Genre: Racing
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

If you were to show someone this game, but not tell them what platform it was on, and asked them to guess, they'd probably say Dreamcast. There are two reasons for this: the texture quality, and the the lighting. Or perhaps I should say "lack thereof" for the two aforementioned attributes, as the textures are blurry and undetailed to say the least, and the entire game features totally static lighting- either the whole scene is full-bright, 75% bright, 50% bright, etc. The player and craft models are not much of an improvement over the textures, and the water annoyingly clips right into the land where the two meet. The only redeeming thing here is the water reflections, which dynamically reflect the scenery, although the water itself looks more like a mirror than real water, again, due to a lack of texturing of any sort.

The music is nice in terms of quality, but the tunes are totally uninspired and totally forgettable. The sound effects are much the same- high quality, but not something you'll remember 10 minutes after you're done playing the game. The voice-overs are, sadly, even a step back from the music and sound effects; they're very echoey and garbled sounding, as if they were recorded at 300% volume, then resampled at a lower volume.

The game features a few different modes, including Championship, Time Attack, Stunt, and Training. As for the actual gameplay, this title plays much like the original Wave Race on the N64, except for one huge change- the other riders now produce a wake, and their wake actually creates waves. Oftentimes a CPU player will swoop in front of you, and their resulting wake will annoyingly throw you into a buoy or wall. Also, sometimes your player gets snagged on things it looks like you should be able to pass by or under, resulting in a crash and a tough recovery, which makes you fall into last place. Once you get the hang of the controls, it's a fairly decent racer, but the controls don't feel nearly as tight as they should be.

Wave Race: Blue Storm is not the type of game that feels like it's opening the flood gates of a new era in gaming. Instead, it feels like a washed up sequel to what was a mediocre game in the first place. If you're looking for something to play, it's worth a rent, but as far as this game's overall worth is concerned, it's beached.