Humpday Gaming: Blade Force (3DO)
Studio 3DO will go down in history as one of those developers that were cursed to make games for a console that was long forgotten before it even died. It’s unfortunate, since what these guys were able to produce on the ailing 3DO was nothing short of amazing. First came Killing Time. It was a flawed FPS, but was still quite the technical achievement for a console that was far past its glory years (if it ever had any). Their magnum opus however, came with the release of Blade Force. And to this day, it still amazes me just what these people were able to make the 3DO do.
Blade Force is about some dude in the future who straps a helicopter onto his back and fights crime. It’s a great premise, and Studio 3DO went all out with it, putting enough crude humor into it to easily justify its teen rating. For instance, the evil preacher in the game was named Reverend B. Atch, and several of the game’s female characters featured ample cleavage. While most of us were bemoaning Studio 3DO going for the lowest denominator, they at least gave the game a pretty unique style and look to go along with the braindead Junior High humor. Even if it did make all the characters look like they were made of ham and Play-Doh. The game also featured one of the best opening movies ever made for a video game:
That guy running from the giant flamethrower truck puts me on the floor every damn time.
As you can see from the video, the game had some pretty unique bad guys. Each had their own stage and story to go along with it, while it was up to you to take them down to stop their horribly hilarious crime waves. And if anything was going to take down a crazy surgeon with a second face attached to his forehead, it was going to be an even crazier guy with helicopter blades strapped to his back, and a big ass laser gun.
The real star of the show though, was the graphics. It was a stunner all the way, and nothing could touch it. Even the mighty first-gen Playstation games didn’t look anywhere near as polished or impressive as Blade Force. You took control of your helicopter robot guy, and flew through large sectors of the city in order to open gates, and hunt down your current target. The city looked great, the special effects and lighting were second to none, and the fluid control really made it a blast to play. There really wasn’t anything quite like it on any console, so it’s a shame that maybe a total of seven people ever played it and got to enjoy just how awesome it was. It also sucked to see what the 3DO was capable of producing at this point, only to be what was obviously too little too late.
Studio 3DO also created a couple other games before the console managed to shit out. One was Star Fighter (a game as generic as its name implies), while the other was Captain Quazar, which was some weird cartoony 2D 3/4 overhead shooter. Neither were very good, though Captain Quazar came complete with one of the most awful rap videos ever produced as its ending sequence. Nothing came close to topping Blade Force for Studio 3DO. It never even got the dignity of being ported to the Playstation. Just another relic that will never be remembered, other than being called “that one game that was on that one shitty console” by some drunk friend.
Man, you guys missed out on an awesome game.
