POSTED 28/6/14


BLUE ESTATE

Focus Home Interactive

Blue Estate is a game about where Smurfs live.

No it isn’t.

OK then, it’s about an azure station wagon.

No it isn’t.

Oh alright, it’s about a racehorse.

Truly!

The titular Blue Estate is a racehorse at the centre of this comedy-tinged, noir-soaked on-rails shooter, vaguely akin to Time Crisis or The House of the Dead. But funnier, and more noiristic. Kinda like The Big Lebowski, but lots dumber.

At this juncture you’re likely either wondering how you control it, or thinking, “Shit, analog stick crosshairs” or “Damn, wish I’d picked up that Move for $10 when I saw it”. But neither are relevant. Instead, control comes via the clever little gyrocopter doohickeys flying about inside your DualShock 4. You just waggle it in the air pointing where you want to shoot.

While Blue Estate, based on a series of grownup comics of the same name by Viktor Kalvachev, is a blast both literally and figuratively, and chock-full of cheekiness that could have anybody from the North Koreans to Colonel Sanders’ ghost declaring war upon those responsible, it’s that control method that’s at first intriguing, but soon becomes a bit of a bane. No, not the Batman type.

You see, its calibration wanders. Wildly. You can tap L1 or up to recalibrate on-the-fly (poor Louie) – and you’ll get into the habit of doing it almost constantly - but it can distract when you’ve a roomful of fuckers aiming for your head and you’re frantically reloading whichever weapon you’ve currently engaged. Options for analog or Move control should have been included. Really.

Bits requiring touchpad swipes – including floppy hair and Chuhuahua soccer - also sidetrack.

Still, any determined fan of this gloriously mindless genre should find much to love regardless, especially if you’re not offended by anything.

If you are then you’ll end up blue.

CLICK THIS!



CLICK THIS!