Blast Chamber

Blast Chamber is a game that stresses me out, not because of any difficulty or gameplay necessarily, rather just a overwhelming feeling of 'left-outedness' I get while playing it. It's a game that doesn't feel complete by any stretch, but somehow comes across as the total package the developer wanted to create. At its core, BC is an action-puzzled where you compete against players (real or computer) to bring object A to goal A, while dodging traps or preventing other players from doing the same. The mechanic at play allows for a player to move the cube's orientation, bringing goals or traps closer. Even though the PSX hardware was new at this point, there is no reason that I can see why this game is as sloppy as it is.

For a game where speed and precision are so important, it plays with serious delay and the graphics can get seriously muddled when the action on screen gets heavy. Sound wise it's not a terrible game, but the main run of the game gets very boring very quickly. Even if controls weren't an issue, the bland level design and hyper-repetitive nature of gameplay would have you turn it off after one sitting, only revisiting to see if it's as bad as you remember. Guess what: it is.

It's not a broken game by any stretch - one could figure out the janky controls and get enjoyment out of the local play (games are always better with couch co-op), and so that's why it didn't receive a lower score. It's a game that seems to be missing so much, yet I wonder if even fixing these issues would offer enough to keep a gamer interested. It's a neat relic to visit from the early days of the PSX, but not much else.