Firstly, the games story follows our main protagonist Tony Luciano, an Italian mobster living the American criminal dream in Los Angeles. His life takes a sudden turn, deciding to shoot everything in sight. The games story is oddly quite an annoying element of the game. During gameplay little “jokes” pop up on screen, causing the game to pause for that brief moment, ruining the flow of the game. The cutscenes that follow are dire, but are skip-able, along with the comic strip cutscenes. The story is certainly not a reason to pick up this title, as it is its biggest flaw. Each level of the game will take you to a unique location (ignoring the second mission). In each mission you will be bombarded with thugs that you will have to gun down to progress further into the game.
As you may have already guessed, it is already sounding like your typical rail shooter. The only difference I have found throughout the game is that Blue Estate features power-ups along with a few different weapons to collect. The weapons are nothing special, but certainly add to the gameplay experience, with ammo not being too hard to find. As you can imagine, when you are in a tight situation, the game will have nicely placed explosions to help you out, with some traps also. Oh, and don’t forget its Matrix/John Woo slo-mo segments that can be activated once shot at. The gameplay itself all-round is fairly enjoyable and I did quite enjoy taking on the onslaught of enemies, the game does not hold back. The main thing that lets it down is the Boss fights, which won’t exactly make you sweat, especially if you are playing in co-op.
What actually makes this game more enjoyable than most on-rail shooters is the simple control scheme, yet it uses two of the most currently unused but curious features of the PS4’s DualShock 4; the touch pad and motion controls. The aiming, as you can expect is done by pointing the controller at the TV screen, using the D-Pad to reset the cross hair if it goes out of line. You can also use a quick tap of the L1 button, with R2 is the trigger button and L2 being used for cover when available. Lastly, the touch pad is used for interactive sections of the game; this includes picking up health, unlocking doors, swiping enemy thrown objects back at them and certain levels that have quick-time events.
The game utilizes touch pad and motion controls quite well and in all fairness is very solid. It’s a nice bit of interaction that makes you feel more involved in the game. I would certainly like to see more use of the touch pad in other games.
The shooting is pretty solid, but it can take a while to get use to the motion controls and aiming at your TV. No PlayStation Move support is very odd as I could easily see myself enjoying it a lot more with the Move controller. Don’t get me wrong however; the PS4 controller does the job fine, feeling natural after an hour or two of play. The controls most importantly work well, but the one downside is the crosshairs. The controller tends to lose itself after mini-cutscenes and various sequences. If this wasn’t present, the experience would be a lot more fluid.
Aside from the shooting, as expected there’s a score system to keep you keen. You are constantly earning points when killing enemies or finding hidden items. The best way to rack up points is chaining lots of kills together as well as pulling off special shots. Don’t get hit though, as the combo will break fairly often. Throughout the levels, there are these mini-duckhuntesk shoot outs. This involves the player simply to shoot a certain amount of sequenced enemy’s popping up for headshots. It’s a good way to rack up points, but it certainly distracts from the flow of the game, feeling rather forced at times.
The points system really only comes down to the visual representation of how well the player did. Leaderboards are supported, but with no unlocks, only board-climbers will have an interest in racking up points to compete against the online community. Blue Estate is certainly a game that is required not to be taken too seriously. The game features a range of exploitative content from jokes to nudity with pop culture references thrown into the mix, which you will see a lot of during the campaign.
The various different environments you visit on the short campaign help keep it feeling fresh and fluent, each with their own end of level boss. The campaign can be fun, but in reality it’s offers nothing that urges you to pick up the controller and play through again. Obviously, previous titles under the same genre never really focus on a solid story, but this is scraping the barrel. If you want it to be more enjoyable, invite a friend over for some two player local co-op.
Overall, Blue Estate‘s campaign certainly isn’t worth the price, with it only clocking in at around 3-4 hours and with little replay value. The visuals aren’t the best but they do set the tone of the game well. The game is better to be played in co-op, but the story lacks immersion. At the price of £16.99, Blue Estate is very steep, it may have solid controls and some funny moments, but the price of the title however is too much for the experience and is overpriced. Yet if on-rail shooters are your thing, you may want to pick it up; otherwise you may want to wait for a price drop.
- Blue Estate was reviewed via a digital review code for the PlayStation 4.