Blue Estate

Game Info

 

Almost 20 years ago, my mom worked at the mall for long hours and she could not afford child care so my brother and I were kind of stuck going to work with her.  When we got to her job, we would beg to go to the arcade in the mall and spend countless hours playing awesome classics of today.  They had 2 rail shooter games that I always loved playing in the arcade but not on the consoles,  Area 51 and House of the Dead.  I played those games non-stop in the arcades and so I bought House of the Dead on the Xbox years later when it was released and I felt like it was a disappointment and just lacked something.  So that kind of killed rail shooter games for me for a long time until recent.  I got my hands on Blue Estate and now I have found new life in the rail shooter genre, if they can continue to be as awesome and fun as this.

Blue Estate is based off a comic book series that I am honestly not familiar with but if the game is anything like the comic then it is definitely a series that I want to start reading.  The story of the game is far out there but pretty awesome as you play through it.  Basically the first couple levels you play as Tony Luciano, a hot tempered Italian mobster and the son of “The Don,” trying to get his favorite stripper back.  Then during that fiasco you cause a war with the Sik family.  In return for the trouble that Tony has caused, they take “The Don’s” horse named “Blue Estate,” hence the name of the game.  All hell break’s loose from the very beginning.

 

Blue Estate hooked me as early as the warning before the game even begins.  The game is rude, crude and hilarious throughout the entire gameplay.  It gets a little racial, a little sexual, completely outlandish, lots of blood, weapons, and the first game to use the dualshock 4 to its full potential.  Basically, instead of having a gun to point at the screen and shoot away at the other gangsters, the controller serves as your gun.  I know it sounds weird but there is no real calibration problems so it works out great.  Basically in the beginning, the game will ask you to aim your controller and shoot to calibrate and it is that simple.  Now, at first I was like ehh on the whole idea but then as I got going, the calibration will eventually mess up and it sucks but with the press of a button, it automatically sets up your controller however you are holding it as the reset point, which would be the middle of the screen.  The downfall is that you will press the reset a lot but it’s great because imagine having to re-calibrate the controller every time you lose the centering of your aiming.

 

I found the controller aiming scheme to be awesome but to make it better, the touch pad also gets some good use as well.  There are some bad guys with some even badder weapons that will come running at you, at that moment you will have to swipe your finger in a certain direction on the touch pad to pistol whip him.  Those other mobsters will also throw some grenades, paint cans and etc., at you and when it gets close you can swipe in three different ways to knock the item back at them.  The touch pad is also used to open up doors and gates not to mention Tony’s hair falls in his face so swipe it back behind his ears.  Basically, the players will barely use the buttons on the controller with the exception of the trigger and the reload buttons.

The graphics and sounds of Blue Estate are awesome and smooth.  The sounds of hitting objects back, getting hit by those objects, explosions and gunfire are all right on cue.  The graphics run extremely smooth especially all that is going on as the screen moves around to your next destination.  The cut scenes are flawless and hilarious as well.  The blood that splatters every where from the pistol whips to the head shots are amazing, gory, and it sprays out on point and looks great doing it.  I can’t speak enough on how much I enjoyed all of this.

 

The game play is pretty simple, basically you will aim around and kill the enemies after you.  Not much to it, but there are some hidden goodies that you can shoot to help raise your score at the end of each level.  I feel like I have spoken so high about this game that it seems like there are no blunders, but no game is perfect and that includes this one.  The game can get repetitive being that you constantly shoot at the bad guys and can gain new weapons doing it but you are still just going around shooting guys and not doing much of anything else.  The end boss fights are somewhat challenging at first but then it repeats itself, basically once you have done a certain motion of things you will turn right around and keep redoing them until that threat is defeated.  So, mostly the negatives of this game are repetition but I am sure there are some of you who are politically correct type of gamers and so that means the vulgar language and racial slurs will probably be offensive to you as well.

 

The Recommendation

Blue Estate has, in my opinion, great humor whether it be vulgar or racial and no I am not a racist but tell me how many mob movies you have seen with out racism?  The lingo reminds me a lot of mob type movies and I can appreciate that whether its tasteless or not.  I also love blood and gore, so shooting heads clean off is definitely a great positive in my book.  The downfall to this game is that you really don’t get too much of a change in game.  You will be constantly shooting and being attacked, which is great because it keeps the game action packed but it does get redundant after a level or two.  Also, I loved how the boss battles begin but again, it becomes a chore doing the same thing over and over until defeated.  Basically, if you like strippers, bad language, mobster types, and lots of blood baths of death than you need to get this.  If you are a politically correct, or part of the pussification of America then pass on it so the rest of us don’t have to listen to you complain about something else that could be offensive.