To begin with, the graphics are both great and mediocre at the same time. Especially when you factor in the game only runs at 30 fps instead of 60 fps that is slowly becoming the standard of racers this generation. The water ranges to violent large waves to calm water that mirrors the background. When it rains, you can see the drops hit the water as well as water splashing onto the screen as if it was heading straight into your face. The one thing that did bother me about the water was how it looked when it interacted with some of the backgrounds. It appeared more like it was a sheet cutting through rather than water meeting a coastline. While the waves move beautifully and the water looks great overall, the backgrounds and characters leave much to be desired. The framerate would be more forgivable if it looked as if there was a trade off in the process, but it doesn’t look like it in this case. On the plus side, the framerate is consistent and almost never slows down. It is unfortunate that the graphics don’t show off the system like a launch title from a first party game should, but they are hardly bad by any means.

When it comes to audio, the music ends up being good, but nothing that will stand out in your memory. Again, there is an announcer that constantly chatters through the race to let you know what is going on and to give you warnings. Overall the sound does the job but doesn’t stand out at all. Personally, I prefer a lot of the music from the original Wave Race 64 to Blue Storm’s set of tunes. A noticeable example is the lack of music in Dolphin Cove, which I thought was nice in the original. However, let’s move on to what made Wave Race 64 such a great game, the gameplay.

Wave Race: Blue Storm is set up with three different difficulty levels. Selecting your difficulty will determine the number of races you race, which variation of the track you race, and the aggressive level of the CPU racers. As the difficulty goes up, a new track is gained as well as additional day added to the length of the circuit. One key thing is that there is no specific order in which you need to race the courses. This plays into strategy when you factor in that you are given a weather forecast for the next few days. Because of this design, you can try and put calm weather on harder tracks with rough weather on easier tracks giving you a better chance of winning the race. While some may worry about the tracks being mostly just remakes of the original game, the variations to the tracks makes them feel different enough rather than a prettier version. There are a total of seven areas with up to three variations of each area. This makes a total of eighteen tracks that you can play through.

Once again, the water physics are phenomenal and can be more violent than you have ever experienced before. It can be fun to simply race around Dolphin Cove or on one of the tracks in Free Run or Time Attack and just have fun with the waves and jumping off ramps. Also returning is the trick system, which now gives you a wider variety of tricks to attempt. Once you’ve practiced all the new tricks, you can test your ability in the Score Attack. These tricks also actually play a role in the game as you can now use them to build up the new Turbo meter. Also by building up the Turbo meter you gain a higher top speed that you can race at. When the meter is full, you can use your Turbo for a speed boost but be warned you will end up slower than you were when the Turbo wears off. It’s best to use these in straight areas where you can also pass by buoys and build up your meter again before the Turbo runs out.

What hurts this game for me is how it feels and plays. I’ve spent countless hours trying to love the game like I did the original, but I just can’t get into it. One of my gripe is how you handle the controls now. Before you simply used your analog stick to steer. If you wanted a sharp turn, you pulled diagonally down in that direction. Now they’ve stripped the middle degree of turning out of the analog stick and have introduced it into the right and left analog shoulder shift buttons that represents weight shifting. Thus, if you want to slightly turn, you steer left or right, if you want to turn more, you include the shoulder buttons, and if you want a hard turn you pull the stick down diagonally. The end result makes the steering feel somewhat awkward at first as well as stiff. This to me interrupts the smooth control design of the original game and complicates it for no other reason than to be complicated. I can’t find one benefit to the new control scheme. If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. I’ve adjusted to it, but I still don’t like it and prefer the control from Wave Race 64.

It doesn’t end there though. New to the game is having wakes from jet skis to deal with. Wakes make handling the jet skis a bit harder because you can’t judge the water as well. This in itself isn’t a bad thing and in concept is a pretty good idea of a new feature. However, when you combine that with adding more racers than existed previously, with the racers being closely bunched up, it becomes rather cumbersome and doesn’t leave you much room to deal with. A number of times I was thrown out of the race simply because of a wake that I just couldn’t get out of. Again, having wakes isn’t a bad thing, but I believe that they should have kept the number of racers down to what Wave Race 64 had, which could have fixed the problem. I have absolutely no problem judging the waves, that much is clear when I play the Time Attack mode and even have it set to stormy weather. However, add in the wakes and just not seeing or misjudging several wakes at once could knock you completely out of the race. The end result a number of times I will have a clean line to race through only to be knocked off out of nowhere from a wake, or even times where there is nowhere to go but hit an obstacle because of the wake and the crowd of CPU racers. It almost feels cramped at times. Even worse is the instances when it almost feels like a magnet is drawing you towards an object and you can’t pull away. Even after finishing the game, I felt all the work required to beat it was more frustrating than enjoyable.

I realize, for those of you who actually still are reading this rather than outright discrediting it, that I am in the minority here when it comes to Wave Race: Blue Storm. I’ve heard all the analogies stating that if you love the first one, you will love the sequel. Well that isn’t the case with me, and it isn’t the case with others as well. Thus I am warning you that you shouldn’t go into the game with that mentality. It is more probable that you will like it, but the changes to the gameplay may throw you off. Those who didn’t like the original, likely won’t like the sequel. But for some reason, the changes made to the sequel have placed me in the minority who feel that Wave Race 64 is a better game.

In the end, I find the game more frustrating than fun most of the time. The smallest mistake can easily take you out of a race, and if you lose a race at a key moment, you might as well restart the circuit. I don’t mind challenge, but I don’t think Wave Race: Blue Storm has the right balance of everything and thus it doesn’t mesh very well. It seems like they concentrated on trying to get the physics down, adding in more characters, and adding new features such as wakes and turbo, but somewhere along the line lost focus of what makes Nintendo games what they are. It wasn’t the graphics that hurt the game; it was the gameplay and my enjoyment of it. It really disappoints me as I tried so hard to enjoy it. Hopefully one day we will see the original Wave Race team make their version on the GameCube instead of NST. When it comes to games from Nintendo, I usually believe that in most cases they can do no wrong. Well, with Wave Race: Blue Storm I can say that I believe they didn’t do it right.

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