Blasto

"A Well Made Game With Lots Of Features"

In this game, you play Captain Blasto, a blond stereotypic hero that has been assigned the mission of protecting the Earth from alien invaders from Uranus. Along your mission, you blast your way through hundreds of aliens, rescue the occasional damsel in distress, and face insane obstacles. This is a game that's unique and deserves a play-through.

Gameplay: 7/10
The game isn't too bad considering which century it was made. The controls are not too complex, but not too simple. The character is easy to maneuver, but has occasional instances where he stops too slow, and runs too slow. The camera isn't great, because you would move your character to go left, and the camera would only move after a short period of time, which could mean the difference between life and death in the game. There are enough weapons to make this game interesting, while not too much so that it feels like they are just clones of each other. I want to make a note that this isn't one of the games where the life counter stops at 99. You can get as many lives as you want, with no limitation, making the game a little more interesting and fun because you'll want to get every single life you can.

Story: 6/10
The story is a little bland. The story is that you, Blasto, have to kill the alien boss, Bosc, before he can lead his army of aliens to destroy and invade the Earth. You spend your time in the game destroying all the aliens before a final showdown with Bosc. Pretty basic and not too complicated story. Barely being really mentioned or influencing the game. Even so, not all games, namely this one, needs a story to be interesting, after all, this isn't an RPG.

Graphics: 8/10
The graphics in this game are 3-D. You can see pretty far in this game, which makes it a little interesting. The backgrounds aren't too detailed. The graphics are blocky, but even so, they're not too bad. Even though they're blocky, it really doesn't make too much of a difference because it's done in a way where it looks like it just belongs that way. The weapons' looks are pretty decent, although particularly blocky. Almost everything in this game is "blocky", but it isn't bad, trust me. There aren't curves in this game, just straight lines and angles, but it's not bad. Like the classic Megaman games, the
way they look isn't exactly brilliant, but they're not bad.

Sound: 9/10
The sounds are not too shabby in this game. The music is pretty decent, and it also changes with what's happening, which makes for a pretty interesting gameplay. The sound effects are crisp. The voice over for the aliens are good, even though they use the same couple of voices over and over again. The voice for Blasto is done by Phil Hartman, so it's great, but the lines he says, unfortunately, are a little cheesy. The sounds overall, however, aren't too bad.

Replayablity: 7/10
This game is a pretty long game, so you probably wouldn't want to play it again. You might want to clear everything in this game and get every last thing you can in this game, but it depends on how much time you have. The gameplay isn't bad, so you would want to play it again if you enjoyed it, but even if you did the length of this game really does make you think twice about playing it over again. I myself played this game dozens of times over and over again, but then again, I'm one of those people that hangs around electronics a bit too much. You would want to play this game over and over again if you really enjoy it, but if you think this game is less then a 8 out of 10, then you would not play it again.

Overall this game isn't bad, but it lacks characteristics to make it truly great. This game is a little cheesy, in terms of its jokes, as this game was meant to be "humorous". The graphics were good for its era, and they're still not too bad now, but with more up to date games coming out, the graphics in this game is just going to seem to get worse and worse. The music and sound effects are great, even for this time period. This game is a long one that is going to take a while. Once you play it once, you probably wouldn't want to play it again, considering how long it is, so I would rent this game first, and if you truly like it and want to try all its weapons and get everything in the game covered, then you can buy it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/16/06