Blast Radius

Here's a game that I really wanted to enjoy, but just couldn't get into.

In terms of sheer potential, Blast Radius had it all. It was produced by Psygnosis (A premier developer, and creator of the awesome space sim Colony Wars), has awesome light sourced space graphics, and featured lightning fast arcade gameplay.

In the end, Psygnosis just didn't pull this one together correctly. This title is doomed to gather dust on my shelf! This is due to some simple mistakes made in development which could've (and should've) been easilly rectified.

There was a few things I liked about this title. I'll explain these first, because it really isn't a total loser.

From a purely graphical standpoint, the game is pretty awesome. A few years back (when we were all playing the Sega 32x) I would've killed to get a game like this. This thing is loaded with polygons, has super cool explosion effects, and has a "go anywhere" environment. While playing Star Wars Arcade on my 32x (before the PS), I envisioned what space shooters should look like. This is it almost too a tee, when speaking of lighting, explosions, and the overall deep space look.

The game is a pure arcade shooter, as opposed to a story based sim. Some perfer stories, but me, I perfer the intense (not slowing) action in an arcade shooter.

The game has 40 missions, 37 types of enemy crafts, 9 assault crafts, and a two player death match mode. There is also a great deal of upgradeability in the crafts. More then enough to satisfy even the most jaded gamer.

Yes, it would seem like this was a winner. Problem is, the faults far outweigh the good. Here are the problems:

One of the biggest mistakes is the fonts used to explain the missions. They are small, and completely un-readable. I have a Toshiba 32" screen TV, and even on this, I couldn't tell what each mission is about. I tried adjusting the contrast, and sharpness, but this didn't help at all. I bet those fonts looked good being developed on a PC monitor, but they don't here. They should've been checked before release for the console.

Another big mistake is that save points are few, and far between. I don't know about you, but I hate being forced to re-do sections in a game for lack of a timely save point. This really kills the re-playability of this title!

The ships all look dorky!! Who designed these things?!! The design is bad, but doesn't hurt gameplay. Still, it hurts the overall graphical look, as the rest of it was so well done. The creators should be forced to watch Star Wars (or something with cool ship designs) before they create another space game. Ships are supposed to look cool! These just look dumb!!

The gameplay felt repetitive after awhile. Yes, there were varied missions, but all had the same feel after spending time with the game.

All in all, it was a sub-standard effort (especially from Psygnosis). Had they put a little more into it, it could've been awesome. As delivered, a rental at best.
 

RATINGS
GRAPHICS 77%
SOUND 80%
GAMEPLAY 75%
ORIGINALITY 70%
REPLAY VALUE 65%
OVERALL 73%