The other evening I found myself with a difficult decision, what do I play next? I decided to browse the PlayStation Store and came across Viktor Kalvachev' Blue Estate: The Game. It looked crazy, funny and the kind of game I wouldn't mind putting some hours into, so began my mini adventure.
Burrito. A Burrito is a combination of meat, salad, black beans, rice and hot sauce, all wrapped up in a tortilla. They can be tasty, but quite often they're not, in honesty though when you throw a load of cheap ingredients together that's going to happen. If you go in, eyes open, knowing all of this then you have no one else to blame if you find yourself sitting on cold porcelain with a wad of toilet paper in your hand. Playing Blue Estate I found myself asking was this one of those occasions where I was enjoying something tasty, or did it leave me wanting to make a rapid departure to the bathroom?
Story
The story has you take on the role of two characters, Tony and Clarence. Tony is the son of a mobster and is the family screw up, he's a psycho who only seems to care about one thing; a stripper named Cherry. Clarence is an ex-Navy SEAL who is a no-nonsense kind of guy who is a hitman hired by Tony's father to help clean up his son's mess, amongst other things. The game is narrated by Ron Devine JNR. a private eye who likes to spin the yarn and tells tall tales.
The story is fairly loose, and for the most part, that's okay. Tony's dialogue is initially funny but as the game progresses it becomes old. Clarence comes across as dull and there is no depth to his character. The person that stands out most is Cherry, and that's because she seems a little bit more real than the other characters. There is a lot of nudity and crass jokes which for the most part is quite funny. Overall though the story is mediocre at best, and while I wasn't expecting Shakespeare it could have used a little more development.
Visuals
The visuals are...not great. The backdrops aren't that much fun to look at, and the game instead seems to focus on nudity, toilet humor, and Chihuahuas. Similar to the story, for the most part, it's okay, but you can only rely on it for so much.
Overall the game is visually underwhelming, and while there are some funny visuals moments they can't make up for its other shortcomings.
Music
The soundtrack is a combination of electric guitar mixed with themes from 70's and 80's cop shows, and it works, it's also probably one of the stronger parts of the game. The music is created by French composer and artist Eric Los, he has worked on a number of games, some of his work includes; Tokaido, Armada, Slash Monsters, and Crasher.
The score runs at around twenty minutes and while it features only a few tracks, I did have favorites including, 'Golfing with Grenades', 'Kim Jung Sik', and 'Bring Out The Dead'.
Overall a short but solid soundtrack.
Gameplay
Blue Estate is an on-rails shooter, which is part of what attracted me to the game, I used to love to play House of The Dead 2, Time Crisis 2, and Die Hard 2. The gameplay is simplistic but fun and works, about 75% of the time. When it came to the shooting element (most of what makes up the gameplay) I found myself having to recalibrate the DualShock 4 controller regularly, which really pulled me out of the game and caused more than a few frustrating moments. The game offers you the ability to use melee attacks using the touchpad, while it worked well for this, unfortunately, it did not work well when it came to being used to collect health and ammunition.
I stuck with the game throughout despite its shortcomings, but the last mission just seemed to be so long, and I was having to recalibrate the DualShock controller every few minutes. On more than one occasion I nearly packed in playing the game altogether.
Overall there were fun elements to the gameplay and when it worked, it worked well but in honesty that just wasn't often enough.
Final Thoughts
After almost ten hours of gameplay, how did I feel? Pretty disappointed. While it's not the worst game I have ever played, it is the worst I have played this year. This one gets 2 out of 5
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