Video Game Critic review of Blue Lightning, gave it a D+

[UHATEIT]

Boo, he gave it a D+. I personally like this game. Here's the link to the review, thoughts on this one? I enjoy reading his reviews, some are way off but to each their own as some people like a game more than others. But if I'm in the market for a game and wand a blunt opinion of it, I tend to check there first and see if he has done a review. I was surprised he hadn;t reviewed all the jag games by now honestly. 

 

https://videogamecritic.com/jaguarab.htm?e=28013#rev1543

Edited January 7, 2022 by UHATEIT

[JagChris]

Yeah that's probably my opinion too. C or D. It can be kinda fun. 

[Cris1997XX]

Eh, I'd give this game a C at most

[ZylonBane]

It's pretty bad. For a clone of After Burner, a game released back in 1987, the graphics should have been a hell of a lot faster and smoother.

[sirlynxalot]

D+ seems a little harsh but the game is certainly no A or B quality title. I've had fun reading the game critics capsule reviews over the years, it's not just a rehash of the same talking points that casual YouTube personalities say about certain games, and in most cases i feel like he gives unpopular games a fair shake on their merits.

[+LS650]

I played this game a lot 15 years ago when I had a JagCD, and really liked it then.

The CD is long gone, so I played Blue Lightning for the first time in many years just recently on my Jag Game Drive.

I have to admit, the game has not aged that well: it's fun for a lark to fly along and just blow up stuff, but it's not that great of a game.  

Overall I'd give it a C+.

 

The VideoGameCritic is like that.  Sometimes he'll write a review that reads positively - and yet the letter grade is poor.  It's odd.

[Greg2600]

It's very comparable to After Burner on 32X.  Both have huge issues with frame rate, draw distance, and BL has some herky controls.  Sometimes when hardware is limited less is better a la Star Fox.

[+madman]

'eh D+ might be a little harsh, but I don't believe it to be far off. Around a C is what I give that one. 

[LordKraken]

Same curse as checkered flag: Excellent, almost fantastic on the Lynx, pretty bad on the Jag.

[Isgoed]

It's not a great game, but also not bad at all imo.

 

I like the ground missions the most, using airbrake most of the time to take a lot of targets out.

The music fits the game pretty good and for me is a huge part of what makes the game enjoyable overall.

[Atlantis]

Yes I have read lots of his reviews before. They are well-written and spot-on.

 

Havent given the game too many chanses, nor Vidgrid, yet. When my cd-add is set again I Will give it a new go.

 

For what I remember I think D is a good and correct judgement. I wouldnt hold it against him, but its a mattet of taste.

 

Do one compare it towards other Jag games - or do one compare it towards favorite PS5 games?

[stranno]

VGC has been always a bit cynical/satirical to my taste. But I can agree that it is not a great game.

 

Highlander F-? Learn to play, please.

[+madman]

I'd say 90% of the time I generally agree w/him, other times he may be wildly off and it shows in the user rating vs his. It's hard to argue with the vast majority of his Jag ratings and he's given out plenty of As and Bs.

[The Helper]

Honestly, I hate to admit this, but literally I played the game like 20 times back when the Jag CD first came out and I could not get past the first 30 seconds.  I kept getting killed by something behind me.  For the life of me I never figured out to get passed it, I finally just gave up out of frustration.  Have not ever looked back

[doctor_shred]

I played Blue Lightning on the Jag CD a lot back in the day.  I used to play from beginning to completion in one sitting before I had a memory track, lol.

 

I agree that it could have, and should have, been better in the graphics department.  It's less impressive and has a poorer frame rate than the (awesome) Lynx version and there's no excuse for that.  When you look at the frame rate and sprite scaling of Superburnout Blue Lightning is shameful.  That said it's fun enough.

 

The FMV cut scenes were good for the time and the soundtrack ROCKS!  I also liked the fact that different planes were better suited to certain types of mission which added some rudimentary strategy to an arcade-style game.

 

Overall, VGC's verdit of D is pretty fair IMHO, I might stretch to C-.  Battlemorph is leagues ahead in terms of quality and playability.

[Atlantis]

Seems like BL has a learning curve a bit too hard… not sucking you in like Tempest.

 

If bad, I can still enjoy bad games due to the so-bad-it’s-good factor. He he, I watched Highlander playthrough, then beat it with immortal code than in default mortal mode, and had alot of fun doing so.

 

BL I just put on my to play-alot list not at first place in the list yet.

[jerseystyle]

To this day the barrel roll effect still makes me laugh. I liked the game but MAN that was dumb.

[+LS650]

14 minutes ago, jerseystyle said:

To this day the barrel roll effect still makes me laugh. I liked the game but MAN that was dumb.

Indeed - what were they thinking..?  It would have looked a lot better, and I imagine it would have been easier, if they had simply rotated the aircraft sprites.  Deliberately dropping to 3 frames per second is never a good choice - I'm looking at you, Supercross 3D!

[PFG 9000]

That guy gave Slime World on the Lynx an F-.  There's no such thing as an F-, but he gave out that grade anyway just to show what he thinks of the game.  I could not possibly value his opinion any less.  At that point, it's not even that he has different taste in games, or that I happen to like something that he doesn't like.  His ratings just have no meaning.

 

More on topic, I like Blue Lightning on the Jag quite a bit.  It's nothing earth shattering, but it's good mindless fun.  And the music is pretty awesome, so that brings its score up a bit.

[PFG 9000]

11 hours ago, The Helper said:

Honestly, I hate to admit this, but literally I played the game like 20 times back when the Jag CD first came out and I could not get past the first 30 seconds.  I kept getting killed by something behind me.  For the life of me I never figured out to get passed it, I finally just gave up out of frustration.  Have not ever looked back

Speed up to get it to follow you, then hit your airbrakes and it will fly past you.  Shoot it.

[Emehr]

He also gave Warbirds on the Lynx a D, apparently expecting WWI biplanes to handle like jets.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Emehr

[+madman]

14 hours ago, ls650 said:

Indeed - what were they thinking..?  It would have looked a lot better, and I imagine it would have been easier, if they had simply rotated the aircraft sprites.  Deliberately dropping to 3 frames per second is never a good choice - I'm looking at you, Supercross 3D!

Edit: Here's an interview where the developer mentions they couldn't do what they wanted with the barrel roll: https://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/rvg-interviews-fred-gill/

5 hours ago, PFG 9000 said:

That guy gave Slime World on the Lynx an F-.  There's no such thing as an F-, but he gave out that grade anyway just to show what he thinks of the game.  I could not possibly value his opinion any less.  At that point, it's not even that he has different taste in games, or that I happen to like something that he doesn't like.  His ratings just have no meaning.

"This guy and I disagree on one game, therefore all 5,500+ reviews of his are worthless!"

[Greg2600]

VGC is not an in depth reviewer.  He plays the games more or less for the first time, and writes a brief review.  He doesn't play games for inordinate amount of time, and honestly, as I've said many times, he is largely an "emulation" reviewer.  i.e. when emu's first came out, who didn't immediately pour through every game they heard of but never saw, on a system, given games no more than 10-15 minutes a time?  Well that's kind of where he comes from.  First impressions mean quite a bit, and if he senses problems including poor controls, he gives bad grades.  He also allows for everyone to comment on his reviews on this forum, and at times, if the user vote is such, he will go back and re-review.

[+cubanismo]

Blue Lightning = Solid A in my book for the music alone. The game itself is fun. The graphics and frame rate? It has graphics. It has frames. They appear at various rates. What's not to love?

[Lostdragon]

Review scores by their very nature are always going to be subjective, but with Blue Lightning your talking a title which:

 

 

Atari Corp internal documents showed they themselves knew was going to get slaughtered at review, yet as they had so little software ready for the platform, was worth the risk of simply putting out. 

 

 

 

There are conflicting recollections from those who worked on it, it was a CD project from day 1, it was decided to be a CD project late in the process and it sounds like a painful development to say the least.. 

 

 

We completely underestimated how much work Blue Lightning was going to be, and I don’t think we fully understood the gameplay when we started recreating it for the Jaguar; I remember squeezing the graphics in was painful (weird shapes, lots of space wasted – a very novel fitting algorithm, which is now known as texture atlassing); we just couldn’t the performance we wanted with the barrel roll. And I am pretty sure the CD drive was a late addition to the project/contract, which compounded our development problems even more.

 

 

https://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/rvg-interviews-fred-gill/

Blue Lightning was designed just for the Jag CD. Having a game for a CD meant we could produce a much more graphic intense game, it also had a unique engine drawing the graphics as you played the game. Because we didn’t have to worry about fitting it on a cartridge, we had a mixture of rendered and drawn backgrounds. It was not an enjoyable experience working on this game. The game designers had a very fixed idea of how they wanted the game to look and we clashed quite a few times over the course of production. In the end it was very stressful producing the graphics for this game and I don’t think we achieved a great result.

 

The company had an idea that we would scan all the backgrounds in and produce 3D models for the sprites. It was such a naff idea. It just didn’t work and it caused me a lot of headaches and heartache as I was so unhappy not only with the game but with the company. The models looked great, but the scanned backgrounds looked awful. In the end, we had a mixture of drawn and scanned backgrounds. Needless to say, the game got slated and I left the company.

https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/louise-herd-interview/

 

K. L. H memory is a little off in places when asked about it in another interview, as she thinks it never saw a  release on Jaguar. 

 

If I could rework a game today, it would be Blue Lightning. I would remove all scanned images and create a 3D world. It had the makings of a great game, a bit Top Gun if you like. We actually hired a fighter jet and pilot gear for a photo shoot. Those working on the game got to dress up and be pilots for a day; the results of which were used in the select pilot screen. That was the best time I had at ATD.

 

 

 

Games that didn't make it: Rat Pack, Radian and Ramparts for the Atari ST. Cabal for the C64. Blue Lightning and Hulk for the Jaguar. Battleship for the Playstation.

 

https://www.c64.com/gt_display_interview.php?interview=23

#When she talks of C64 Cabal, she's referring to:

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/nightbreed-rpg/

 

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Lostdragon