Review: Bladeforce

Studio 3DO made some great games, there is no doubt about that fact. Battlesport was simple but it was fun and Killing Time is one of the best first person shooters ever made. However, then you have games like Bladeforce. Interestingly Bladeforce is never a bad game, however when placed under a lense next to other, higher profile titles, it certainly suffers.

*Sweet guitar solo*

To describe the setting is difficult. Imagine Studio 3DO ate Blade Runner and the 1983 computer program turned crime fighter cringe fest Automan then had a hard night on the sauce and vomited all over your living room. That’s about the best way to describe it.
That isn’t to say the setting is bad. Studio 3DO clearly had a lot of fun coming up with humourous names and back stories for the villians in the game. My personal favourite is Reverend Biatch, who looks like she belongs on the cover of a progressive rock album.You play a helicopter backpack wielding badass with a penchant for blowing things up as he takes on the crime family running Megagrid, and hopefully making it back in time for electric tea, or whatever they drink in the future.

Control is difficult to explain, but it’s not great. Studio 3DO was aiming at making this a title that made you forget about the incoming Super Mario 64 and focus on how powerful the 3DO was, with a game that gave you the ability to move in 3-dimensions through a word that felt open.
Basic movement in the game is fine, it is only when you need to make minute adjustments to your position that it becomes difficult to actually control your character. Picking up small boxes in the environment or singling out smaller targets can be very difficult due to your tendency to swing all over the place. Precise aiming and homing in on targets is not a simple task in Bladeforce, however, considering the entire gimmick of the game is that you can move in three dimensions vertically and horizontally it probably should have been made as simple as possible before the game shipped.
Basic combat and objective completion is simple and satisfying with a compelling enough variety of weapons and although enemies are fairly brain dead, they do a good enough job of trying to attack you to provide a challenge.
One of the biggest, most persistent issues with Bladeforce is in the level design. Maps are overly large and sparsely populated with actual content. It also isn’t immediately obvious what you are supposed to be doing, some sort of objective indicator would have helped me enjoy the game more.

Graphically, Bladeforce is one of the most impressive 3DO games that was ever released. Standing alongside games like Need for Speed, P’oed and Killing Time for incredible graphics, it surpassed anything that was being released in 1995 by a mile.
Textures are crisp and detailed with billboards and neon lights shining vibrantly amongst well modeled environments. Explosions are epic and exciting and the frame rate is fairly smooth, though it does suffer occasionally.
My one major complaint with the graphics in Bladeforce comes down to the art direction. You watch the entertaining introduction and expect big, sprawling cities to explore but everything looks fairly bland and most objects don’t really look like anything.
That said, it stills looks great and is a testament to how much power the console still had in it.

Bladeforce feels like a tech demo. It’s a long game, but it is bereft of content and the gameplay is unpolished. Control is jittery and aiming precisely is made overly difficult because of this. While the gameplay is unpolished it still has moments where it is fun and if you can look past these issues and the enjoy the pristine graphics, you might become a fan of this game.