salaminizer

User Score
8.5

Presentation - 8.5
Gameplay - 9.0
Value - 8.0

Wave Race: Blue Storm came out in 2001, 5 years after the original and early in the GC life. Featuring impressive graphics, a variety of modes, improved gameplay and presenting which appeared to be some sort of mascot character, it's certainly a great game, but leaves a feeling that there could be more to it.

All the modes available are inherited from the first game: championship, stunt and time attack. There's also a new mode called Free Roam that lets you inspect a course, but it's nothing more than a relaxing ride as each course changes according to difficulty and have few shorcuts.

Again, like the first one, each difficulty level adds new courses to the championship, unlocking new ones. The problem is that every single one is a re-designs of a classic course. By the time you complete the championship, there's nothing else to it. Time Attack and Stunt Mode are both nice additions, but, although Stunt Mode can be played in multiplayer, both are the same from the original.

Multiplayer is once again lacking, with 4-player split favoured over any sort of multiplayer with AI. Compared to F-Zero GX, which at least offers complementing AI in multiplayer, Blue Storm is once again limited.

With all the rehash feel, one would think gameplay suffered from the same problem, but that's not true, in fact, it's much improved over the original. The game now offers 8 characters with different attributes, which actually become 8 different playstyles, along the tweaks such as Acceleration x Max Speed. Controlling the jet-ski requires much tighter manouver of the stick, besides leaning correctly in curves. Difficulty in the game comes also with more aggressive and better AI. This makes the Championship mode harder, but the points system is balanced as in F-Zero GX so it rewards a good overall performance than 1st places.

The really unique feature of the game and what makes the sequel stand out is the weather system. Each championship will have a weather for each day, and you can choose what course to play when you want. Weather ranges from clean to stormy, with varying wave heights and water level in each course, which directly affects control of the watercraft.

Like Wave Race 64, the soundtrack is good enough, and now all characters have a team leader which radios information. A small gimmick, but still a good one.

In days were yearly sequels are the norm, Wave Race: Blue Storm looks like one, so coming out 5 years after the original game leaves the feeling that Nintendo could have added more to it. Nevertheless, it's still an amazing game.