I originally wasn't going to buy Blue Stinger because it looked like a hokey Resident Evil 2 rip-off. Well ok, it is a hokey Resident Evil 2 rip-off. Like Resident Evil 2, you can choose from two different characters, there is a nice amount of weapons, key card quests, much puzzle solving, some amusing dialogue, ("What if a monster comes in when you're butt naked?" "Then I'll fight 'em butt naked!"), and gore, and strangely enough, each of these games begins after a vehicle crashes... the car crash in Resident Evil 2 and the helicopter crash in Blue Stinger...hmm...

Blue Stinger follows in the footsteps of the survival-horror genre nicely. There is a decent array of weapons at your disposal, plenty of badness (however repetitive), blood, a sensible plot, a little atmosphere, and some interesting characters.

You play the role of Eliot Balad, a member of ESER (Emergency Sea Evacuation and Rescue). Along your travels you meet up with Dogs Bower. Dogs decides to join your cause and it's a good thing he does. Dogs is the grunt of the game. He handles all of the heavy weapons duties. Dogs is good for taking out the mini-boss's you face along your quest. Dog's only drawbacks are that he is slower than Eliot and he cannot use short range weapons, save for the Club. Besides being the faster of the 2, Eliot can use short-range weapons, along with some long range weapons. You'll want to use him for getting from point A to point B, which is what you'll be doing the majority of the game. You can switch between these 2 characters anytime during the game. This is a nice feature as one might be better suited for the task at hand. You will encounter NPC's in the game, and most of them are there to give you something to do. The main NPC in the game is Janine, who has an interesting place in the game.

Of course no survival-horror game would be complete without a decent array of weapons, and Blue Stinger doesn't fail here, at least...not too badly. The weapons in Blue Stinger are really varied. You start off with the standard pistol. You'll graduate to the Shotgun, Napalm gun, Bazooka, and many of the other exotic weapons as you progress through the game. As cool as it is to have a wide assortment of weapons, the weapons themselves are difficult to tell apart in the damage dealing category. Normally, one would think that the shotgun would kill a baddie quicker than the pistol. Not true here. The pistol will kill a baddie just as quickly, if not quicker, than if you were to kill the same baddie with the shotgun. Eliots short range weapons seem to suffer from the same problem. Some of Eliots short range weapons are the Aluminum baseball bat, Stun rod, or the Star Wars-esque light sabre sword. Take your pick, these weapons seem to have the same effect on the baddies. Where Blue Stinger out does the other games of its genre in the weapons department are the sounds for all the weapons in the game. They are simply awesome. From the pistol to the bazooka, the sounds are the same as they would be in the real world. To truly appreciate the weapon sound effects in Blue Stinger, one need only use the Gatling Gun. The roar of this death-dealing machine is incredible. Only usable by Dogs, it makes you feel like Jesse Ventura in the original Predator movie. With the Jump Pack in your controller, the Gatling Gun is the most fun to use weapon in any survival-horror game, that is, if you know how to use it properly.

The gore factor in Blue Stinger is there but it is nothing to get excited about. You would think spraying a room with a Gatling Gun would tear everything to shreds, at least the baddies. Sorry, they only get thrown back and maybe a little bit of blood spurts out of their mutated bodies, sometimes their heads get blown off. This aspect disappointed me somewhat. How cool would it have been to cut one of the baddies in half with the light sabre and watch the top half slide off the bottom half? Or maybe cut off a body part or two, at least. But this is only an aesthetic thing and doesn't take away from the game. Maybe in Blue Stinger 2?

Speaking of the baddies, there are probably around 50 different types. The most common of these are the human/alien hybrids. These guys have 4 arms, 2 human arms and 2 alien arms and are very simple to kill. They will provide you with your main source of income as well, so kill them at every opportunity. You will also encounter mutated rabid fish, bigger mutated fish, funny looking glowy light bug looking things, some giant insects, some weird crow things, and many other ones I forgot. The coolest looking baddies in the game though, are the mini-boss's and the final boss (duh). These guys are of course bigger than their cannon fodder counter parts. The mini-boss's are simple to kill, unfortunately, so Don't expect much of a challenge.

The environments and quests in Blue Stinger are at times creative. For instance, towards the beginning of the game you will be duking it out with baddies in a grocery story, while going on this "Stamp Rally" looking for PenPen (as in PenPen: TriIcelon) stamps of all things. To top it all off, Christmas music is playing in the background. But that's not the end of the Wackiness, oh no. Sometimes things just get downright disturbing. Later in the game, Eliot and Dogs can only advance if they are germ free. So, what do they do? They undress in front of each other and hot in a tub with eachother. This wouldn't be SO bad, but does Dogs really have to comment on the status of Eliots man-hood? It was good for a laugh, though. For the most part the environments and quests are pretty standard for the genre. Walk through hallway A, go through door B, talk to person C, and get key D, all in the name of advancing to the next quest. This may sound boring, but it's actually pretty fun. After all is killed and done, the game takes about 10-12 hours to beat the first time around, which is just right for this genre. If you enjoyed the game up to this point, then you'll definitely enjoy the ending as it alludes to a possible Blue Stinger 2 (woohoo!).

Oh, and some people whine about how bad the camera is. Truth is, I only had ONE instance where the camera was working against me, and even then I was able to correct the problem. The only annoying thing I found with the camera is when you first enter a room, and the camera starts zoomed in on the top of your characters head, this can blind you from incoming enemies. This is easily corrected by just WALKING forward. I've never died from this occurrence so it's not a problem, just annoying.

Blue Stinger turned out to be a very good purchase. I wasn't expecting much from it, but it has provided me with many hours of solid gameplay. I'm sure it will be forgotten once Resident Evil: Code Veronica is released, but it's a little something to keep you survival-horror fanatics, like myself, happy until Resident Evil is released.

Graphics - 7/10 - Nothing that you'll want to impress your friends with, but they serve the purpose. I really liked the lighting effects for some of the weapons, nicely done.

Sound - 8/10 - Of what sound there is, it's cool. The weapon SFX are great, and I happen to like Christmas music and cheesy dialogue.

Gameplay - 6/10 - Nothing new here, either. I wish there were more things you could do aside from blowing things up and going on little quests. Its still fun however.

Replay Value - 8/10 - Blue Stinger doesn't let down here. Beating the game a certain number of times rewards you with new modes of play and new weapons, Definitely worth checking out.

Review By: Richard DeJoode