Blue Force – Final Rating

Puzzles and Solvability: 2

This rating may seem unfairly, punishingly low, but one thing I noticed while playing Blue Force is that there were precious few puzzles that required much intuition. Most of the time, it was a click-fest to find the thing you know you need, like the glass-puncher from useless Officer Harrison’s trunk to get the drunk guy out the screwdriver on the Future Wave to open the emergency box to get the flare (still mad I couldn’t take the whiskey).

Also, still laughing at the fact that this clown didn’t even know what was in HIS OWN TRUNK.

The puzzles, such as they existed, when they weren’t just “Go here and click this thing on that guy” (which is adventure gaming in a nutshell, I get it) were just kind of silly. Harrison not knowing what’s in his trunk? A random screwdriver in a pouch on the back of a seat? Playing “Let’s plug everything into everything else and see what happens?” Like I said at the time, I knew that I needed to smoke Bradley Green out of the Future Wave’s cabin, but (a) I found the diesel-soaked rag way earlier and seemingly randomly, and (b) the means of starting the fire should have been more logically placed. Overall, the puzzles weren’t much fun, nor did they provide a sense of accomplishment. At least when I caught a horse fart in a bag in Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, I had to work for that bit of equine flatulence!

Truly a work o fart.

The only puzzles I liked were using Jake’s father’s nickel to distract Mr. Carter so you could grab the keys to the Future Wave, and throwing a grenade at someone.I’m going to be comparing this game a lot to the last Jim Walls-designed game I’ve played, Police Quest III. I gave that game a 3 for this category, lamenting that I couldn’t give it a 3.5. In Police Quest III, the puzzle quality tapered off near the end, but at first there was actually some amount of both logical and lateral thinking required, and the paperwork puzzles and other administrivia Sonny had to deal with made you feel like a cop. Blue Force is even more poorly designed than that: you get things you need for later puzzles well before they’re actually needed, which sort of throws the gameplay loop off. I mean, there is a certain intuition needed to notice the rare coins in Mr. Carter’s shop, and then going through your inventory to realize you have this rare nickel you picked up seemingly for no reason at all in the study at Jake’s grandma’s house. It never felt satisfying in a way that, say Conquest of the Longbow’s puzzles did.

And don’t get me started on visiting the marina first thing and getting inexplicably blown away by a mystery assailant who comes out of nowhere.

I cannot in good conscience rate Blue Force’s puzzles equal to even Police Quest III’s. Blue Force’s were either too easy or too annoying. Understanding developer intent and what they were going for is one thing, but it doesn’t make the puzzles any better.

Interface and Inventory: 4

I’m giving this a 4 solely for the command wheel that pops up when you right-click the mouse button. It freezes the game and gives you an opportunity to make your selection. This was a bit jarring at first for me, being more used to the mouse-driven interface in games by companies like Sierra and LucasArts, but it didn’t take long for me to not only appreciate it, but like it. If only this game presented real-time challenges where the time-stopping would have actually mattered.Otherwise, the interface is pretty standard fare, with some things I noticed which prevent me from giving a higher rating.

First, there aren’t many things to click on and get descriptions of in each room. I contrast this with Sierra games, where a part of the fun was clicking every icon on everything and everyone in a given screen just to see what funny responses you can come up with. Second, while I like that the inventory is constantly displayed on the bottom of the screen, it does eat up a lot of real estate, and the descriptions are only bare-bones. Again to compare to a Sierra game, even a weaker entry like Leisure Suit Larry 5 has funny messages for every inventory object in addition to helpful descriptions. Things like this sound minor, but they add to the richness of the game world. Lastly, Blue Force doesn’t have a speed slider! Given how slowly Jake walks, this is particularly egregious. It made me not want to keep playing in the parts where I was stumped and needed to do the classic adventure gamer thing of revisiting every place to see if I missed anything. You should know better, Mr. Walls. Shame on you. Shame shame!

“Don’t make me come to your house again.”

Hey, at least there’s no driving minigame! That’s something nice to say about Blue Force!

Story and Setting: 3

This is a tough one, quite honestly, because the story of a rookie cop who joined the force to be like his deceased father is a good enough backstory for me. However, the tie-in to (SPOILER ALERT) Jake’s parents murder was very hackneyed. Further, the game’s, quite frankly, quaint and cozy feel didn’t lend itself well to the heavy plot involving murder and arms smuggling. The main villain came from out of nowhere. The best part of the story was Jake teaming up with his father’s former partner whom he, I guess, started a private detective agency with, Lyle Jamison.Otherwise, romance subplots go nowhere, the characters aren’t particularly memorable, and even recurring antagonist Bradley Green is just a generic, hyperaggressive biker dude.

Albeit, with a live grenade.As far as the setting goes, Jackson Beach, CA is basically the Police Quest series’s Lytton, CA. It’s a generic small American city with an overall small feel. In fact, the stakes of Blue Force felt small. There wasn’t much urgency, and the whole thing came off as a bit second-rate. In conclusion, there should have been fewer dinner dates and more grenades chucked in faces.

Sound and Graphics: 5

Blue Force’s graphics are generally on par with what else was out there in 1993. They aren’t eye-catchingly good; they don’t make you sit up and take notice the way, say Quest for Glory III’s lush junglescapes and city streets did. But they portray a mid-sized American city the way it would have looked in 1993, and the beach environments are nice.One thing I ask myself when I rate graphics is whether the game makes me want to actually visit its environments in real life. This is unfair to reality based games like Blue Force because I already live in such an environment. However, there is still room within such mundane environments to get creative through the use of perspective, player viewpoint, and things like that. Unfortunately, Blue Force plays everything relatively straight. It’s serviceable, it works, but it’s not worthy of anything higher than a 5.

The use of digitized actors in the cutscenes works better than the use of digitized actors for dialogue. Jake looks particularly derpy.Ditto the sound. Ken Allen’s score and sound effects are fine, but there’s nothing memorable, though I do love that fuzzy Soundblaster sound. It tickles the ol’ nostalgia sensors of my brain. Otherwise, though, it’s not enough to bring this score any higher.

Environment and Atmosphere: 5

Do you find bowling alleys exciting? How about municipal offices? Jails? Warehouses? Maybe even living rooms and kitchens? Then I’ve got the game for you: Blue Force, by California’s own Jim Walls!

Wow! Just like real life!

Ah, but I am not merely using this as an opportunity to take cheap shots at Blue Force’s expense! The game’s environments and atmosphere actually do a perfectly good job of making you, they player, feel like you’re in a mid-sized American city. For that, it should be commended.I mean, do you like marinas? Of course you like marinas. Everyone likes marinas. Because you’re going to be at this marina a lot. Oh boy, are you.Blue Force also has a warehouse. We love warehouses, don’t we people? We do.

You get the idea. Blue Force sets the scene, and the scene is . . . kind of boring. But I cannot fault a game for doing what it set out to do. It created the vibe it was going for. A rating of 5 is eminently fair. It’s perfectly average, not too high and not too low. It’s there. Just like Blue Force.

Dialogue and Acting: 3

The writing in Blue Force didn’t have much personality to speak of, aside from the chick at City Hall:

She was the best.

The writing is cliché, the plot predictable, and the acting, as it is, unconvincing. It’s very hard to get worked up about Blue Force one way or the other because it’s almost aggressive in its mediocrity, which is kind of weird, because aggressiveness would imply some sort of personality, which contradicts the idea that the game is mediocre, and all of this just goes to show that I’m really running out of things to say about Blue Force so I’ll just show my favorite screenshot in the entire world again:There. I feel better.

So how does Blue Force measure up? Let’s crunch some numbers!

(2 + 4 + 3 + 5 + 5 + 3)/.6 = 37. I had to round this up from 36.66666666666667).A 37! Wow! Very deep. Very meaningful. There is some serous numerology involved here. The number 37 is creative and daring. According to the Internet, modern-man’s Sybil, it gives off “celebrity vibes” (I wish I knew what that means). Surely, such a low rating actually redounds to Blue Force’s favor! Only commenter Vetinari guessed right. Good job, Vetinari! You get a gold star!

In order to figure this out, let’s look at the historical context of Blue Force’s monumental final score. I’m trembling with anticipation here so badly I can hardly typoearkldfd fa;sdf; ljasdfljk asfj;ls

Whew. I’ve calmed down. Moving on.

A 37 rating places Blue Force in the company of Shadowgate (35), Altered Destiny (38), Questprobe featuring Spider-Man (36), Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood (34), Cruise for a Corpse (35), Geisha (36), Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (35), Bargon Attack (34), Seastalker (35), Starcross (37), Enchanter (37), Hook (37), Suspect (38), A Mind Forever Voyaging (39), Oo-Topos (37), Cyborg (37), The Worm in Paradise (35), Humbug (38), Borrowed Time (38), The Archers (37), The Institute (35), Hollywood Hijinx (35), An American Tail: The Computer Adventures of Fievel and His Friends (37), and Last Half of Darkness (35). What a strange assortment of games. I’m sure there is some deeper meaning to have been gleaned from listing all of the games within a ± 3 or so points to Blue Force, but it’s lost on me so alas, this entire paragraph was merely an exercise in post padding. As if I’m not long-winded enough.

Oh, but wait. Wait wait wait. Going back to my introduction post from way back on October 25, 2022, what did I type about Blue Force’s critical reception at the time?

“Unfortunately, Blue Force was not well-received. According to my sources (Wikipedia):

‘Computer Gaming World‘s Charles Ardai in 1993 stated that Blue Force”is simply not as strong as Walls’ previous games”. He criticized the game world (“prop-up facades”), “abysmal” dialogues, “appalling spelling errors and factual inconsistencies”, and slow speed. Ardai concluded that “Walls and Tsunami both have better work in them ... they have nowhere to go but up’.

In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Blue Force the 37th-worst computer game ever released.”

The . . . 37th . . . worst computer game ever released.

Thanks to Computer Gaming World Museum for the scans.

This is big, my friends. Massive. GARGANTUAN. Never before in the history of The Adventurers Guild has there been such an amazing coincidence (or is it???) between game rating and game ranking. This confluence of events has so confounded me and commandeered my attention that I am convinced, caterwauling all the way, that there must be some sort of catastrophic calamity this message has been sent to counteract and contradict. Crazy!So what does it mean? Damned if I know. All I do know is that Charles Ardai’s review in Computer Gaming World issue 112 is hysterical and hits most of the same points I did. A few highlights:

• “Having ‘acquired’ Jim Walls, the ex-cop who created the Police Quest series of games for Sierra . . . .”
• “Not to worry though: in the end, Jake’s private investigation ties into the domestic violence call he was sent on at the start of the game. A neat, little, improbable package—what more could one want?
• “A coherent story, to begin with, I suppose; and, second of all, a story over which the player has some control.”
• “. . . a trip to any location other than the one the computer wants the player to see is a waste of time. The player will only find a locked door or an empty room when he arrives, or an admonition from the computer and nothing else. Try to take Jake to the ‘Bikini Hut’ while he is on duty and the computer says, ‘NO time for pleasure.’ Try to take him there after hours and the computer says, ‘No time for pleasure.’ It sinks in slowly: the computer is just not going to let Jake in, ever.”
• Eventually, one realizes that many of the locations in the game simply don’t exist except as prop-up facades . . . After a while, it becomes clear that Tsunami hasn’t even bothered to simulate a game world.”
• “Opening the box on the right reveals some flares and a spring-loaded punch . . . if he tries to take the flares he is told, ‘You have no need for the flares.’ [Alex’s note: But you do later in the game! Why can you take a stupid nickel or boathook when you don’t need it, but you can’t take the flare here?]. Why put them in the picture, then?”
• “When one clicks on objects in Blue Force, one is lucky to get a description at all.”
• “In the amount of time it takes for Jake Ryan to walk across a screen, a real cop could have arrested a perp, beaten him up, and stood trial for brutality.”
• While playing Blue Force I was reminded of Capstone’s Stephen King-derived game, The Dark Half, which loyal CGW readers will recall I deemed the worst adventure game of the past ten years. While Blue Force is not in that category, that’s a little like saying that pneumonia is not as bad as cancer—true enough, but one wouldn’t want to get either.

Blue Force: Hey, at least it’s not cancer!My enjoyment of Blue Force waned as I played. This was disappointing because I can tell that the game was created with a lot of heart. Care did seem to be put into the presentation and the story. It had a naïve earnestness which I appreciated. Unfortunately, the story just wasn’t very interesting. Cardboard characters (Hayley aside) and lame jokes like the twins Barry and Larry (basically a lazy labor-saving corner-cut) didn’t do much to liven up Blue Force. Jake is a do-gooder which I like, but do-gooders don’t have to be boring.

Having everything tie back to Jake’s parents’ murder also had the emotional impact of a flaccid noodle slapping tepidly against the wall (what?), mainly because it was so obvious that the theft of arms from the armory would tie directly into said double homicide. Cliches don’t have to be boring. You can play around with them, even subvert audience expectations to at least give them something they haven’t seen before. If your game, or story, or whatever, is so predictable that anybody could have written it, you need to go back to the drawing board and dig a little deeper. I get that time- and budget-constraints are thing, but imagination is free. I’m not going to bother including any more contemporary reviews of Blue Force because nothing can top what I’ve already discussed.

And that is the most egregious failing of Blue Force: its lack of creativity. It treads the same ground that the Police Quest series did, but without the novelty or the tight plotting of the first two games. There is nothing in Blue Force to make it worth your time over playing other games, old or new. Or reading a book. Or getting outside, having a few drinks and laughs with friends. Or playing with your kids. Or doing your taxes. And so on. You get the idea. In fact, if it wasn’t for this blog, I’d never have played Blue Force. It kind of makes me regret volunteering to write for this blog in the first place. If only I knew that eventually I’d have to play Blue Force . . . And speaking once again of Capstone, at least it’s not L.A. Law: The Computer Game.

Blue Force: At least it’s not L.A. Law: The Computer Game!

Another few hours of my life I shall never recover.

. . . but on the other hand, at least L.A. Law: The Computer Game was so egregiously bad I had plenty of stuff to write about. L.A. Law: The Computer Game is the videogame equivalent of the really bad movies I love watching more than I even love watching really good movies. There’s so much material to work with. Blue Force is like a C-level made-for-TV movie where it’s competent, but just a rehash of stuff you’ve seen done better many times before. Sort of like this review.