Quando um survival horror não se leva a sério, nasce um Blue Stinger. Praticamente uma paródia dos grandes sucessos da época do Play1, Blue Stinger entrega uma história tão nada ver que acaba ficando interessante.
Atuações péssimas (tradição no gênero), controles ultrapassados e gráficos datados e charmosos, fazem esse jogo confundir os sentimentos de quem termina ele.
Seria um jogo bom ou ruim? Se a intenção foi ser uma sátira de survival horror, acredito que acertaram em cheio.
Atuações péssimas (tradição no gênero), controles ultrapassados e gráficos datados e charmosos, fazem esse jogo confundir os sentimentos de quem termina ele.
Seria um jogo bom ou ruim? Se a intenção foi ser uma sátira de survival horror, acredito que acertaram em cheio.
This game is a steaming pile but it does have its charms. Dogs Bower is an extremely funny name for a protagonist.
This is a game some other friends of mine have told me is awful and not worth even looking at for ages, but a few weeks back a bunch of people on the Slack chat were talking about how much campy fun it was, and we all decided to play or replay through it over the course of the month~. I'm not much one for survival horror games, but for the 300 yen price of entry, I was willing to give Blue Stinger a shot even if it was something I ended up hating, particularly with what I'd heard about the Japanese version's different camera. It took me about 9.5 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game on normal difficulty on normal hardware.
Released in 1999, Blue Stinger takes place in the faaaar future of 2018. In 2000, a big earthquake on the Yucatan Peninsula causes a ton of it to sink into the ocean, and a new island to appear on top of it. This is believed to be the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, so it's called Dinosaur Island. Elliot, our main character is boating nearby when a weird meteor strikes the island and traps it in a big weird dome. He's attacked by strange monsters that are unleashed from the island, but manages to survive and wash up onto the island. He's found by the foul-mouthed Dogs (that's his name), and the two of them team up to try and find out what's wrong with the island along with radio assistance from a sniper on the island, Janine.
The story is a giant campy romp through a pastiche of action sci-fi movies. Having played the Japanese version and seen just how quick and weirdly overly detailed the subtitles are (this game has no Japanese dub, only subtitles, despite being a Japan-developed game), I'd also argue it's specifically an homage to poorly localized American action movies, and that's an element lost in translation to the English versions of the game. Another very fun thing about the game is that the VA is actually quite competently done for 1999, and even better that it's done by a bunch of the same VA folks who provided (or would provide) voices for Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, as Elliot has Sonic's VA, Dogs has Robotnik's (and sounds a LOT like him too), and Janine has Rouge's (and her voice is exactly the same). I got tons of big belly laughs out of just what a pig-headed buffoon Elliot is and what a wise-cracking jerk Dogs can be to him in response. They have great chemistry, and the slightly awkward English they speak only adds to that charm. For someone with a lot of nostalgia for Sonic Adventure 2 like me, the camp value is kinda incalculable, but even for someone unfamiliar with that, there's a ton to laugh at in Blue Stinger.
Now I know I opened the review by mentioning that Blue Stinger is a survival horror game, but that's a bit of a fib on my part. The truth is that Blue Stinger is really just an action game with a fixed camera like Resident Evil or Silent Hill uses, at least in the Japanese version. The English versions of the game lock the camera behind your shoulder to help with combat, but I think that also in turn makes puzzle solving a bit more difficult since the camera is now no longer guiding you towards important objects. The combat is ultimately so easy that I don't think it really needed "fixing" like that, and I'd argue the Japanese version of the game is simply the better one, but I think it's not a point super worth debating.
The gameplay itself is very survival horror like but with the quality of life features of an action game. You have clunky combat and movement, but also respawning enemies who drop money (only the enemies who drop money respawn) and infinite items you can buy. You could theoretically just grind near the start of the game for untold hours and get all the max health upgrades and items right then. It'd take you a SUPER long time, but you could do it. I found it decent fun to play. It has the same sort of awkward jankyness that all those old fixed camera horror games have (although this is a new level of awkward, as you don't actually have true tank controls and can rarely get screwed by the camera sorta getting you stuck), but the writing really carried the experience for me.
The presentation is pretty impressive for 1999. Character models look quite uncanny by today's standards, but it adds to the campy charm for me. The music is pretty unvaried and not terribly impressive, but the monster designs are cool and disturbing (sometimes surprisingly so) and the environments look nice too.
Verdict: Recommended. This is going to be a game a lot of people bounce off of, but if what I've described here sounds appealing, I think the game is well worth checking out. It's a game pretty easily picked up for cheap, so it shouldn't set you back terribly even if you end up not liking it. Who knows? It just might end up being one of your favorite Dreamcast games like it was for me~ (granted I have played very few XD).
Este juego ha acabado con mi cordura. La cámara es un caos, la diferencia entre enemigos es un caos, la música, pese a ser buena, te taladra la cabeza a tal volumen que los diálogos se quedan relegados a un segundo plano. Sus ideas son originales e intenta implementar veinte mil mecánicas que se quedan todas a medio fuelle. No suelo dejar juegos sin acabar pero este ha podido conmigo. Sigo sin entender qué demonios pasa, solo sé que el protagonista quiere mojar el churro desesperadamente. Antes que esto probad Illbleed que, por lo menos, merece la pena.
Junk
Probably should have been a Jurassic Park straight-to-vhs movie. Great voice acting for the time, but poor controls, over the top sexism, and weird story makes this a no for me.
The game isn't that fun to play, the controls are sluggish and the camera is unhelpful, as a lot of games from this time period are. However despite that the game has a ton of charm to it in its dialog and presentation that I can't REALLY hate it. I definitely can't reccomend it to everyone, but it is definitely something you should check out if you are into some cheese and can tolerate its age
Much like this company's other game, Illbleed, Blue Stinger has a great world and atmosphere that's marred by poor gameplay. Unlike Illbleed, however, Blue Stinger's world can't make up for the gameplay shortcomings, and completing this game can be a miserable experience. There's enough here for me to enjoy, but not enough to merit playing through the entire game rather than watching a playthrough online.
i cant do this
anyone know if theres an indie game out there thats directly inspired by this game (detailed dreamcast visuals and lighting with survival horror mechanics).
I think Blue Stinger has a lot of cool ideas and is a solid survival horror especially on the Dreamcast.
It can be decently funny which I sometimes wonder is intentional. The story was kind of all over the place and weird but I still thought the setting was pretty interesting despite a ton of mistranslated dialog and set pieces. I'm also a big fan of some of the boss fights and environments.
Game has a ton of weapons, several I didn't even get to to try so i'd say it'd be fun to replay. However, the general clunkiness overall makes it something I don't see myself returning to, but I'm still glad I checked it out and enjoyed my time.
It can be decently funny which I sometimes wonder is intentional. The story was kind of all over the place and weird but I still thought the setting was pretty interesting despite a ton of mistranslated dialog and set pieces. I'm also a big fan of some of the boss fights and environments.
Game has a ton of weapons, several I didn't even get to to try so i'd say it'd be fun to replay. However, the general clunkiness overall makes it something I don't see myself returning to, but I'm still glad I checked it out and enjoyed my time.
"The only reason I didn't give it a 5 are the camera controls (or lack there of), and the swimming" was my old review, now I don't care, it is a 5/5 game.
After watching TransWitchSammy play Illbleed at the behest of myself and Appreciations, I knew Blue Stinger was the next game she ought to play in order to fully appreciate Crazy Games and Shinya Nishigaki's mad genius. However, I'd previously committed to playing the game myself and had intended to do so in December, coinciding with when the game takes place, and it was quickly settled that I would play and stream it instead.
I'd like Sammy to know I took a bullet for her and I hope she never forgets the sacrifice I made.
DINOSAUR ISLAND TRAVEL LOG
Day 1:
For a Sega Dreamcast launch title and a first outing by Nishigaki's Climax Graphics (rebranded to Crazy Games two years later), Blue Stinger leads with its best foot forward.
Elliot Ballade is sailing around Dinosaur Island with his friend, who is so busy occupying himself with fitting a PVC figurine into a jar that he gets caught in a time dilation bubble. Elliot is saved a short time later by Dogs Bower, and now might be a good time to mention Masaki Segawa of Basilisk fame did all the character designs for Blue Stinger. Not to disparage his future work, but he's really never designed someone quite like Dogs since.
The story takes itself a little more seriously than Illbleed, with Nishigaki preferring to skew more towards a tone similar to that of Jurassic park, carefully balancing action and suspense while sprinkling in bits of his humor. People are mutating into horrible amalgamations of mammal and reptile, and though you have an arsenal of traditional and high-tech weapons, you can also like, put on a sumo shirt and come at them like the gassed up middle-aged, denim shorts wearing freak of nature Dogs is-- and all while thunderous music by composer Toshihiko Sahashi (who later worked on Gundam Seed) blares at a level that's just a bit too high in the mix to be able to hear your friends talk over Discord even with the game dropped to 20% volume.
In other words: this is a crazy game by Crazy Games. Or it is for now....
Day 2:
It doesn't take long to reach the Hello Market section of the game, which is littered with tons of great examples of video game signage, including so much marketing for Hassy Recovery Cola that you might be forgiven thinking it's a real product you can put your real lips to. However, Hello Market also exposes an especially frustrating aspect of Blue Stinger's design that plagues it through the duration of the game: it's "gero camera," the Japanese onomatopoeia for vomiting, which Nishigaki unaffectionately refers to it as in in an interview with Game Developer's John Andersen.
The camera tightly follows the player-character, and is at times so closely zoomed in that your visability when entering a room is limited to the back of your character's head. This was the result of an edict by Activision, which felt this sort of camera system would play better in Western markets as opposed to the more zoomed out position it takes in the Japanese version, because why on Earth would you want your game to be readable?
Unfortunately, I don't speak Japanese and I want to hear Deem Bristow go "GAH'CHA!" so I was forced to constantly eat shit when entering into rooms because Blue Stinger's enemy placement is practically the template Signalis followed, only with greater and more devious intent. It's fine, I spent all my money on large cans of Hassy. Dogs is leaving Dinosaur Island with his life and the price is only a few thousand dollars in soft drinks and completely calcified kidneys.
Day 3:
I'm starting to get a little frustrated.
Elliot is equipped with a shotgun and Dogs has a god damn gatling gun, and both these weapons do shit damage. What the hell, man? How do you make a video game gatling gun feel bad. How do you make a video game gatling gun wielded by reigning sumo champ Dogs Bower feel bad.
The whole weapon economy is fucked. Your arsenal is largely purchased from vending machines, necessitating a certain amount of grinding to afford new armaments. But when certain guns feel weak despite their cache in gaming culture, blowing 8,000 bucks on a laser sword or bazooka carries a risk that the weapon might be a total waste of money. Do you want to horde your cash and trade it in for ammo, cheeseburgers, and hot dogs? Or do you want to see what's in the mystery box?
By this point, the wildly variable audio mixing was actively causing problems with hearing my friends and being able to absorb needed context for where to go and what to do. Sammy became my Otacon, using a guide to keep me grounded and focused on the task at hand, only we discovered so deep into the walkthrough that the author was littering it with half-truths and totally glossing over important pieces of information, as if they too were a bit fed up with Blue Stinger. If IAmYoFatha was on the job, this wouldn't have happened, but he's either dead or in jail.
Day 4:
Elliot swallowed monsters.
Day 5:
Ok, man, let me tell you about burger-frames.
The final boss comes after a three minute and 45 second long defense mini-game with no save inbetween, meaning at minimum you're doing that over again if you die. Or worse, you'll have to do that plus a run back down and up a tower to restock on bazooka ammo if you didn't have the foresight to overstock your supply beforehand, because it's about the only thing that does a reliable amount of damage.
Despite having predictable patterns and attacks that can be led, the final boss feels like a bunch of random bullshit. His fire breath frequently hits outside of the effect and sometimes does not actually harm you when standing directly in the middle of it. I cannot stress enough how wildly incongruous the hitbox is with the animation itself. It also deals an insane amount of damage, killing Elliot in two hits if you didn't upgrade his health (something I didn't know was even possible until after I beat the game) and Dogs in three.
This is where cheeseburgers come in. Of all the consumable items in the game, cheeseburgers have the longest period of invulnerability from the time you eat them to the time your health is recovered, meaning you could bypass potential damage by eating a cheeseburger at the right frame of the boss's attack. At worst, you'll get a little cooked but still heal, rubbing your tummy while your head is engulfed in flames. This was the only way I was able to keep myself alive and beat the boss.
By this point, I was already at my wits end with Blue Stinger, frequently flipping the high-speed toggle in Redream and going "VROOOOM" while throwing sumo chops at a million miles an hour just to keep myself awake and invested in what was happening. Towards the end of the final night, I was making plans to buy a Japanese copy of the game and frame it.
"Oh, you must like this game a lot, huh?" some unsuspecting guest might say.
"Fucking no I do not!"
___________________________________________________
Blue Stinger is brimming with charm, humor, and that signature Nishigaki style. It's also obtuse, frustrating, and ill-conceived. It has Dogs Bower and Hassy, and it also has the worst gatling gun in video games and a "vomit camera." It's Crazy Games - or rather Climax Graphics - at its most nascent but not at its most pure.
Stand for the national anthem.
I'd like Sammy to know I took a bullet for her and I hope she never forgets the sacrifice I made.
DINOSAUR ISLAND TRAVEL LOG
Day 1:
For a Sega Dreamcast launch title and a first outing by Nishigaki's Climax Graphics (rebranded to Crazy Games two years later), Blue Stinger leads with its best foot forward.
Elliot Ballade is sailing around Dinosaur Island with his friend, who is so busy occupying himself with fitting a PVC figurine into a jar that he gets caught in a time dilation bubble. Elliot is saved a short time later by Dogs Bower, and now might be a good time to mention Masaki Segawa of Basilisk fame did all the character designs for Blue Stinger. Not to disparage his future work, but he's really never designed someone quite like Dogs since.
The story takes itself a little more seriously than Illbleed, with Nishigaki preferring to skew more towards a tone similar to that of Jurassic park, carefully balancing action and suspense while sprinkling in bits of his humor. People are mutating into horrible amalgamations of mammal and reptile, and though you have an arsenal of traditional and high-tech weapons, you can also like, put on a sumo shirt and come at them like the gassed up middle-aged, denim shorts wearing freak of nature Dogs is-- and all while thunderous music by composer Toshihiko Sahashi (who later worked on Gundam Seed) blares at a level that's just a bit too high in the mix to be able to hear your friends talk over Discord even with the game dropped to 20% volume.
In other words: this is a crazy game by Crazy Games. Or it is for now....
Day 2:
It doesn't take long to reach the Hello Market section of the game, which is littered with tons of great examples of video game signage, including so much marketing for Hassy Recovery Cola that you might be forgiven thinking it's a real product you can put your real lips to. However, Hello Market also exposes an especially frustrating aspect of Blue Stinger's design that plagues it through the duration of the game: it's "gero camera," the Japanese onomatopoeia for vomiting, which Nishigaki unaffectionately refers to it as in in an interview with Game Developer's John Andersen.
The camera tightly follows the player-character, and is at times so closely zoomed in that your visability when entering a room is limited to the back of your character's head. This was the result of an edict by Activision, which felt this sort of camera system would play better in Western markets as opposed to the more zoomed out position it takes in the Japanese version, because why on Earth would you want your game to be readable?
Unfortunately, I don't speak Japanese and I want to hear Deem Bristow go "GAH'CHA!" so I was forced to constantly eat shit when entering into rooms because Blue Stinger's enemy placement is practically the template Signalis followed, only with greater and more devious intent. It's fine, I spent all my money on large cans of Hassy. Dogs is leaving Dinosaur Island with his life and the price is only a few thousand dollars in soft drinks and completely calcified kidneys.
Day 3:
I'm starting to get a little frustrated.
Elliot is equipped with a shotgun and Dogs has a god damn gatling gun, and both these weapons do shit damage. What the hell, man? How do you make a video game gatling gun feel bad. How do you make a video game gatling gun wielded by reigning sumo champ Dogs Bower feel bad.
The whole weapon economy is fucked. Your arsenal is largely purchased from vending machines, necessitating a certain amount of grinding to afford new armaments. But when certain guns feel weak despite their cache in gaming culture, blowing 8,000 bucks on a laser sword or bazooka carries a risk that the weapon might be a total waste of money. Do you want to horde your cash and trade it in for ammo, cheeseburgers, and hot dogs? Or do you want to see what's in the mystery box?
By this point, the wildly variable audio mixing was actively causing problems with hearing my friends and being able to absorb needed context for where to go and what to do. Sammy became my Otacon, using a guide to keep me grounded and focused on the task at hand, only we discovered so deep into the walkthrough that the author was littering it with half-truths and totally glossing over important pieces of information, as if they too were a bit fed up with Blue Stinger. If IAmYoFatha was on the job, this wouldn't have happened, but he's either dead or in jail.
Day 4:
Elliot swallowed monsters.
Day 5:
Ok, man, let me tell you about burger-frames.
The final boss comes after a three minute and 45 second long defense mini-game with no save inbetween, meaning at minimum you're doing that over again if you die. Or worse, you'll have to do that plus a run back down and up a tower to restock on bazooka ammo if you didn't have the foresight to overstock your supply beforehand, because it's about the only thing that does a reliable amount of damage.
Despite having predictable patterns and attacks that can be led, the final boss feels like a bunch of random bullshit. His fire breath frequently hits outside of the effect and sometimes does not actually harm you when standing directly in the middle of it. I cannot stress enough how wildly incongruous the hitbox is with the animation itself. It also deals an insane amount of damage, killing Elliot in two hits if you didn't upgrade his health (something I didn't know was even possible until after I beat the game) and Dogs in three.
This is where cheeseburgers come in. Of all the consumable items in the game, cheeseburgers have the longest period of invulnerability from the time you eat them to the time your health is recovered, meaning you could bypass potential damage by eating a cheeseburger at the right frame of the boss's attack. At worst, you'll get a little cooked but still heal, rubbing your tummy while your head is engulfed in flames. This was the only way I was able to keep myself alive and beat the boss.
By this point, I was already at my wits end with Blue Stinger, frequently flipping the high-speed toggle in Redream and going "VROOOOM" while throwing sumo chops at a million miles an hour just to keep myself awake and invested in what was happening. Towards the end of the final night, I was making plans to buy a Japanese copy of the game and frame it.
"Oh, you must like this game a lot, huh?" some unsuspecting guest might say.
"Fucking no I do not!"
___________________________________________________
Blue Stinger is brimming with charm, humor, and that signature Nishigaki style. It's also obtuse, frustrating, and ill-conceived. It has Dogs Bower and Hassy, and it also has the worst gatling gun in video games and a "vomit camera." It's Crazy Games - or rather Climax Graphics - at its most nascent but not at its most pure.
Stand for the national anthem.
This review contains spoilers
Blue Stinger is according to the internet an “Action Adventure” video game developed by Climax Graphics as an exclusive for the SEGA Dreamcast, the last in SEGA’s lineup in consoles before they shut down their console series and stuck to developing games for their competitors in the future. However, in their final stretch they helped either develop or publish some pretty good bops such as Sonic Adventure, Shenmue, Crazy Taxi, Skies of Arcadia, and Jet Set Radio; the list only getting bigger and bigger. They also commissioned some smaller hits or games that kind of slid under the radar: this game I feel is one of those games. Originally created as a debut launch title for the Dreamcast, it originally started as a title by Shinya Nishigaki, whom wanted to create a “tribute to western action movies” on the SEGA Saturn before it was requested for development to be switched to the Dreamcast instead (and it kind of shows). Early plans for the game included AI companions and a third character that could be switched too. The devs originally worked as Climax Entertainment’s CGI department before branching off into their own company for this game. While the game missed the Japanese Dreamcast Launch, it hit the U.S. just in time for the North American launch with Sonic Adventure, House of the Dead II and Soulcalibur. My history with this game is rather limited; I purchased this game for around 60-70 dollars on Ebay because it was listed as a “survival horror exclusive” for the Dreamcast. I picked it up after talking with a buddy of mine about Dreamcast Exclusives and I kind of went down a rabbit hole, picking up games like Blue Stinger, Illbleed, The Ring: Terror’s Realm, D2 and a couple of other games for the express purpose of sitting down and playing one day. Earlier in the year, I decided to beat one game per console per year, and after narrowing the games down with another buddy, they picked this game for me to stream for them.
Blue Stinger is the story of an 80s action B-Movie dressed up in chunky graphics and dressed up on a cheese platter. It starts with a flashback to sixty five million years ago, a giant meteor crashes on Earth and destroys all life on the planet, eviscerating the dinosaur population. Millions of years later, Dinosaur Island is formed after an earthquake sinks the entire Yucatan Peninsula, leaving a patch of land and the Kimra Biological Organization swoops in to claim ownership. Eighteen years later however, a giant light shoots down over Dinosaur Island, forming a dome sealing everyone off from the outside world and Eliot Ballarde, a member of the Emergency Sea Evacuation and Rescue (ESER for short) whose vacation with his buddy Tim is interrupted by this giant dome and attempting to figure out the source of the issue, makes his way over to Dinosaur Island to rescind the dome. Along the way he meets the gruff captain of the S.S. Anna, Dogs Bower, who tags along with Eliot before they meet the final member of their team: Jeanine King, a member of the KISS Security Force on Dinosaur Island, who introduces herself by saving the lives of both men. How does Eliot respond? By incessantly hitting on her while she kind of slyly ignores it, to which Dogs responds by going on strange and hateful rants. Here’s my thing with the three characters: if I were to describe Eliot in one word it would simp because by god does he simp for Jeanine. While it’s not the worst thing, in fact I feel like the right wing’s love for it is sad because I’m down to simp for a bad bitch and I don’t care who knows it, it just kind of feels like that’s his entire personality in the game. Dogs is the meme character of the game, someone who at first came off with cool dad vibes before just increasingly becoming worse and worse with hateful sounding stuff (a subplot revealed that Dogs is Jeanine’s father, and they had issues after her mother divorced and/or died. I guess my main issue with this is that the way they talk, I didn’t even understand if there was conflict or if Dogs was just a weird misogynist). Jeanine just kind of responds in a manner that feels like she’s ignoring both men while maintaining a charming attitude to it all. I chalk this up to the strange writing and translation, and what I can say is that it feels kind of outdated with both the dialogue and how the dialogue is delivered. That’s not to say the game’s writing isn’t fun with the cheese sometimes, but it’s also just kind of strange with how it goes about delivering their writing.
Regardless, Jeanine sends them out against all odds on a series of errands ranging from opening up the Hello Market (for reasons I forget), to reactivating the Power Plant to bring power back to certain shuttles, to breaking into the nearby Kimra Lab to find intel (which involves Dogs changing into a santa outfit and Eliot nearly getting infected with the same virus as the rest of the mutants), before finally going to the source to stop the mutant contagion (after picking up Jeanine’s sniper rifle from her apartment). The one thing connecting all of it together is a floating alien ghost named Nephilim, a spirit who took the form of a small statue Eliot’s buddy carried with him that can teleport through walls. The creature’s role in the story is sort of minimal, giving vague details and hints about what's going on without actually talking or better yet, doing any work.
Regardless, the true culprit of the outbreak is revealed: the meteorite contained a creature named Jascony, an ultra evil alien Kaiju fucker who had a lifeform (nicknamed Dinosite) attached to it. This blob lifeform can mutate humans and animals at will into grotesque creatures that get worse and worse as time goes. Also, the entirety of Dinosaur Island is Jascony’s fucking egg apparently, and it’s due to hatch any moment, but not if Nephilim has anything to say about it. The gang reunites Nephilim back to the impact zone, where it’s learned that the alien ghost thing also has a Kaiju body buried somewhere. According to Wikipedia, Nephilim is actually the ghost of the second meteorite who opposes Dinosite; and that originally it destroyed the original dinosite while Dogs and Eliot kill off a “clone” of Jascony. My issue is, I had no fucking clue that it was a clone, nor did I know that Nephilim did anything other than engage in a kaiju fight and lose, mainly because either I missed something or It wasn’t explained well. Simply put however, Jascony is put down, the outbreak is done and Nephilim thanks the heroes while flying into space, the final post credits scene being the ghost turning into a dinosite meteor and launching into space.
What are my thoughts on Blue Stinger’s plot? Fuck if I know to be honest, it’s rather confusing in a lot of ways even if it’s interesting in others. Dinosaur connections? Cool. Giant Aliens? Cool. Mutants? Why not? But a lot of things surrounding the plot are kind of wonky, and could’ve done better with more explanation or just better explanation in general. The dialogue is goofy and strange with its tone, and whereas sometimes it felt like a mixed affair to me, I appreciate the jarring tone it delivers.
The gameplay for Blue Stinger is a little bit of an unusual affair, at least retrospectively to me personally. You’ll still play it like a normal survival horror game as you kill or avoid creatures, manage your resources and solve puzzles as you make your way from story beat to story beat. However, I personally feel it’s unique in the fact that as far as I’m aware, it’s one of the earlier third person over the shoulder survival horror games that have been created (again, I could be forgetting one title or something out there). That doesn’t mean there aren’t faults to this game however. I’ll start with the combat by saying there’s the usual affair of collecting ammo to use for weapons you can either find hidden around the map or buy from local vending machines, each gun or melee item being unique to each different character. The two main characters you’re allowed to play as are Eliot and Dogs (though apparently Jeanine was considered for a third before they had to scrap it), and some examples of unique weapons that each one could use are the basic pistol, a shotgun, an emergency ax and a napalm launcher for Eliot and the Gatling Gun, Karate (you have to buy the shirt first though), the Super Bazooka for Dogs just to name a few. The two also have different health bars, which is a good thing considering you can switch from one person to another in a semi-instant if you’re close to dying as one character.
Small note I want to add here, having played on the Dreamcast itself, when you switch between the two characters the VMU (or memory card) on your controller will show a little chibi animation based on the character you’re playing as. It doesn’t have anything else VMU wise like minigames so other than that, it’s not much to worry about to be honest. Now according to the Blue Stinger wiki, there are about 15 weapons for Eliot and 8 for Dogs, with Eliot being the more well rounded character while Dogs is more of the tank and their weapon loadouts are matched accordingly.
Again, a lot of these weapons come out of vending machines (a hilariously capitalist concept lol), however everything you buy in game seems to be inflated to all of high hell economically because jesus christ some of this shit is expensive. In fact, everything in this game is expensive from weapons to food items like steak being worth 2,400 dollars (though it does boost your health bar) and honestly it makes me wonder what the hell happened in order for inflation to hit that bad in this game’s economy. As such, unless you seem to play the game normally or commit to a good run (by beating certain objectives and/or the game in an allotted time limit and hitting up certain events), you’ll have to get by grind killing mutants you see in game, who drop off a decent amount of change you pick up. In this way, it reminds me of Alisa as it seemingly encourages you to go out of your way to kill these things in order to support your ammo/food supply. A definite recommendation is that if you get enough money (it helps if you find certain bank cards and cash them in at the Hello Market Bank for thousands of dollars), you should buy an Emergency Axe for Eliot. You knock off a couple of mutants or two with this axe (be careful as the reach isn’t great so you’ll have to run up right next to them) and you could make enough cash to buy some soda (in this game called Hassy Drinks) to heal yourself. I’m a bit mixed on this option, as while this game doesn’t really need to be harder than it has to be and I know it’s considered an “action” game but It felt like it should’ve stuck more with survival horror. While combat for the most part isn’t the worst thing and in fact can feel decent sometimes, I want to add that be careful when you eat/drink because they’re invincibility frames are different. If you take a Hassy and you get hit by an enemy in the middle of the animation, you don’t get any frames or health and you’ll end up losing the item due to it being in the middle of movement. Eating burgers or a hot dog is SLIGHTLY better, but varies from “barely any time” to “a decent amount of time” depending on the item…except in the case of the final boss. This final boss can suck my dick and lick my balls, and perhaps even go into the sweat underneath because by god it’s one of the more frustrating ones.
So basically I already described the lead up being a 3 minute 45 seconds wait, there’s no save feature added after this protection section, AND THEN there are unskippable cutscenes right? Okay, clearly final boss time right, how bad can it be? It’s not bad in terms of strategy or anything, it essentially boils down to getting out the rocket launcher (save as much ammo/buy as much as you can, trust me) and moving back and forth after firing a rocket/reloading the launcher while trying to move out of the final boss’s attack range. My problem with this is that the hitboxes feel genuinely unfair and bipolar as fuck. Places where I think I wouldn’t get hit, I’d get hit randomly one time and then I would be safe the next time (tip: avoid the middle section) and compounded on top of the fact that the two characters you play as walk incredibly slow (looking at Dogs with his goofy ass spongebob walk) make the odds feel stacked against you. This is just with the fire, but the fire helped fuel the rage inside me as I dealt with that on top of the potential stun lock occurring in the second phase of the fight and the fact that at the beginning of each phase there seems to be a random chance that the stun lock will occur because you spawn right in front of this fucker. I’d say after the fifth time it became less of a skill issue, and more of bullshit programming and I don’t say this lightly because I SUCK at video games and I’m more than willing to say when I’m just not playing by the game’s rules. And again when you die? Game over, go to the menu, reload your save, and OH SHIT HERE’S THE NEARLY 4 MINUTE PROTECTION MISSION AGAIN. It’s fucking sloppy game design, and because of this encounter alone I nearly brought the score down for me in general.
Rant aside, with combat comes controls, and they fare actually somewhat decently? I say somewhat because the Dreamcast Controller is a bit like the N64 one, where it’s kind of a behemoth except this time the thumbstick is on the left side instead of straight to the center (thank fuck). I don’t remember all the buttons, I don’t remember if they said something about it in game but I can at least say that the instruction manual has the controls here (which I forgot to look at and read so my bad) so I guess here’s the general gist:
X is for the melee button
R button then that’s when you’ll fire off bullets (They’re separate instances so just keep that in mind so you don’t accidentally shoot when you mean to swing your melee weapon)
A is basically the interact button, to open stuff talk to people and whatnot
B Button is to cancel and to swim (I’ll get to this in a second)
Y Button is to also fire your gun
D-Pad along with the regular thumbstick helps you move around
Pause is to…well pause lol.
Also to address swimming, I didn’t figure out how to swim until I found a forum post (which I’ll post at the end) where it described the controls for swimming. So here’s what I figured out:
B pressed rapidly is to swim in a direction. In order to sink a bit down you have to actively stop moving and just let whomever is swimming sink, and if you want to swim up then you have to actively press B when not moving. I guess there wasn’t a better way to do it with the controller set up but by god, is it really clunky trying to move underwater while dodging enemies like giant killer fish. The shit sucks, and luckily while it doesn’t take up a huge portion of the game (an estimated 5% I think according to guesses on the forum or other places), it still kind of blows going through them, especially the long stretch during the final act and so I would’ve preferred just not having the mechanic at all. Apparently you can shoot the pistol as Eliot underwater (shoutout to Snarboo on the forums for explaining all of this), but truth is I didn’t feel like it was worth the time or bullet management and took the chance of awkwardly finagling out of an enemies path.
It’s not bad as I’m reading it out now but I had also bought a bootleg controller a while ago so I didn’t totally realize like a fuckin’ doof that there were extra buttons and shit I don’t understand while I was playing the game so it took me a bit to figure all that out. I’ll at least say, I wish there was a dodge button because holy shit when fighting enemies in game you’ll get surrounded and jumped really quickly if you’re not in an open area and this happens a somewhat decent bit in the game. This isn’t helped by the camera, which isn’t the greatest in the slightest. It’s not the worst I’ve encountered (in fact I heard the Japanese cameras were WAY worse according to an IGN review I’ll post below) but I still got it snagged a couple of times on background items where I couldn’t see the enemy properly in order to gauge my fight or flight. It especially got frustrating actually entering a room, as sometimes if there are enemies nearby (especially when you’re in smaller spaces like the hotel later on in game), you’ll have to deal with the awkward camera hanging over you as you get jumped by a bunch of mutated wasp and caterpillar fuckers. This camera angle, mixed with the fact you can’t just turn around and leave the room as soon as you enter, necessitating you to move forward and then turn back (in which case the enemies give off some hits), means that in the smaller areas you can get janked out pretty quickly. Luckily I saved the game a lot, though even then there were times where I felt I would get unfairly jumped and when that happened, I just pulled out a rocket launcher and cleared the room with one or two more enemies quickly.
Certain enemies respawn (like the mutated humans) while thankfully the annoying little assholes such as the mutated butterflies or whatever die permanently (and don’t give money anyways) so it’s essential if you can to kill them first. In certain areas in the later half of the game you will be able to pick up Life Hooks, which cost 500 dollars in certain vending machines but guarantee you won’t get a game over if you accidentally fall to your death. I managed to pick up a lot and didn’t worry about buying more until right at the very end climbing the tower, so the worst thing that you’d have to worry about is how little margin for error sometimes you’ll have before you fall. This is especially egregious when you’re coming back from the Kimra Labs to the Brain Department when the roads look like they got hit with an earthquake, and there are times where I fell into a tiny little crack in the sidewalk (that one could easily walk over) and clipped through the entire ground to my death in an incredible display of physics.
This is a perfect time to talk about saving, which you’ll be able to do by commonly finding what they call KISS Rooms. While they’re not used for kissing, they commonly have vending machines for health and ammo (in random quantities), a red save machine and an area to download the map. The saving for me was sometimes strange and seemingly glitched out a couple of times. I would save once, and then it would save it to the older save even if I didn’t highlight over the older save, and then I would do it again in the same spot and go back to normal; not sure if that was just a me thing or what but if you play make sure to double check your saves before turning off the game. The map one was probably one of my least favorite things? I know this game was before the time of modern day maps, but I’ll be honest while I downloaded the maps I didn’t exactly try to look at where I was because it didn’t exactly help me anyways, and in fact confused me even more. This definitely helped in the sense of being able to memorize the map on my own because I essentially had to, but I really wish that the game would’ve at least added a bit more detail to help orient me? Or maybe I’m just a bitch at video games lol.
Speaking of being a bitch, here’s where I’ll go out of my way and say I suck at puzzles. I was also streaming this game for a friend, so I essentially went full time with a guide for pacing purposes so I don’t feel I can really criticize the puzzles if I didn’t try to figure this out myself. With this in mind, a lot of puzzles you can solve are environmental wise but you’ll also have to look at the item in your inventory to figure out certain puzzles. Some notes I have here are: The freezer section is kind of confusing but produces different results: if you put the temperature as 5000 you should be safe but have it too warm and you experience a different result through the maze. I remember this area in Hello Market, and actually I respect the hell out of this part because the variation in the puzzle actually affects your environment and can lead to different results (unlike everything else in the game), even if it is just essentially more difficult. Another note I had down here was that the 1224 Christmas security code is confusing, as I wasn’t able to determine where you’d be able to find the solution to this code nor do I remember where it was so I could just be wrong here. The last thing I’ll put down is that there are a couple of time limits here and there where you’ll be rushed to do certain activities in order to save someone (or later on, yourself). Most of the time these are generous, but at the same time you don’t want to dally around and you’ll want to actually figure out where you’re going and finish it as quickly as possible. I say this because of certain endgame rewards (which I’ll post a guide in links for later), for example if you save the manager at Hello Market, talk to the scientist lady later in the game amongst other things, then as a new game plus reward you’ll be given a shit ton of soda so you essentially don’t have to worry too much about grinding for health. If you speedrun the game in less than 4 hours, you’ll get infinite ammo for every weapon you pick up (or just play the good run on the game three times or more). Overall, it’s not the greatest stuff and arguably it’s mixed to some degree in terms of quality; and speaking of being mixed.
How does the sound fare? If you go to my favorite area in the whole game, the Hello Market,
you’ll hear a christmas styled musical tune that honestly to me fucking slaps. I’d also argue that the rest of the soundtrack is pretty decent, having an almost Tim Burton’s Batman sound to it; however I think the issue is that it plays all the time and is mixed to be fucking loud or a bit too quiet sometimes (at least with dialogue0. Now I didn’t notice how repetitive it was compared because I was too busy struggling with not dying, however it does play all the damn time and there isn’t really a slow paced track or a quiet moment in the game. I understand that this is considered an “Action Adventure” game more than an actual survival horror game, however the music loses effectiveness a little while into the game due to this issue and eventually it just all kind of blends into the background for me. Even though it’s actually pretty decent, as most SEGA games have a great soundtrack, it’s also kind of inferior compared to other games that I’ve heard though that’s a high bar considering the likes of Shenmue, Yakuza, Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio. The other parts of sound design I would consider to be important is environmental and voice acting. I’ll say that the environmental sounds aren’t bad either, they all sound like you think they would sound, the guns are actually pretty punchy in terms of weapon sound making shooting feel good even if it feels like it goes way too fast. I think if there was a sort of downside to the sound design it would be the voice acting, not that it’s bad at all mind you! It really depends on the vibe you're looking for. It definitely reminds me a lot of old Resident Evil games or cheesy pulp movies, between the goofy dialogue and the delivery of the lines. The actors for the main characters, Ryan Drummond (Eliot) and Deem Bristow (Dogs) have a bit of a shared history with playing opposite characters in Sonic Adventure (with Ryan being Sonic and Deem being Eggman) and I think they do a decent job that I can’t complain about, though the one that was the most recognizable to me was Lani Minella, who voiced both Jeanine in this game but also seems to be the most active voice actress in the game? She’s been in games like The Last of Us, God of War: Ragnarok, the Dead Space remake and even starred in Sonic Adventure 2 as Rogue the Bat I think, according to IMDB. Either way, they do a decent job even if some of the lines were probably lost in translation, and other than that I don’t really recognize anyone on the acting side to be honest.
Graphically speaking the game has the old chunky graphics that I fucking adore, the models aren’t as detailed as a game like Shenmue would be but I’d say that they’re sort of in the middle. If I were to say anything about most of the character models is that they’re for the most part fine; you have your monsters that look imposing and scary to fight while the models for the “normal” people look pretty decent, though seeing as this game was a Dreamcast launch title it looks like it’s only marginally boosted up from the previous console they created, the Sega Saturn. If I were to single any model out, I personally felt that Eliot kind of looks like a marionette of sorts (and walks like one too to be honest, him and his goofy clown shoes because he acts like one too lol, which by the way apparently the game was developed with motion capture which is hilarious considering the goofiness of it) as well as Jeanine (and other models strangely) seem to have a lot of what the kids would call “Cake”. Obviously I understand that the early graphics means that they were just clipping shapes into each other and calling it that instead of forming body parts, and that’s perfectly ok and I’m not judging, I just think it’s funny. As for the environmental set dressing, you’ll encounter mostly cold and metallic areas filled with gray pipes and steel walkways, a vibe I could only really describe as the love child between an old vehicle repair place and a sewage plant. You’ll be going through a lot of locations like this, a power plant here or a sewer system there; though there are varying locations like the Kimra Biological Lab (a straight up RE style mad scientist place) or my favorite location and where I think you’ll spend at least 40% of the game: Hello Market and the surrounding areas. Located in a small section between the docks at the beginning and the “Brain Department”, the gang’s headquarters; surrounding Hello Market is an isolated capitalist fever dream.
The prices on food are exuberant suggesting a horribly inflated economy, the flashing neon lights light up every facet of this district, hotels and bars litter the streets as said before the christmas music just goes on and on, clashing directly with the environment surrounding it considering it’s literally a small island in the middle of the sea with no snow or anything in sight. It’s a strange yet familiar place, two clashing tones that honestly make it the most memorable location in the entire game and the one place that I breathe a sigh of relief to when I eventually make my way back to it multiple times during my playthrough. Again, just to reiterate my point, graphically if you like old and blocky polygons that look better than something the Playstation 1 and other consoles at the time could provide then this isn’t going to be an issue for you; I guess the only issue I have with this is that while I understand that having these cold environments can help lead to a sense of alienation (an example would be the USG Ishimura from Dead Space) and improves the horror bit of the atmosphere; the constant music being thrown at you clashes with the tone and also I find these sort of environments to blend in and and ultimately make me not really want to go back to most of them any time soon.
Finishing off here, Blue Stinger is one of those games where when I first sat down and played it, it had all the ingredients that made me think “wow, this game fucking rocks, I don’t know what the reviews are on about”. From the graphics, to the hoaky plot that could come out of a Resident Evil game, to the stellar soundtrack, and even most of the gameplay. However, after half way in, that’s when the game’s cracks started to form and showed its jank, a jank which I felt became too much for me, and by the end? It was way too much and I just wanted it to be over with, and I don’t like saying that about video games, as the way I view it they should be something you sit down and relax to. I’m not sure if I’d ever play it again either. Maybe one day if I need to record footage for a friend’s video or if a couple of friends want to try it out. Regardless, after Blue Stinger, Climax Graphics would go on seemingly to make two games. One of these games is illbleed, one of the rarest Dreamcast games ever and one of if not the most expensive game I’ve ever purchased at 300 something dollars (never again) and an arcade game named The Maze of Kings, which I’ve never heard of nor played. Shinya Nishigaki, who helmed this game as well as Illbleed, seemingly championed an Xbox Original Remake of both Blue Stinger and Illbleed, would later pass away and so did the ports. Since then, there’s been absolutely nothing going on in the way of remakes or sequels or even remasters. In my opinion, even though I sadly didn’t care for this game, I hope that Blue Stinger (and illbleed) gets the same remaster treatment from SEGA that they did with Shenmue because game preservation should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind. And as for a sequel? I don’t know, does the game really need one? My guess if they did another one is that it would take place in space but truth is it feels kind of wrapped up and ok the way it is. Regardless, my time with Dinosaur Island has come to a close, and sadly I feel that the future has closed on it as well. I don’t know if it would be worth sitting down and beating, but even with its issues I still think survival horror enthusiasts should give it a chance, even just to see what it’s like.
Links:
https://hg101.proboards.com/thread/10137/game-club-199x-blue-stinger?page=5 (Swimming reference link)
https://blue-stinger.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Stinger_Wikia (Knowledge on what’s going on with the plot)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/BlueStinger (Knowledge on what’s going on with the plot)
https://www.ign.com/articles/1999/09/09/blue-stinger (Review reference on camera angles)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climax_Graphics (Bits of research material)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Stinger (Bits of research material)
https://www.mobygames.com/group/13786/launch-title-dreamcast-north-america/ (Dreamcast Launch Titles)
https://medium.com/shinkretro/dreamcast-game-01-blue-stinger-17684379671b#:~:text=The%20late%20Shinya%20Nishigaki%20 (Bits of research material)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/196791-blue-stinger/faqs/2696 (The guide I used to play the game)
https://www.cheatcc.com/articles/cheatcc-blue-stinger-cheats-codes-guides-walkthroughs-and-cheat-codes-dreamcast-dc/ (Secrets/Unlocks Guide)
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/blue-stinger/amp/
https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3504246/dreamcasts-blue-stinger-campy-messy-attempt-breathe-new-life-survival-horror/
Blue Stinger is the story of an 80s action B-Movie dressed up in chunky graphics and dressed up on a cheese platter. It starts with a flashback to sixty five million years ago, a giant meteor crashes on Earth and destroys all life on the planet, eviscerating the dinosaur population. Millions of years later, Dinosaur Island is formed after an earthquake sinks the entire Yucatan Peninsula, leaving a patch of land and the Kimra Biological Organization swoops in to claim ownership. Eighteen years later however, a giant light shoots down over Dinosaur Island, forming a dome sealing everyone off from the outside world and Eliot Ballarde, a member of the Emergency Sea Evacuation and Rescue (ESER for short) whose vacation with his buddy Tim is interrupted by this giant dome and attempting to figure out the source of the issue, makes his way over to Dinosaur Island to rescind the dome. Along the way he meets the gruff captain of the S.S. Anna, Dogs Bower, who tags along with Eliot before they meet the final member of their team: Jeanine King, a member of the KISS Security Force on Dinosaur Island, who introduces herself by saving the lives of both men. How does Eliot respond? By incessantly hitting on her while she kind of slyly ignores it, to which Dogs responds by going on strange and hateful rants. Here’s my thing with the three characters: if I were to describe Eliot in one word it would simp because by god does he simp for Jeanine. While it’s not the worst thing, in fact I feel like the right wing’s love for it is sad because I’m down to simp for a bad bitch and I don’t care who knows it, it just kind of feels like that’s his entire personality in the game. Dogs is the meme character of the game, someone who at first came off with cool dad vibes before just increasingly becoming worse and worse with hateful sounding stuff (a subplot revealed that Dogs is Jeanine’s father, and they had issues after her mother divorced and/or died. I guess my main issue with this is that the way they talk, I didn’t even understand if there was conflict or if Dogs was just a weird misogynist). Jeanine just kind of responds in a manner that feels like she’s ignoring both men while maintaining a charming attitude to it all. I chalk this up to the strange writing and translation, and what I can say is that it feels kind of outdated with both the dialogue and how the dialogue is delivered. That’s not to say the game’s writing isn’t fun with the cheese sometimes, but it’s also just kind of strange with how it goes about delivering their writing.
Regardless, Jeanine sends them out against all odds on a series of errands ranging from opening up the Hello Market (for reasons I forget), to reactivating the Power Plant to bring power back to certain shuttles, to breaking into the nearby Kimra Lab to find intel (which involves Dogs changing into a santa outfit and Eliot nearly getting infected with the same virus as the rest of the mutants), before finally going to the source to stop the mutant contagion (after picking up Jeanine’s sniper rifle from her apartment). The one thing connecting all of it together is a floating alien ghost named Nephilim, a spirit who took the form of a small statue Eliot’s buddy carried with him that can teleport through walls. The creature’s role in the story is sort of minimal, giving vague details and hints about what's going on without actually talking or better yet, doing any work.
Regardless, the true culprit of the outbreak is revealed: the meteorite contained a creature named Jascony, an ultra evil alien Kaiju fucker who had a lifeform (nicknamed Dinosite) attached to it. This blob lifeform can mutate humans and animals at will into grotesque creatures that get worse and worse as time goes. Also, the entirety of Dinosaur Island is Jascony’s fucking egg apparently, and it’s due to hatch any moment, but not if Nephilim has anything to say about it. The gang reunites Nephilim back to the impact zone, where it’s learned that the alien ghost thing also has a Kaiju body buried somewhere. According to Wikipedia, Nephilim is actually the ghost of the second meteorite who opposes Dinosite; and that originally it destroyed the original dinosite while Dogs and Eliot kill off a “clone” of Jascony. My issue is, I had no fucking clue that it was a clone, nor did I know that Nephilim did anything other than engage in a kaiju fight and lose, mainly because either I missed something or It wasn’t explained well. Simply put however, Jascony is put down, the outbreak is done and Nephilim thanks the heroes while flying into space, the final post credits scene being the ghost turning into a dinosite meteor and launching into space.
What are my thoughts on Blue Stinger’s plot? Fuck if I know to be honest, it’s rather confusing in a lot of ways even if it’s interesting in others. Dinosaur connections? Cool. Giant Aliens? Cool. Mutants? Why not? But a lot of things surrounding the plot are kind of wonky, and could’ve done better with more explanation or just better explanation in general. The dialogue is goofy and strange with its tone, and whereas sometimes it felt like a mixed affair to me, I appreciate the jarring tone it delivers.
The gameplay for Blue Stinger is a little bit of an unusual affair, at least retrospectively to me personally. You’ll still play it like a normal survival horror game as you kill or avoid creatures, manage your resources and solve puzzles as you make your way from story beat to story beat. However, I personally feel it’s unique in the fact that as far as I’m aware, it’s one of the earlier third person over the shoulder survival horror games that have been created (again, I could be forgetting one title or something out there). That doesn’t mean there aren’t faults to this game however. I’ll start with the combat by saying there’s the usual affair of collecting ammo to use for weapons you can either find hidden around the map or buy from local vending machines, each gun or melee item being unique to each different character. The two main characters you’re allowed to play as are Eliot and Dogs (though apparently Jeanine was considered for a third before they had to scrap it), and some examples of unique weapons that each one could use are the basic pistol, a shotgun, an emergency ax and a napalm launcher for Eliot and the Gatling Gun, Karate (you have to buy the shirt first though), the Super Bazooka for Dogs just to name a few. The two also have different health bars, which is a good thing considering you can switch from one person to another in a semi-instant if you’re close to dying as one character.
Small note I want to add here, having played on the Dreamcast itself, when you switch between the two characters the VMU (or memory card) on your controller will show a little chibi animation based on the character you’re playing as. It doesn’t have anything else VMU wise like minigames so other than that, it’s not much to worry about to be honest. Now according to the Blue Stinger wiki, there are about 15 weapons for Eliot and 8 for Dogs, with Eliot being the more well rounded character while Dogs is more of the tank and their weapon loadouts are matched accordingly.
Again, a lot of these weapons come out of vending machines (a hilariously capitalist concept lol), however everything you buy in game seems to be inflated to all of high hell economically because jesus christ some of this shit is expensive. In fact, everything in this game is expensive from weapons to food items like steak being worth 2,400 dollars (though it does boost your health bar) and honestly it makes me wonder what the hell happened in order for inflation to hit that bad in this game’s economy. As such, unless you seem to play the game normally or commit to a good run (by beating certain objectives and/or the game in an allotted time limit and hitting up certain events), you’ll have to get by grind killing mutants you see in game, who drop off a decent amount of change you pick up. In this way, it reminds me of Alisa as it seemingly encourages you to go out of your way to kill these things in order to support your ammo/food supply. A definite recommendation is that if you get enough money (it helps if you find certain bank cards and cash them in at the Hello Market Bank for thousands of dollars), you should buy an Emergency Axe for Eliot. You knock off a couple of mutants or two with this axe (be careful as the reach isn’t great so you’ll have to run up right next to them) and you could make enough cash to buy some soda (in this game called Hassy Drinks) to heal yourself. I’m a bit mixed on this option, as while this game doesn’t really need to be harder than it has to be and I know it’s considered an “action” game but It felt like it should’ve stuck more with survival horror. While combat for the most part isn’t the worst thing and in fact can feel decent sometimes, I want to add that be careful when you eat/drink because they’re invincibility frames are different. If you take a Hassy and you get hit by an enemy in the middle of the animation, you don’t get any frames or health and you’ll end up losing the item due to it being in the middle of movement. Eating burgers or a hot dog is SLIGHTLY better, but varies from “barely any time” to “a decent amount of time” depending on the item…except in the case of the final boss. This final boss can suck my dick and lick my balls, and perhaps even go into the sweat underneath because by god it’s one of the more frustrating ones.
So basically I already described the lead up being a 3 minute 45 seconds wait, there’s no save feature added after this protection section, AND THEN there are unskippable cutscenes right? Okay, clearly final boss time right, how bad can it be? It’s not bad in terms of strategy or anything, it essentially boils down to getting out the rocket launcher (save as much ammo/buy as much as you can, trust me) and moving back and forth after firing a rocket/reloading the launcher while trying to move out of the final boss’s attack range. My problem with this is that the hitboxes feel genuinely unfair and bipolar as fuck. Places where I think I wouldn’t get hit, I’d get hit randomly one time and then I would be safe the next time (tip: avoid the middle section) and compounded on top of the fact that the two characters you play as walk incredibly slow (looking at Dogs with his goofy ass spongebob walk) make the odds feel stacked against you. This is just with the fire, but the fire helped fuel the rage inside me as I dealt with that on top of the potential stun lock occurring in the second phase of the fight and the fact that at the beginning of each phase there seems to be a random chance that the stun lock will occur because you spawn right in front of this fucker. I’d say after the fifth time it became less of a skill issue, and more of bullshit programming and I don’t say this lightly because I SUCK at video games and I’m more than willing to say when I’m just not playing by the game’s rules. And again when you die? Game over, go to the menu, reload your save, and OH SHIT HERE’S THE NEARLY 4 MINUTE PROTECTION MISSION AGAIN. It’s fucking sloppy game design, and because of this encounter alone I nearly brought the score down for me in general.
Rant aside, with combat comes controls, and they fare actually somewhat decently? I say somewhat because the Dreamcast Controller is a bit like the N64 one, where it’s kind of a behemoth except this time the thumbstick is on the left side instead of straight to the center (thank fuck). I don’t remember all the buttons, I don’t remember if they said something about it in game but I can at least say that the instruction manual has the controls here (which I forgot to look at and read so my bad) so I guess here’s the general gist:
X is for the melee button
R button then that’s when you’ll fire off bullets (They’re separate instances so just keep that in mind so you don’t accidentally shoot when you mean to swing your melee weapon)
A is basically the interact button, to open stuff talk to people and whatnot
B Button is to cancel and to swim (I’ll get to this in a second)
Y Button is to also fire your gun
D-Pad along with the regular thumbstick helps you move around
Pause is to…well pause lol.
Also to address swimming, I didn’t figure out how to swim until I found a forum post (which I’ll post at the end) where it described the controls for swimming. So here’s what I figured out:
B pressed rapidly is to swim in a direction. In order to sink a bit down you have to actively stop moving and just let whomever is swimming sink, and if you want to swim up then you have to actively press B when not moving. I guess there wasn’t a better way to do it with the controller set up but by god, is it really clunky trying to move underwater while dodging enemies like giant killer fish. The shit sucks, and luckily while it doesn’t take up a huge portion of the game (an estimated 5% I think according to guesses on the forum or other places), it still kind of blows going through them, especially the long stretch during the final act and so I would’ve preferred just not having the mechanic at all. Apparently you can shoot the pistol as Eliot underwater (shoutout to Snarboo on the forums for explaining all of this), but truth is I didn’t feel like it was worth the time or bullet management and took the chance of awkwardly finagling out of an enemies path.
It’s not bad as I’m reading it out now but I had also bought a bootleg controller a while ago so I didn’t totally realize like a fuckin’ doof that there were extra buttons and shit I don’t understand while I was playing the game so it took me a bit to figure all that out. I’ll at least say, I wish there was a dodge button because holy shit when fighting enemies in game you’ll get surrounded and jumped really quickly if you’re not in an open area and this happens a somewhat decent bit in the game. This isn’t helped by the camera, which isn’t the greatest in the slightest. It’s not the worst I’ve encountered (in fact I heard the Japanese cameras were WAY worse according to an IGN review I’ll post below) but I still got it snagged a couple of times on background items where I couldn’t see the enemy properly in order to gauge my fight or flight. It especially got frustrating actually entering a room, as sometimes if there are enemies nearby (especially when you’re in smaller spaces like the hotel later on in game), you’ll have to deal with the awkward camera hanging over you as you get jumped by a bunch of mutated wasp and caterpillar fuckers. This camera angle, mixed with the fact you can’t just turn around and leave the room as soon as you enter, necessitating you to move forward and then turn back (in which case the enemies give off some hits), means that in the smaller areas you can get janked out pretty quickly. Luckily I saved the game a lot, though even then there were times where I felt I would get unfairly jumped and when that happened, I just pulled out a rocket launcher and cleared the room with one or two more enemies quickly.
Certain enemies respawn (like the mutated humans) while thankfully the annoying little assholes such as the mutated butterflies or whatever die permanently (and don’t give money anyways) so it’s essential if you can to kill them first. In certain areas in the later half of the game you will be able to pick up Life Hooks, which cost 500 dollars in certain vending machines but guarantee you won’t get a game over if you accidentally fall to your death. I managed to pick up a lot and didn’t worry about buying more until right at the very end climbing the tower, so the worst thing that you’d have to worry about is how little margin for error sometimes you’ll have before you fall. This is especially egregious when you’re coming back from the Kimra Labs to the Brain Department when the roads look like they got hit with an earthquake, and there are times where I fell into a tiny little crack in the sidewalk (that one could easily walk over) and clipped through the entire ground to my death in an incredible display of physics.
This is a perfect time to talk about saving, which you’ll be able to do by commonly finding what they call KISS Rooms. While they’re not used for kissing, they commonly have vending machines for health and ammo (in random quantities), a red save machine and an area to download the map. The saving for me was sometimes strange and seemingly glitched out a couple of times. I would save once, and then it would save it to the older save even if I didn’t highlight over the older save, and then I would do it again in the same spot and go back to normal; not sure if that was just a me thing or what but if you play make sure to double check your saves before turning off the game. The map one was probably one of my least favorite things? I know this game was before the time of modern day maps, but I’ll be honest while I downloaded the maps I didn’t exactly try to look at where I was because it didn’t exactly help me anyways, and in fact confused me even more. This definitely helped in the sense of being able to memorize the map on my own because I essentially had to, but I really wish that the game would’ve at least added a bit more detail to help orient me? Or maybe I’m just a bitch at video games lol.
Speaking of being a bitch, here’s where I’ll go out of my way and say I suck at puzzles. I was also streaming this game for a friend, so I essentially went full time with a guide for pacing purposes so I don’t feel I can really criticize the puzzles if I didn’t try to figure this out myself. With this in mind, a lot of puzzles you can solve are environmental wise but you’ll also have to look at the item in your inventory to figure out certain puzzles. Some notes I have here are: The freezer section is kind of confusing but produces different results: if you put the temperature as 5000 you should be safe but have it too warm and you experience a different result through the maze. I remember this area in Hello Market, and actually I respect the hell out of this part because the variation in the puzzle actually affects your environment and can lead to different results (unlike everything else in the game), even if it is just essentially more difficult. Another note I had down here was that the 1224 Christmas security code is confusing, as I wasn’t able to determine where you’d be able to find the solution to this code nor do I remember where it was so I could just be wrong here. The last thing I’ll put down is that there are a couple of time limits here and there where you’ll be rushed to do certain activities in order to save someone (or later on, yourself). Most of the time these are generous, but at the same time you don’t want to dally around and you’ll want to actually figure out where you’re going and finish it as quickly as possible. I say this because of certain endgame rewards (which I’ll post a guide in links for later), for example if you save the manager at Hello Market, talk to the scientist lady later in the game amongst other things, then as a new game plus reward you’ll be given a shit ton of soda so you essentially don’t have to worry too much about grinding for health. If you speedrun the game in less than 4 hours, you’ll get infinite ammo for every weapon you pick up (or just play the good run on the game three times or more). Overall, it’s not the greatest stuff and arguably it’s mixed to some degree in terms of quality; and speaking of being mixed.
How does the sound fare? If you go to my favorite area in the whole game, the Hello Market,
you’ll hear a christmas styled musical tune that honestly to me fucking slaps. I’d also argue that the rest of the soundtrack is pretty decent, having an almost Tim Burton’s Batman sound to it; however I think the issue is that it plays all the time and is mixed to be fucking loud or a bit too quiet sometimes (at least with dialogue0. Now I didn’t notice how repetitive it was compared because I was too busy struggling with not dying, however it does play all the damn time and there isn’t really a slow paced track or a quiet moment in the game. I understand that this is considered an “Action Adventure” game more than an actual survival horror game, however the music loses effectiveness a little while into the game due to this issue and eventually it just all kind of blends into the background for me. Even though it’s actually pretty decent, as most SEGA games have a great soundtrack, it’s also kind of inferior compared to other games that I’ve heard though that’s a high bar considering the likes of Shenmue, Yakuza, Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio. The other parts of sound design I would consider to be important is environmental and voice acting. I’ll say that the environmental sounds aren’t bad either, they all sound like you think they would sound, the guns are actually pretty punchy in terms of weapon sound making shooting feel good even if it feels like it goes way too fast. I think if there was a sort of downside to the sound design it would be the voice acting, not that it’s bad at all mind you! It really depends on the vibe you're looking for. It definitely reminds me a lot of old Resident Evil games or cheesy pulp movies, between the goofy dialogue and the delivery of the lines. The actors for the main characters, Ryan Drummond (Eliot) and Deem Bristow (Dogs) have a bit of a shared history with playing opposite characters in Sonic Adventure (with Ryan being Sonic and Deem being Eggman) and I think they do a decent job that I can’t complain about, though the one that was the most recognizable to me was Lani Minella, who voiced both Jeanine in this game but also seems to be the most active voice actress in the game? She’s been in games like The Last of Us, God of War: Ragnarok, the Dead Space remake and even starred in Sonic Adventure 2 as Rogue the Bat I think, according to IMDB. Either way, they do a decent job even if some of the lines were probably lost in translation, and other than that I don’t really recognize anyone on the acting side to be honest.
Graphically speaking the game has the old chunky graphics that I fucking adore, the models aren’t as detailed as a game like Shenmue would be but I’d say that they’re sort of in the middle. If I were to say anything about most of the character models is that they’re for the most part fine; you have your monsters that look imposing and scary to fight while the models for the “normal” people look pretty decent, though seeing as this game was a Dreamcast launch title it looks like it’s only marginally boosted up from the previous console they created, the Sega Saturn. If I were to single any model out, I personally felt that Eliot kind of looks like a marionette of sorts (and walks like one too to be honest, him and his goofy clown shoes because he acts like one too lol, which by the way apparently the game was developed with motion capture which is hilarious considering the goofiness of it) as well as Jeanine (and other models strangely) seem to have a lot of what the kids would call “Cake”. Obviously I understand that the early graphics means that they were just clipping shapes into each other and calling it that instead of forming body parts, and that’s perfectly ok and I’m not judging, I just think it’s funny. As for the environmental set dressing, you’ll encounter mostly cold and metallic areas filled with gray pipes and steel walkways, a vibe I could only really describe as the love child between an old vehicle repair place and a sewage plant. You’ll be going through a lot of locations like this, a power plant here or a sewer system there; though there are varying locations like the Kimra Biological Lab (a straight up RE style mad scientist place) or my favorite location and where I think you’ll spend at least 40% of the game: Hello Market and the surrounding areas. Located in a small section between the docks at the beginning and the “Brain Department”, the gang’s headquarters; surrounding Hello Market is an isolated capitalist fever dream.
The prices on food are exuberant suggesting a horribly inflated economy, the flashing neon lights light up every facet of this district, hotels and bars litter the streets as said before the christmas music just goes on and on, clashing directly with the environment surrounding it considering it’s literally a small island in the middle of the sea with no snow or anything in sight. It’s a strange yet familiar place, two clashing tones that honestly make it the most memorable location in the entire game and the one place that I breathe a sigh of relief to when I eventually make my way back to it multiple times during my playthrough. Again, just to reiterate my point, graphically if you like old and blocky polygons that look better than something the Playstation 1 and other consoles at the time could provide then this isn’t going to be an issue for you; I guess the only issue I have with this is that while I understand that having these cold environments can help lead to a sense of alienation (an example would be the USG Ishimura from Dead Space) and improves the horror bit of the atmosphere; the constant music being thrown at you clashes with the tone and also I find these sort of environments to blend in and and ultimately make me not really want to go back to most of them any time soon.
Finishing off here, Blue Stinger is one of those games where when I first sat down and played it, it had all the ingredients that made me think “wow, this game fucking rocks, I don’t know what the reviews are on about”. From the graphics, to the hoaky plot that could come out of a Resident Evil game, to the stellar soundtrack, and even most of the gameplay. However, after half way in, that’s when the game’s cracks started to form and showed its jank, a jank which I felt became too much for me, and by the end? It was way too much and I just wanted it to be over with, and I don’t like saying that about video games, as the way I view it they should be something you sit down and relax to. I’m not sure if I’d ever play it again either. Maybe one day if I need to record footage for a friend’s video or if a couple of friends want to try it out. Regardless, after Blue Stinger, Climax Graphics would go on seemingly to make two games. One of these games is illbleed, one of the rarest Dreamcast games ever and one of if not the most expensive game I’ve ever purchased at 300 something dollars (never again) and an arcade game named The Maze of Kings, which I’ve never heard of nor played. Shinya Nishigaki, who helmed this game as well as Illbleed, seemingly championed an Xbox Original Remake of both Blue Stinger and Illbleed, would later pass away and so did the ports. Since then, there’s been absolutely nothing going on in the way of remakes or sequels or even remasters. In my opinion, even though I sadly didn’t care for this game, I hope that Blue Stinger (and illbleed) gets the same remaster treatment from SEGA that they did with Shenmue because game preservation should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind. And as for a sequel? I don’t know, does the game really need one? My guess if they did another one is that it would take place in space but truth is it feels kind of wrapped up and ok the way it is. Regardless, my time with Dinosaur Island has come to a close, and sadly I feel that the future has closed on it as well. I don’t know if it would be worth sitting down and beating, but even with its issues I still think survival horror enthusiasts should give it a chance, even just to see what it’s like.
Links:
https://hg101.proboards.com/thread/10137/game-club-199x-blue-stinger?page=5 (Swimming reference link)
https://blue-stinger.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Stinger_Wikia (Knowledge on what’s going on with the plot)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/BlueStinger (Knowledge on what’s going on with the plot)
https://www.ign.com/articles/1999/09/09/blue-stinger (Review reference on camera angles)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climax_Graphics (Bits of research material)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Stinger (Bits of research material)
https://www.mobygames.com/group/13786/launch-title-dreamcast-north-america/ (Dreamcast Launch Titles)
https://medium.com/shinkretro/dreamcast-game-01-blue-stinger-17684379671b#:~:text=The%20late%20Shinya%20Nishigaki%20 (Bits of research material)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/196791-blue-stinger/faqs/2696 (The guide I used to play the game)
https://www.cheatcc.com/articles/cheatcc-blue-stinger-cheats-codes-guides-walkthroughs-and-cheat-codes-dreamcast-dc/ (Secrets/Unlocks Guide)
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/blue-stinger/amp/
https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3504246/dreamcasts-blue-stinger-campy-messy-attempt-breathe-new-life-survival-horror/
Why do I love this game? I have no idea. It’s definitely not a smooth game. The combat is bad, the bosses are melt or get melted, and the sound mixing is terrible, but I loved every second. The exploration and puzzle solving is great and the characters and story were very enjoyable. Definitely not a game I would recommend to most but for survival horror/adventure enthusiasts, Blue Stinger is a must.
To start off with I really don't like this game but I also can't escape it this game either. It's super bizarre and out there but you know what? As I've gotten older I've come to see some charm in the game.
Just like Illbleed and how bizarre that title is which is saying a lot but I will say BlueStinger isn't as confusing as Illbleed. I can still remember getting this x-mas day and how I wanted House of the dead but that was only on saturn.
BlueStinger is something you need to experience to really let things wash over you as words really do fail to convey what sort of feeling you get from this kind of thing. I must have played and beat this game like a dozen times or something now and for some reason I keep coming back even though it's legit not a good game.
There is something about it that just gets you to keep playing- perhaps it's the made up drink Hassy? Perhaps it's the fact there was a music video called 'nePhY-STING Me~' and how there's an english version of the song.
In a way I would have loved to have seen a second game like I heard was planned but ah well. Anyway there is no fishing in this game but there is a part where you enter a bait and tackle shop and kill monster fish because dinosaur island! Also there was a guy who was fishing in BlueStinger outside of that shop and died doing what he loved
FISHING
Just like Illbleed and how bizarre that title is which is saying a lot but I will say BlueStinger isn't as confusing as Illbleed. I can still remember getting this x-mas day and how I wanted House of the dead but that was only on saturn.
BlueStinger is something you need to experience to really let things wash over you as words really do fail to convey what sort of feeling you get from this kind of thing. I must have played and beat this game like a dozen times or something now and for some reason I keep coming back even though it's legit not a good game.
There is something about it that just gets you to keep playing- perhaps it's the made up drink Hassy? Perhaps it's the fact there was a music video called 'nePhY-STING Me~' and how there's an english version of the song.
In a way I would have loved to have seen a second game like I heard was planned but ah well. Anyway there is no fishing in this game but there is a part where you enter a bait and tackle shop and kill monster fish because dinosaur island! Also there was a guy who was fishing in BlueStinger outside of that shop and died doing what he loved
FISHING
i have nothing to say
Fixed camera angles, at their best, serve as a way for the developer to highlight specific objects & challenges in a view which allows the player to comfortably navigate while remaining tense & mysterious. Perhaps that isn't something that everyone can agree upon, but in the case of this game, I think fixed angles, or any other camera for that matter than the one given to us, particularly in close combat areas, would have been better. What the game lacks in controls, camera, direction, objectives (glorified errand runner), & combat, it makes up for in some genuinely fun environments/setting, & some clever variety that no matter how frustrating the game can be at times, still has an air of charm to it. It's not completely unbearable, but it certainly isn't fun nor interesting.
Something we can all agree on, however, is that Blue Stinger is a christmas movie.
Something we can all agree on, however, is that Blue Stinger is a christmas movie.