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Absolute Blue

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Developer: Intermediaware
Publisher: Intermediaware
Genre: Action > Shooter
Released: Apr 14, 2005
Players: 1

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- Absolute Blue Review

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Whatever you do, don't press escape! Yes, I had to warn you at the very beginning - if you make this fatal mistake, you'll be blasted to pieces without any confirmation boxes popping up, abruptly ending your space adventure (probably at the worst time possible like it happened to me).

Anyway, that said, Intermediaware's Absolute Blue is a game inspired by R-Type clones such as Pulstar or Last Resort, which means it's a fairly standard side-scrolling spaceship shooter based on destroying everything you can and avoiding everything you can't, all while collecting various power-ups and trying to survive. You'll face almost endless hordes of enemies with a big boss every now and then, you'll dodge a lot of tiny, hard to see bullets and, if you're lucky or skilful enough, you'll get to save the universe.

Now, on to the background story details. Well, there are these aliens... and they are, you know, really, really evil. So you have to kill them all, including the Brain behind their fiendish plans. That's about it - pretty standard for the genre. Absolute Blue offers 60 sectors grouped into twelve 5-sector levels, which are further grouped into four 3-level worlds. This might sound like a lot of fun game time, but due to the saving system and the shortness of actual sectors between the checkpoints, it plays exactly like four very long levels would. Luckily, the game isn't too hard on "easy" so you'll rarely have to replay a sector more than twice, and gimmicks like the tunnel chases or levels scrolling to the opposite side provide some much needed variety.

Contrary to the principle seen in some extremely twitch-based arcade games, your spaceship has an energy bar so there are no single hit deaths�€�unless you collide with the scenery, which instantly sends your ship to its demise. A similar design inconsistency is shown in the case of the "big rotating wheel of imminent doom" boss - as opposed to all the other enemy ships, it flashes when hit, which means that this concept is recognised by the developers but, for some reason, they chose not to use it for anything else. This was also the first boss that caused me to experience another interesting issue - as I blasted it into pieces, some of its stray bullets hit my ship, making our death simultaneous. So, what do you think happened? If you remember the days of SNES shooters, you probably guessed. The game didn't register that the level was over, and I was left in limbo, forever lingering on the boss fight screen.

The power-up system is extremely linear - there is no real choice of the upgrades you can install on your ship, no equipment-shopping between levels, and no kind of weapon toggles. To improve your chances of survival you can collect power-up capsules (they spread out your cone of fire and add a rear gun) until you're maxed out, increase your speed, or pick up one of three possible companion modules. They are two "satellites" that float around your ship, and a front-mounted laser, all of which are activated by keeping the fire button pressed and they have more power than your usual shots.

Graphics: 7/10

Absolute Blue is, regarding style, rather eclectic, making me wonder if the artist perhaps had a tough time deciding whether to make a steampunk game, a biomech/organic game or a generic "Japanese" shooter with anime-inspired technologically advanced ship designs. The individual visual elements almost look like they were originally created for completely different uses and pasted into a parallax side-scrolling engine in the state they were found in, without any efforts to achieve a design unity.

The particle effects used for all kinds of explosions and weapon effects are without a doubt of a high quality and look quite satisfying. If so much attention was paid to everything else, Absolute Blue would have been a great game. However, these effects are the only thing that really stands out. The level design is repetitive, the playing field layer is mostly made up of very similar-looking tiles glued to one another, and other parallax layers (some of which really clash with each other) are more often than not indistinguishable from the layer that can hurt your ship. All of the above qualities make the visual experience of playing Absolute Blue a very mixed bag.

Sound: 8/10
Apart from the nice-looking laser beams, the sound is pretty much the best part of the game. All the background music truly does what its name implies instead of being too intrusive, and there are a few nice touches like the high impact riff on the "get ready" screen, sounding almost like something you could hear in a Japanese 2D fighter. Don't stay on the main menu too long, though - the loop is very short.

Voice-overs are mostly limited to short phrases, appropriate between the levels, but somewhat annoying during the actual game. For example, the same phrase sounding like "extra points" is repeated each and every time you collect a bonus points bubble. Since most enemies are dropping the bubbles, it will be a sound you'll hear at least 20 times per minute, and after a while I consciously started avoiding them. Maybe it's in fact a clever feature designed so that only the most brave and enduring amongst us would be able to achieve the highest score? In any case, for an effect of such frequency, a simple "pling" would have been more than enough.

Gameplay: 6/10
To paraphrase Mr. T, I pity your spacebar. There is no auto-fire in Absolute Blue (although there's talk of adding it in one of the future releases, as well as custom key mapping), so, in order to play the game, you'll have to constantly hammer the fire key which seriously detracts from the action. Not that there is much action to pay attention to - Absolute Blue is as basic as a sidescrolling shootemup gets. There are no combo systems, no cool hidden features and no alternate ways to improve your score apart from collecting the already mentioned score bubbles.

Value: 6/10
The replayability of Absolute Blue boils down to a single feature - an online highscore table uploaded through a somewhat obscure external program (which might explain the relative lack of variety amongst the player names seen on the board). For a game you can finish in a day, $19.95 could be called slightly overpriced, if only due to a huge amount of better games on the indie shootemup market.

Concept: 5/10

All of the features from Absolute Blue have already been seen in other games. From the staple "ground forces" of side-scrolling shooters - the AT-ST-like mechanic walkers to the cannon turrets in tight tunnels or rockets launching straight up at you, everything you encounter will have a familiar ring to it if you're ever played more than two vertical scrollers in your gaming career.

Fun: 6/10
Since side-scrollers aren't exactly in a genre famous for its originality, perhaps the best category to judge them by is the fun factor. That, unfortunately, is something that Absolute Blue lacks. The action, though sometimes very fast, isn't fluid enough, opportunities to save the game are very rare, the scrolling speed changes without any warning, seemingly designed just to destroy your ship, and power-downs are frequently thrust upon you (in narrow tunnels, no less) making Absolute Blue more frustrating than fun.

Overall: 6/10
Minor issues like clumsy translations, the lack of a unifying theme to the game and a surprisingly low amount of features for a recently-made shootemup suggest that, to really succeed, Absolute Blue should have received some more polish. Don't get me wrong, though. Sure, it doesn't let you fly carrot ships, but if you're a fan of the genre who's looking for a no-frills representation of the genre, Absolute Blue is worth checking out - after all, you get to shoot stuff, and isn�€™t that what shooters are all about.

By: Damjan Flegar
Posted: Tuesday July 19, 2005