On-rails shooters, particularly the light-gun genre almost all but died last console generation. The switch from CRT TVs to HD flat panel displays necessitated new sensors and shooting peripherals to work correctly. Outside of the Wii and select titles such as Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles or Dead Space: Extraction there wasn’t much on offer.
So it’s refreshing to see a developer attempt to revive the genre on the new-generation Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Meet Blue Estate, a new on-rails shooter based on the “darkly humorous” comic of the same name. Being based on the comic you’ll fighting chihuahuas and mobsters - possibly an interesting change of pace from the zombies and creepy-crawleys that are so prominent in this genre.
In Blue Estate, instead of using a gun peripheral players will take aim using motion sensing controls; that means using Kinect gesture controls on the Xbox One or the DualShock 4 controller’s gyroscopic tilt functionality on the PlayStation 4. We aren’t sure how well these controls will work in practice, and it’s a brave design choice given that all Xbox One’s aren’t guaranteed to ship with a Kinect sensor anymore.
We’re interested to see how the promised two-player co-op feature will work in practice. In any case you can find out today as the game is now available on the US PSN (available tomorrow for Europe), with a 20% discount for PlayStation Plus subscribers.
Based on this trailer and the few screens we’ve seen we’re assuming Blue Estate isn’t the kind of game that takes itself seriously. Although some of the imagery (such as the above screen) may inadvertently be painting the game in a bad light.
Shehzaan Abdulla
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