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).