It is now the twenty-fourth century, the Earth is
devastated, and most of the land has become submerged in water. The world has
been split into two fractions the North and South. The South has reorganized and
became prosperous once more, while the North became a ferocious frontier
controlled by radial Warlords. The South fears that the fanatic Warlords will
attack them; to prevent this from happening, they launch the Argosy, their most
powerful warship, to do rescue and reconnaissance work in the North. The Argosy
carries the SeaBlades, high performance rescue and attack vehicles, that can
fly, and go underwater. Players take on the role of David Pierce, an ace pilot,
who is commander of the SeaBlade Squadron. Your assignment is to protect the
Argosy and help complete its mission.
The ship designs for the game are not the best in the world. Each ship has a low
polygonal count, and is not very well textured. To make up for this, players
would assume each of the environments would be extremely detailed. Once they get
into the game they will be shocked since all the environments have the same
amount of detail as the ships they fly. The levels are extremely bland and
boring, and it seems like the developers have a thing for the color brown, as
most of the coloring is a shade of brown. This is not a bad thing, but it makes
the game extremely bland to look at. This is the thing that is extremely
puzzling: since most of the levels have water in them, why are there no
real-time reflections? The developers did nothing to take advantage of the Xbox
graphical capabilities at all. On the plus side the game has a high frame rate.
The animations for each ship are one good point about the game. Each craft has
four separate wings, to help it steer though the air and swim in the water. When
players hit a speed boost, break, or turn, it is very interesting to see each
wings move to make all of this occur. Transferring from the air into the ocean
is a smooth process that does not require any load time, which is a good thing,
since players get a huge dose of that before each match begins.
SeaBlade supports a mediocre soundtrack that gets annoying after it is heard for
the first few minutes. The voice acting is above average; this is one game where
players will not be laughing by the ridiculous voices by the briefing personal.
The sound effects used are sub par, but they have that been there, heard that
feeling to them. One of my favorite sound effects happens when the players
submerge their ships under water. Everything from the engine to the machineguns
has a muffled sounded. In this respect the developers tried to put a little bit
of realism into the game.
The controls are what kill this game. Once players turn on the game and attempt
to play a mission they will be dumbfounded when they realize how un-user
friendly the controls are. To help things, players would assume that the
developers would allow the players to customize the controls, but there is not
an option in there to do so. Players will spend more time fighting with the
controller, trying to fly the ship, then fighting enemies and accomplishing
their mission objectives. This is a shame because the game has some potential in
it, if it had been properly tested.
SeaBlade offers some multiplayer modes for the brave, which are Chaos Reigns,
Tag, and Moving Target. Chaos Reigns is a deathmatch between two to four
players. Tag is where players play tag with a time bomb; the last player holding
this bomb will explode when the timer runs out. Moving Target is where players
hunt down a computer controlled vehicle, to win players must try to be the first
to eliminate the target. The problem is that it seems like there was little to
no thought when making these modes, so none of them are very fun to play with
your friends.
SeaBlade is rated T for Teen for violence.
Gameplay: 4.6
Players will spend more than half of the game trying to figure out how to
control the ships! The controls for this ship are a huge hindrance; they
are not intuitive at all. I wonder how this ever got past the Q/A testers!
Graphics: 5.5
I am not a fan of mediocre colors on a next generation console. I know
that SeaBlade takes place in a post-apocalyptic future, but the world should
never look this dull. Everything seems to have a low polygonal count, so people
will wonder: why are there extremely long load times?
Sound: 6.0
The sound gets repetitive and extremely annoying. Within minutes players
will mute their TV’s and turn on their stereos.
Difficulty: Medium
The game is pretty easy, but the controls bump this category up a notch.
Trying to fly the ships is the hardest thing in the entire game! The enemies
will not have to shoot down your ship, as the players will do that themselves as
they try to pilot the ships.
Concept: 6.3
The game has a been there done that kind of feeling. The only difference in
this game, and others like it, is players can fight in the air and underwater.
Multiplayer: 5.0
The multiplayer for SeaBlade is just like
the single player game, which is not fun at all. Instead of one person
complaining about poor controls, bland graphics, and magnificent loading screen;
up to four people can partake in this festivity.
Overall: 5.5
If you value your money, time, and sanity, please pass over this game. It
may look promising, but the poor controller scheme ruins it. If you are looking
for a good single player game combined with an awesome multiplayer support, look
at MechAssault or TimeSplitters 2.
