'Stinger' captivates

Blue Stinger

Dreamcast

HHH

In spite of the name, Blue Stinger is not a flight simulator, it is a survival horror. Its main advantage over the Dreamcast's incarnation of a Resident Evil game is that Blue Stinger is available now.

Strangely, the power of the Dreamcast works against the figures in the game.

Courtesy of Sega "Blue Stinger" is a quirky survival game.

The characters are well depicted but yet smooth and cartoon-like, which works against the theme. When there is less processing power, figures are more angular, and look as though they could be attacked by zombie-like creatures.

The world, however, is more real looking than any other game of this genre. Most of these games take place at night, to help hide the backgrounds.

Blue Stinger takes you to the beach on a sunny day and asks you to take a look.

The game also has an admirable quirkiness. One level involves a marketplace decked out for Christmas shopping, and involves constant irritating Christmas muzak and huge video walls of Santa and his bikini-clad elf.

To access certain parts of the game you need to collect happy comic stickers from vending machines in a grocery store.

It almost seems like survival horror for kids, except there are poorly voice acted profanity that is completely out of the context. That and all the zombie killing.

The story is reasonably good and the game is fairly interesting. Blue Stinger is enough to tide gamers over until something bigger and scarier comes along.

- Ted Watts

09-10-99