3RRDC Blue Stinger

By now I'm sure many of you have either heard of blue stinger or
played it. While it was a launch game for the American Dreamcast, I
just picked it up not to long ago. For years I heard that it was an
aweful, terrible, and horrible game with bad graphics and some of the
worst camera angles known to man. So I decided never to pick it up...
until now. After playing the great Illbleed, and remembering that Blue
stinger was an earlier work of climax graphics, I decided to pick it up.
But is this game really as bad as some people say it is? Let's check out
dinosaur island to find out.

The story takes place in the future about 15 or so years from now. The
hero Eliot G. Ballade, a member of some sea rescue organization, is out
on vacation, cruising on a boat near dinosaur island. A giant meteor
falls from the sky and hits the island and then Eliot awakes on dinosaur
island to see what the explosion has done. He will soon meet up with
Dogs Bower, a sea captain who is the other playable character in this
game. Aided by a mysterious spirit girl, and computer whiz (and love
interest for Eliot) Janine King, can they solve the mystery of dinosaur
island? Or will the new zombie residents and other mutants have them
for lunch? Overall I found the story to be somewhat interesting, and I
rather enjoyed the characters and how they interacted with one
another.

People have said this is just a poor resident evil clone, and while that
may be true to a degree, Blue stinger does offer some interesting
game play mechanics. In your quest to kill zombies you will find that
weapons and ammo can be bought (along with healing items) in
vending machines found all over the place. You really never have to
worry about running out of ammo for either character as a vending
machine is always likely near by. But you need money for those things,
where you gonna get that, from the zombies? Why yes. When you kill a
zombie their dead body will release a bunch of coins. It looks strange,
sounds strange, and it is strange, but it is unique.

I've said that you get two characters to choose from. Switching
between them is done a lot like resident evil zero on the gamecube.
Just press start and go into character change. Each character has
their own weapons and skills, such as Eliot can swim, Dog's can't. So if
one of your guys is dying, just switch him with the other one and
continue to kill the baddies. Ahh but these men do more than just kill.
Also a unique aspect of blue stinger is when you eat one of the many
life recovering power ups (which range from hamburgers and hot dogs,
to sandwiches and steak dinners) you actually have to watch your
character eat the food. At first I found this to be cool, but after the
20th hot dog, I just wanted them to eat it and hurry up. Characters also
have animations for reloading their guns, which is more realistic then
resident evil's reload in the pause screen. But this too can get
annoying as enemies can attack you while you're eating or reloading.
But the developers, (then) Climax Graphics, gets props for doing some
stuff differently than the standard. Plus they put in a lot of different
weapons to play with, 22 to be exact. I found myself using about
mainly 6 of them max, throughout the game.

Graphics wise, you can tell this game is one of dreamcast's first.
Characters models might have looked just ok then, but now they look
really dated. Hands don't look good, the joints in characters' bodies
don't good and overall just scream first generation. Enemies are a little
better. But there's really about 1 kind of zombie throughout the entire
game, some wear different shirts, and there are various other
monsters. Not much variety, but at least the monsters look better than
the ones in Carrier. The level design is hit and miss. Some places like
the town, which includes a convenience store, arcade, and other local
joints, looks really cool, because of climax graphic's signature touch
for detail. I had fun looking at all the cool Christmas (which is when the
game takes place) signs around the town and I felt that they did a
really good job with that. Some places, mainly the boring facilities, or
anything outside the town, are lifeless and bland looking. P.S look out
for a cameo appearance from the crazy critters from "pen pen
tricelon" in the supermarket and around town!

Now would be a good time to mention the infamous camera angles.
People hate it. And honestly it's one of the wackiest camera's I've ever
come across. When you enter a room the stupid thing always swivels
right behind you and then looks down on your character. In narrow hall
ways it gets worse because if you stop the camera will automatically
get behind you and show you a nice view of your character's head.
Now activison claims that they improved the camera for the American
release, and if that's true then man do I feel sorry for the Japanese
gamers. I can't even begin to imagine how horrible it must have been
in the original version.

But if the game does something right it's the sound. Well mostly. Guns
and such sound good, as do the short range weapons like the beam
saber. I don't recall the enemies having any voices. They might have
but I don't think so. Maybe just a generic roar. The main characters all
have fantastic English Dubs which really helped the game out. From
Eliot's cool guy voice, to Dog's aggressive and raspy voice the game
shines here. The cutscenes where Eliot and co interact are hilarious,
one of my favorite being a certain bath scene. As for the music, the
happy Christmas time theme of the town was memorable, but
everything else was really bland. Please not that while the character
voices are good, the lip synching is horrible. Some of the worst I've
ever seen.

For replay, you can beat the game a number of times to get infinite
ammo and play as Eliot in a swim suit. But honestly if someone plays
through this once, I can't really see anyone playing thorough it again.
The game took me about 7 hours to beat (which is similar to climax
graphics other two dc games Illbleed and Time stalkers). So it's short
and for the most part very easy. I had to consult a walkthrough a few
times online when I didn't know what to do.

In the end if you played and loved the other survival horror game from
climax graphics (now crazy games) "Illbleed", you probably will like
this one. It's so obvious they were made by the same company. Blue
stinger even has the same character animations when your hero is
knocked to the ground. Also can't forget the blue stinger references in
Illbleed. They even both have the same power up drink! And I think a
few of the same American voice actors. But blue stinger has like hardly
any blood. Zombies give off a little when they die, but most other
baddies bled green ooze. Nothing in the game was scary (Except the
camera angles) and it featured some excessive language. Nothing too
much though. But if you wanna try a kinda funny take on survival
horror go play Illbleed, AND THEN play this.

Review by: Orochi Sonic