Wave Race: Blue Storm -- Sleeping Away the Winter

After reading this article over on Gamespite.net about a week ago, I've kinda been in a Wave Race: Blue Storm feeding-frenzy, and with good reason, too. One, the article touches upon why the game was so good yet universally panned by critics (something I never really understood), and two, it's freaking cold here and I need some virtual beaches and waves to drool over while I wait out the winter. So, into hibernation I go. Unfortunately, it's not so easy to do, you know, with responsibilities and such.

Usually, I'd write a long-winded article about my experience with Wave Race (and you'd sigh and drift in and out of boredom-induced sleep), but that article on Gamespite is so well-written and says much more than I could ever say in that amount of words that I just have to claim defeat and direct you over to Gamespite again. But in case you care about what I think, I guess I'll tell you.

Wave Race is fun. It wasn't very well-received and is supremely underrated. I remember a bet two EGM editors had years ago that basically involved an intense showdown between Wave Race and Splashdown, another jet-ski game that had been released a little while after Nintendo's offering. The bet concluded that Splashdown was leagues better based on the magazine's scores, and Wave Race was officially declared the loser.

I cried a little that night. But who said life was fair?

When you get right down to it, Wave Race: Blue Storm is a game you pick up, finish the championship mode on a certain difficulty, and then turn off. The controls are a little touchy yet incredibly deep, but the game itself is pretty light on content. That doesn't make it bad, though -- and while I isolate myself in a cave for the next three or four months until the sun comes back out again, the game is a perfect substitute for some [occasionally] excellent weather to remind me that, yes, heat does exist in the world. It's just a matter of where you live, I guess.

Let me plug that article again. Yeah, that should do it. Funny how these things pretty much write themselves...now, back to hibernation.