent, but it's definitely not on any of my top lists.
One thing is for sure. While I can't entirely recommend this as a serious game, I can recommend it as a terrible, yet somewhat cheesy one that has to be experienced at least once. I know I'll be looking for more games with that odd quirky little charm hidden within them.
