While admittedly not for everyone, Wave Race 64 set the standard for water graphics and spawned tons of cheap knock-offs (most notably Sony's Jet Moto series), but none could come close to the original. Plus it was fun to boot. Five years later, we have another instalment. Is it a sequel or just a worthless rehash? It all depends on you...
Developed by NST (did the port of the first 3 PSone Ridge Racer games for the Ridge Racer 64 compilation), most of the essentials from WR64 are intact. At first glance, you'd probably just say it was a useless rehash of the N64 version, with all of the cheap gimmicks used to fool that big changes have taken place. New levels? Well kind of. Southern Island makes a return (with new annoying rocks!) and Aspen Lake is Drake Lake from WR64, don't be fooled. New characters? Not for N64 fans they aren't! They added familiar names such as Ricky Winterborne, Rob Heyward, and Akari Hayami. That's right, the so-called "new" characters were yanked directly from 1080 Snowboarding! As for extras, the original stunt tricks are all here with a few new ones inspired by Motocross racing (done by pressing B while doing your regular trick commands) Ho hum. And if you were wondering, yeah the CPU opponents are still cheap on Expert.
But if you give the game a chance, you'll notice that they attempted to add something new wherever possible.
The biggest change is the addition of Turbos. Instead of just cruising around once you earn Maximum Power, you can put it to use by hitting the Z button and getting a Turbo boost, and performing a trick will make your level go up one.
(TorkTip®: Don't hold on to your turbo forever! Fire off a turbo as soon as you reach Max Power so you can get started on earning another)
If you weren't a fan of WR64's controls, chances are you'll hate Blue Storm. The control is more or less the same, except for Nintendo's realization that a jet-ski doesn't have brakes, therefore no more brake button. This change will take a little getting used to (took me 30-45 minutes) but soon you'll know how to be easy on the throttle. You can also use the trigger buttons to lean harder into your turns, but they've been pretty useless to me. There are times when no matter how hard you push the stick, your jet-ski won't budge while at others just tapping the analog stick will send you spinning in circles. Only seasoned Wave Race professionals will have a chance re-mastering this skill.
The graphics are a similar story. At first glance you'll just say it's an improvement over N64 and nothing really noteworthy. But keep playing and you'll sing a different tune. First and foremost, no game can top the relective mapping of water here. (woohoo! FINALLY sony fanboys can get off of their "GT3 has water reflections!" kick) The weather effects put the Gamecube in a league of its own! My jaw literally dropped the first time I raced through a thunderstorm. Sadly though, I did find a few (rare) moments of slowdown/frame rate stutters.
One more change that seems minor but isn't is the champonship mode. Now you select the the order of which tracks you race on. If you know you suck at a certain track on a rainy day, go there now while it's a sunny day. This really comes into play once you make it to the Expert circuit.
As a Wave Race 64 addict, I recommend getting Blue Storm. But I seriously doubt that a non-Wave Race fan will have the patience to get into it.
