I never really played much of Wave Race 64. I gave it a rental once. I was impressed with what I played back then though. When I played Wave Race Blue Storm, I was also extremely impressed. The water effects are, in a word, phenomenal. I love how the water splashes on the camera. It’s total eye candy. The water itself is awesome. The waves are fantastic and when it gets stormy you can barely see because of the waves splashing and the rain pounding the camera. If the buoys didn’t light up, you’d have no clue where to go.

The controls, and I’m sure you’ve heard this before, are hard to get used to. The first few times I played (since I’m not a wave race pro) I outright sucked. But a few races later and I was doing pretty damn well.

If there is one thing I don’t like about the game, it would fall in the sound category. The music is great; I have no problems with that. But the voices, while great, are far too repetitive. I’m tired of the game telling me which side to pass a buoy on every time I accidentally miss one. And I’m tired of it saying stuff like “good work” every single time I do pass a buoy correctly.

And if I had to choose just one thing that fully impressed me with the title it wouldn’t be graphics, or control, or sound, or even gameplay. It would be load times, or should I say the almost absence of load times. The menus are lighting quick. When you go to load up a track, you’re waiting no longer than 5 seconds. It’s a beautiful thing, what you can do with a small disc and a CAV drive, it really is. I’m highly impressed with what NST has done with the Cube and I’m itching to pick up this title on November 18th.