Hearing that the independent Hesaw were bringing a darkly comedic mature-rated shooter to the Xbox One might’ve passed my notice until I read that it was designed to be played with Kinect.
This review has the danger of, instead, being a treatise on Kinect – since the technology has been largely relegated in the Xbox psyche. The unbundling of the device, and the removal of its processor requirements, has pretty much ensured Kinect features won’t be present in big third party games – devs opting to use the extra CPU to bump graphics.
Most Kinect focussed games thus far are aimed at as broad an audience as possible, owing to the fact few would likely give them a chance. Disney’s Fantasia: Music Evolved has won some high praise, and Kinect Sports sits as a firm party game staple – what room IS there for an Kinect shooter for adults? Apparently plenty!
Settings and Story
Blue Estate puts players behind the eyes of Tony Luciano, a hopeless gun toting Italian-American gangster stereotype who ploughs through the game in a whirlwind of bullets and blood. Without spoiling too much, the first level sets the tone for the game’s setting, which is generally firmly in the gutter. I like that.
The game is narrated by Roy Devine Jr, an even more hopeless Private Detective, who describes the events of the game derived from the testimony of Cherry Popz, a dancer from Tony Luciano’s strip club – whose character model emblazons the menu screen with an attention to detail other aspects of the game can’t boast. Either that or I’ve examined her a lot more closely than other parts of the game, who knows.
If the above paragraph didn’t emphasise this fact enough – know that Blue Estate is a mature game, intended for adult audiences. Much like the comic it’s based on, Blue Estate is crammed with dark, raunchy humour, the likes of which will likely send the left-wing media into a self righteous melt-down the next time they have a slow news week.
I’d argue that, whilst Blue Estate is base with its humour, it does show self awareness, often deprecating itself and its characters. More than once I found myself laughing out-loud at the cheesy one liners, and there’s a real sense that Hesaw Games had a lot of fun whilst writing it. Some critical feedback I would offer them though, is to avoid explaining the references the game makes. There’s a lot of pop culture cameos in the games dialogue, and often the game will explain where or who they came from – kinda ruins the “ah ha!” effect they would’ve otherwise had, but its a pretty minor gripe.
The writing drives the player forward, complimenting game play design decisions which, probably shouldn’t work, but generally do.
Gameplay
As I mentioned earlier, there’s a real danger this review could be a treatise on Kinect rather than a review of Blue Estate. Blue Estate is an on rails shooter at core, drawing on a legacy that includes titles such as Time Crisis, Die Hard 2 and House of the Dead. Since the advent of twin joysticks, on-rail shooters haven’t really been a necessity – but, thanks to Kinect, with Blue Estate, the genre is getting a well deserved second chance.
Blue Estate can be played with a controller, but clearly, is best experienced using Kinect, and it is – to my surprise – a fun experience indeed.
Kinect maps both hands. One hand is utilized for targeting, and the other for gestures. With a controller, the same is true, instead utilizing the left and right joysticks. Kinect clearly has its issues, and I found myself experiencing similar problems to when I played D4. There is just enough latency on the targeting reticule for it to be a bother – whilst I can’t put the blame on this down to the game, Blue Estate does an incredibly admirable job of using the technology to its full potential.
My Xbox play space is tiny. I had to stand at the absolute minimum distance to Kinect without somehow no_clip’ing through my wall. Despite this, Blue Estate had no trouble registering my commands, and most importantly, my aim. The urge to play the game using a finger-pointing handgun gesture is irresistible, and luckily it works well – and I have no doubt it would feel even better with a larger play area.
Reloading, changing weapons, and pulling the trigger all utilize buttons when played with a controller, but require gestures on Kinect. Being unable to register these commands in a shooting game would be catastrophic, but thankfully Blue Estate did so every single time throughout my experience with the game’s meaty 8 chapter story. Point down to reload, raise your arm over your shoulder to switch weapon (you can even pretend there’s a shotgun strapped to your back for maximum immersion… if you want to… not saying I did that or anything… nope). Blue Estate also throws various gesture commands your way to keep the game fresh. These include batting away grenades, grabbing health kits and even pushing Tony Luciano’s annoying fringe out of your field of view (quips in tow). Ultimately, Blue Estate makes a great case for on-rails shooters utilizing Kinect, and makes me wonder if Ryse might’ve been better received if it had stuck to it’s Kinect’ed roots.
Whilst the game does have impressive controls for Kinect, it does go to some lengths to help you. The targeting reticule is quite generous, and will lock on to help with your aim – supporting the idiosyncrasies of the input scheme. One aspect of gunplay some might take issue with is the fact it automatically fires when the targeting reticule hovers over an enemy – but this solves a barrier Kinect presents that I can’t find an alternative for. Mobile games such as Modern Combat do things like this to compliment touch controls as well, and in my opinion – Blue Estate’s gameplay choices work well, without breaking the game.
On normal mode, the game can still be quite challenging. The HUD will draw your attention to enemies who pose the greatest threat, warning you to target them first or aim-down into cover. The scoring system is what truly makes Blue Estate an addictive experience. Each kill you make, you’ll be awarded points and a combo extension, and your gameplay style will be scrutinised in a results screen at the end of the chapter – how many times did you get hit? how fast did you target enemies? how many collectables did you shoot? and so on.
Headshots (and nutshots) carry higher rewards – and regardless of the game’s form, the Unreal Engine plays a huge part in making the game fun. The game carries some impressive production values for what I typically expect of an indie game. The texturing on the guns is impressive, and the levels are detailed and varied – characters also react dynamically to where they’re shot, and ragdoll as appropriate to the engine. Each scene has layers of destructibility too, from the walls, tablets, and so on – adding to the on-rails experience fans of classic games like House of the Dead and Time Crisis will appreciate.
Guns all feel very different, even on Kinect – which is a big bonus. Whilst you lose that vibration feedback I’ve come to expect from a shooting game, each have their drawbacks, whilst each feel rewarding in their own way. Shotguns have a wide blast radius, as you’d expect, but require long reload times. Hand guns have infinite ammo, but deal average damage and cannot penetrate the armour of enemies you’ll meet in later levels (requiring you to go for a headshot) – and machine guns have a faster firing rate, meaning you can sweep your hand from left to right with Kinect and carve swathes of enemies into bloody chum with ease.
The game also comes with an Xbox One exclusive Arcade Mode, which similar to classic on-rails shooters features a limit that requires kills to extend – and weapon pick ups as a reward for combos. The mode comes with leader boards and a frenetic, quick-fire gameplay you’d expect of a mode carrying the name ‘Arcade’ – it certainly adds weight to the game’s incredibly reasonable £10.39 (or just £8.31 if you’re a gold subscriber price tag.)
Conclusion
Blue Estate is a very admirable attempt to bring some credibility to the notion of Kinect gaming. I found myself yearning for a light gun, or a hand held trigger peripheral to compliment he motion tracking – as the auto fire (whilst necessary) didn’t feel as good as pulling the trigger myself.
The story is humourous, but won’t stand up against Black Adder or Red Dwarf any time soon – but it needn’t. The antics of Tony and other characters are entertaining, albeit laced with stereotypes – is designed to be firmly tongue in cheek, staying faithful to Viktor Kalvachev’s source material.
The game boasts a decent amount of content on Xbox One, with an arcade mode, multiple difficulties and leaderboards, and at a price of just £8.31 for Xbox Live Gold members, in my opinion, the title becomes a must buy for anyone who is curious about Kinect, or enjoyed quality motion tracking gameplay exemplified by D4. The value for money aspect alone is a big plus, for what is quite a polished title – as far as it’s b-movie guilty pleasure styling will allow for anyway.
Fans of Kinect, classic on-rails shooters, raunchy humour and ridiculous John Woo style action should strongly consider Blue Estate.
Jez is a games journalist, Executive Editor at Windows Central. They contributed 1 article to ICXM in 2015, focused on game reviews: one of Jez Corden’s earlier ICXM bylines.