As a shmup fan, I could not be happier with my Nintendo Switch. I feel that the genre is having a renaissance, and there couldn’t be a better time to own a Switch if you love shmups. Now, we have another shmup in our console, and I must say that so far, I haven’t played a game that gave me so much freedom on how to beat each stage. Blue Rider is a shmup that throws a wrench into a defining aspect of shmups: the automatic scrolling of the screen. This is a staple feature that most–if not all–shmups have. The screen moves forward automatically, and you must maneuver your way through waves of enemies and enemy shots. However, Blue Rider is different. Here you can move in any direction you want. If you stay, nothing happens unless there are enemies close. Then, they will look for you and shoot you down. I really like that change. You have more freedom of exploring each stage to its fullest, trying to uncover all secrets and upgrades available before engaging the boss. Or, if you are being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of enemies in the stage, you can backtrack until you are in a more favorable position. Hit and run tactics work really well in Blue Rider, but for those loose canons that don’t care about a few scratches, you can just move forward and destroy everything on sight.
Blue Rider , like old-school shmups, doesn’t have a tutorial. You just look at the help options and see which button does what, and you are golden. Also, it doesn’t have any story per se, so it’s up to your imagination to create a setting for the game. For me its “The Evil Chupacabra Army are treating to destroy the world, Blue Rider you are our only hope!”…..or something like that. Anyway, in a shmup, the story is secondary. What matters is that the game is fun, and you get to shoot all the things!
From the game play perspective, I really like what Blue Rider has done. Being an isometric 3D game, you have a bird’s eye view of most of the area surrounding you (most because sometimes the camera is zoomed in to you, so you can’t see enemies approaching or incoming bullets). That helps big time when you are surrounded and want to backtrack and rethink your strategy. I like that the first level feels like a tutorial without a tutorial. The enemies are less aggressive, and the amount of bullets they shoot is not something that can overwhelm you. In my play-through, the first stage helped me get a feel of the controls. When I got to the first boss, the control scheme felt natural. Getting used to the controls quickly is a good thing, since the difficulty, even on easy mode, goes up around the middle of the game, because more enemy types appear. The previous enemies become more aggressive, shooting more bullets and being more proactive in following you. This happens even more in a group, which makes the game more challenging and ultimately more fun to play because you never know what is going to happen on the next stage. You need to be prepared.
One thing that happened in my play-through is that on level seven (the ice level), you can see enemy hangars. As you move through the stage, I was thinking “need to keep my eyes peeled as soon as I’m close enemies will come out of that hangar.” The funny thing is that no enemies came out, but as soon as I turned my back on them, the enemy waves started to shoot me and come after me! I was like, “Oh, no! You want to pincer attack me,” since I was being attacked by enemies both sides. It was a good change in the atmosphere of that stage. I even depleted all sub-weapon ammo, but I succeeded on defeating them.
It wouldn’t be a respected shmup without upgrades to your weapons,. There are two weapon types: red and blue. The red type–once it’s upgraded fully–shoots in a spread like fashion (love it since it helps a lot in crowd control) with an average rate of fire. The blue type is a laser-like with a faster rate of fire, which is good to deal damage quickly but without the spread feature the red one has. Sub weapons also have two types: green and purple missiles. The green sends several small missiles in a straight line, and the purple sends missiles with homing capabilities. You can find upgrades hidden in blue tower-like structures. Once you destroy them, you can see the icon that flies out of them that changes after a couple of seconds. If you want to keep your current setup, you need to be quick to grab the power up because if you don’t, you might change to a weapon that doesn’t have enough upgrades as you want. This is in the case of the main weapon, since if you upgrade five levels for the red and you change to blue, you lose the upgrades done to red and start from scratch on blue. This only happens if you haven’t upgraded the other weapon type. If you did, you continue from where you left up the last upgrade of the weapon and vice versa. It is annoying to have a powerful weapon exchanged for a weaker one. There is also hidden relics on each level, three of them. They don’t affect the game in any way but destroying them helps achieve a higher score.
Each of the game’s twelve stages is well detailed, and I like that the developer made the effort of making them big enough to prevent a quick ending. I also like that they are completely different from each other. This adds so much for the game progression overall and is a welcome addition. I like how the game plays performance wise. So far, there were no moments of lag or hiccups during game play, especially when I was surrounded by enemies and their bullets. On docked mode it is really fluid. On handheld, I only had a tiny bit of lag in some areas where there are a lot of things happening on screen like enemies, bullets, or background. However, there was nothing game breaking and in only happened twice.
The music is fine, but it needed a little more pizzazz. The only thing that I really wanted was a bit of replay value when finished with the game such as a new game plus or boss rush mode (the game bosses are so cool, and I still hate the lava stage boss). At least there are online leader boards, so for those who like to brag about their piloting skills, they have a reason to replay the game in each difficulty.
Bottom Line Blue Rider is a good shmup with some interesting game play mechanics and that old school feel that captivates many shmups enthusiasts. I feel that is a game that definitively does things different and that you should give a chance. I honestly am happy that the Nintendo Switch is becoming the place to be for shmups.
A Review code was provided for this Review.