The Wave Race 64 sequel: The waves are stronger, the CPU racers are stronger, and even the waterbike is stronger to the point of being harder to control - but if you're someone who can take in the jump in difficulty, then you'll feel rewarded by mastering it.
Wave Race Blue Storm is a game that I'd describe as one of those games that, despite the seemingly simple premise and even having a prequel that was more lenient, kicks the door in and decides that you'll take a beating the moment it sees you - until the moment you fight back and take it on regardless of how long it takes you to tame it.
...Or will get you walking out of the place the moment it starts throwing you enough hard curveballs to drop the game and write it off as too much of a hassle to bother with.
With how there's a handful of games that exemplify this that I can respect even if I can absolutely not get a good grip on them consistently [Scud Race and SEGA Touring Car Championship are this to Daytona USA and SEGA Rally, or Super Mario Kart to...basically every other Mario Kart- even Super Circuit is easier], or on the flipside, I've managed to get good grips on and feels cool yet kind of lonely due to how niche it is [Crazy how Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers didn't QUITE take the world by storm like SRB2Kart did on its launch due to its difficulty out of the box- but there's also stuff like Tetrisphere and Wetrix that are hard to explain but can be addicting if you somehow click with it - and talking about racers, most stuff from old school like the Daytona USA games, Mario Kart 64 and so on are also games that easily whoop the uninitiated compared to easier arcade racers and modern Mario Kart games].
If you haven't guessed by this point, Wave Race Blue Storm basically chose the option of not compromising to be easy to tame for mass appealaccessibility and rather sticking to the vision that waterbikes can be fairly tough to handle properly, therefore requiring you to preemptively steer its weight around on calm waters...and controlling the throttle for when the waves decide to get nasty - as trying to go all gas when a wave is about to stop you from taking a buoy you need is certainly not the best idea.
And if the difficulty alone, not just from the extra stuff to account for the controls, including leaning with the triggers and using the turbo at the right time, wasn't enough to give Blue Storm the unfortunate destiny of often being left sitting in the shadow of Wave Race 64, there's also how it is coded to be a circa-2000 western extreme sports game, with the particular choice of ambiental drums/techno/rock for more tracks along with the redesigned characters and their specific crew chiefs, rather than a higher fidelity rendition of the bright colors, memorably Nintendo music and powerfully enthusiastic announcer that the original game had.
...So yeah, its a noticeably harder game to pick up and play than Wave Race 64, and is notably different from the highs that game had in its presentation as well - a combo that almost if not always, at most has people thinking about enjoying WR64 more, at worst having players bounce off hard out of the game due to how much it changed...and even at best, even if you tame Blue Storm and love it for what it is, is admittedly missing out on the pop the announcer and music WR64 had, thus making it slightly less memorable on first impressions than 64 even if you enjoy playing it as much.
If you even know the slightest bit of my preference for games though, then you should know that I actually tend to take on challenging games fairly well as long as I can figure out the way to get good grips on it with practice, and Blue Storm was quite the new challenge to try out after having mastered Wave Race 64's set.
Lets say that you can get used to the controls, sure. Nothing that track memory along with some accel tapping + quick turning [holding down the stick to steer - same as in WR64] can't handle, even using the triggers to lean if needed.
There are three things that will give you some trouble quickly though. The first one is learning the places to use the Turbo efficiently, as trying to use it on an area where you need to swerve through buoys placed in a straight line is a terrible idea. The second one is dealing with the buoys themselves, since they can get fairly fickle as early as the later Normal tracks onwards, really requiring you to put into practice your turning skills and learning the layout.
But what racing game known to be difficult and often chastised for it would be allowed to be known as such if it didn't have the secret ingredient of the most dastardly CPU racers ever? More specifically in this case, consistent rubberbanding to never allow you to slack for more than a second if you want to get that first place on a race - even in the Normal circuit.
This means that you'll either have to make sure you have your steering game ON POINT and avoid any slight mistakes [let alone big ones] like turning too wide without Turbo to close the gap against another racer, crashing into a wall [or even getting stuck in one??] and such...or if you have been playing your race well enough to still have any lead on the CPU racers, bend the rules over and go for a strategic buoy skip. Since CPUs here ALWAYS follow the buoys, there's some juicy chances to cut a good chunk of the track with enough chances to skip buoys available and gain seconds over the top CPU racer for good measure if a first place is what you need.
And if you are going for the all 1st Expert run for RetroAchievements like I did some days ago...you're gonna need those skips just to make sure you don't get scammed last second by a CPU and have to restart the run when all of the tracks in that run can be EASILY messed up at on crucial turns. But you can watch my run where I finally succeeded on that on the championship runs list above.
Use the buttons at the top or click the VMU below to return to the Memory Card menu.
