PlayStation Basement #16 - Blast Lacrosse

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on December 15th, 2018. It has been edited slightly for formatting.

It’s raining today in Pittsburgh, as it usually does. Thankfully we can be inside for the PlayStation Basement. Every Saturday, I’ll be reviewing an overlooked or odd game for the original PlayStation. As always, I’ll be using a nine-point scale where 9-7 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.

Today, December 15th, is the first day for the NLL, the National Lacrosse League. NLL is the men’s professional box lacrosse (indoor lacrosse) league. I’d guess most of you don’t know much about lacrosse (I didn’t either before I did some research), but once upon a time, that time being May 23rd, 2001, the NLL had a video game – Blast Lacrosse. It was developed by Sandbox Interactive and published by Acclaim. Sandbox only seems to have developed licensed titles for children’s properties, and, well, we all know Acclaim for better or worse. How will the PlayStation’s only lacrosse video game, a game in the style of NFL Blitz, fare in the PlayStation Basement?

The cover art is awesomely extreme and strange. The bulkiest dude is angrily clenching his lacrosse stick while sparks fly all around him. He seems stretched a bit to fit on the cover. The character design is amusingly cartoonish like Fred Flintstone. The rest of the art is just the game's logo and some logos for other companies. The color scheme is pretty weird, gold and pale blue. I'm really not big on this cover, but the cartoon levels of 90s nonsense going on make it campy and humorous.

Graphically, Blast Lacrosse takes a similar approach and ends up messy. The game takes place from an overhead perspective as most sports games do. The arena doesn’t look very good, being a particularly lurid shade of green with few details and a dark audience section. The audience themselves are just a big blur of colors without any specific character models so I can see why the developers would want to keep this in the shadows. The actual character models are okay; they have a whimsical, boxy look to them with bright colors to differentiate the teams. The players all seem identical though per team with no variation in facial expressions, hair colors, numbers, skin colors, or anything else you might expect to some degree. The animations for shooting and passing are nothing to write home about, but they aren’t awful. I did have trouble seeing attacks I was making. I enjoyed the funny animations when players are knocked over, causing them to fly through into the air. Like NBA Jam players catch on fire for doing really well; Blast Lacrosse seems to have this as an afterthought. The graphics could certainly use a bit more work.

Sound in Blast Lacrosse isn’t too hot either. Right off the bat, the announcer, Scott Ferrall, is awful. He is from here in Pittsburgh, which is kind of neat I guess, but I am really not big on his gnarled, yinzer vocalisms and odd metaphors, insults, and jokes. If you like this guy, you might think it's cool to have him in the game though. Thankfully for me, the options can be set to music instead of an announcer. The music is okay, an energetic electronic metal fusion, though it isn’t particularly memorable or inspired. There are only a few tracks, and they are not very long. The sound effects in the game are somewhat subdued and thin for an arcade-style sports game. I really don't like the crowd sound, so thin and constant. Unlike NBA Jam, you don't have any fun voices to liven up the action in Blast Lacrosse. None of this is great.

The gameplay of Blast Lacrosse is thankfully the best part. The game uses actual lacrosse teams from the year it was released. There are a few different modes from the main menu: Sudden Death, Arcade, Season, Tournament, and Options. Arcade is just an exhibition match, and the other two are self-explanatory. Sudden Death includes a few different options from Basic Overtime, where the first team to score a point wins, to Suicide, where the goal is to have all of your players explode from holding on to the ball too long. Unfortunately, the game only starts with Basic Overtime available, and I am not sure how to get the other modes that really intrigue me. The computer is relentlessly difficult on the normal mode and still no pushover on easy, so I had trouble winning many matches that might unlock something. I was only able to score on the opponent in easy mode, and my team was often hit so hard on normal mode that I had only one or two members left to stand for the majority of a normal level match. The opponent never seems to stay down like this no matter how many times or how hard you hit them. On the other hand, versus mode seems like it would be pretty fun; perhaps real humans could actually score in this kind of match. I intend to try it out in the future.

Blast Lacross is such a weird game. It was the first lacrosse video game, but it had no press being a late, cheap release on the PlayStation. The graphics and sound are subpar, though the gameplay has potential. Too bad the computer is so hard to beat. I don’t think this game is awful, but it certainly isn’t that good.

Blast Lacrosse receives a Neutral (4).

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