This feels like a Super Nintendo game.

That was my response to playing Blowout. Sure, it is for the PlayStation 2 (plus Xbox, Gamecube and PC) but it feels like a Super Nintendo game. Basically, you shoot things. Then you run. Later, you collect colored keys to open doors.

The story is that you are John “Butch” Cane, a member of something called the Jump Posse that is the law enforcement for battle platforms (i.e. spaceships). These Jump Posse members are “heavily armed and can respond quickly in super fast jump ships” to any emergency. Yes, they have “super fast” ships.

Something on board the Honour Guard goes wrong. The clones that normally repair and monitor the ship have mutated and now rule the ship. It seems that somehow an alien virus got into the replication process and all the new clones that were produced to maintain the ship went insane and turned into vaguely insectoid creatures. The infection started with a lone gunner clone named C.F. Stephens but as the game manual puts it “DNA can take only so much abuse.”

Notes:

• This game gave me a headache. The levels are highly repetitive and the gameplay doubly so. It is a side-scrolling game that plays vaguely like Doom or maybe some type of Contra clone. If you like side-scrolling shooters that have levels that grow in size (proportionally in annoyance) then this game is for you. If you like, you know, creativity in your games and graphics that do not look as if they were designed for the Super Nintendo, then look somewhere else.

Screenshots:

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