After an initial Leap Motion release and and an announcement that the title would be coming to consoles, HeSaw presented a playable demo for their comic book based rail shooter Blue Estate on the PS4 during E3.
Once a staple of arcades and the home console market, rail or light gun shooters have fallen out of grace with players over the last decade. As immersive stories and expansive worlds have increased in popularity with gamers, the linear, timing-based gameplay of rail shooters has quickly become a relic of a bygone time when games were simpler. Blue Estate seeks to take those old design ideas and update them for modern players.
In an age where nostalgia drives a large number of independent developers to build games reminiscent of the titles from their youth, the rail shooter is still a surprisingly underrepresented genre. With Blue Estate, developers HeSaw are taking Viktor Kalvachev’s comic and adapting it to the rail shooter genre, bringing to life the comic’s world of humor and violence.
Announcements have previously been made concerning the game coming to the Xbox One with Kinect-driven controls, but part of the day’s festivities at E3 included a playable demo of Blue Estate making use of the PS4’s six axis controls in place of a light gun. Our own Kerwin Tsang was on-site at the event, taking a few moments with Viktor himself in his role as creative director for the title to discuss what the game was about, and how it would make use of the PS4’s unique capabilities.
You can listen to the Blue Estate interview, here.
Blue Estate’s initial release made use of the Leap Motion peripheral and received mixed reception from critics. Criticized somewhat for its lack of depth and imprecise controls, it is a somewhat surprising choice for the developers to bring to the home console market. Nevertheless, with updated visuals and a new control scheme the title is likely to fare well, especially in the far from saturated genre of rail shooters. By embracing such an underutilized genre the game looks to carve a unique spot for itself in the libraries of the Xbox One and PS4, and with a twenty dollar price tag there is little risk of the title breaking the bank for interested gamers.
Viktor seems to feel positive for the title’s future, and it is easy to share his enthusiasm for Blue Estate. With its absurd sense of humor and fast gameplay the title is sure to enthuse players looking for a change of pace on their consoles.