Eliot Ballade, a police officer on vacation, is trapped inside the barrier as horrific monsters begin to appear. Ballade must work to find a way out, along with a boat captain named Dogs Bower, a computer expert named Janine King, and a strange water spirit known as Nephilim.
As with Over Blood and Galerians, there's a good chance you know of this game from Game Informer's Super Replay. Nitro Rad also covered the game
in late November of 2023.
This work contains examples of:
- Body Horror: Most of the enemies appear to have mutated from the island personnel. Eliot also begins to mutate at one point, though he manages to cure himself.
- Closed Circle: Even if Eliot's boat had not been destroyed, a force field that surrounded the island when the mess started prevents anyone from leaving.
- Clothes Make the Superman: Dogs can find or buy shirts depicting various fighting styles. By putting these shirts on, Dog suddenly can use that fighting style.
- Dungeon Bypass: After defeating the first boss, there is a maze of ice blocks. It is possible to melt the ice and just swim across the now-empty room, but doing this means fighting a tough mini-boss (see Harmless Freezing below).
- Eldritch Abomination: Jascony, the Final Boss. To sum it up, the meteorite that crashed onto Earth and caused the extinction of dinosaurs was actually an egg. An egg that took 65 million years to mature. Then it took 18 years to hatch, the final stage of the eclosion occurring right as you're near it, letting you face a humongous, Godzilla-esque monstrosity. Which was also absurdly vulnerable to your rocket launcher.
- Nephilim. This mysterious alien lifeform came from the titular Blue Stinger that crash lands on the island. It takes the form of a fairy just because it was finding a proper form for humans to comprehend. Nephilim never says a single word and every so often shows our main characters psychic visions of Jascony hatching and destroying the world. Whatever this thing actually is, it’s revealed Nephilim and Jascony are part of the same life cycle. Nephilim seemingly mates with the ancient abomination, becomes giant, and as mentioned below, turns into the exact same meteor holding Jascony and a ring of Blue Stingers, starting the process all over again.
- Gainax Ending: After Dogs and Elliot save the world from Jascony, the now-giant Nephilim flies off into space before the credits roll. After the credits, she transforms into another meteor identical to the one that held Jascony, surrounded by a ring of the blue creatures. The meteor then launches off to get a headstart to another planet before the stingers go after it. The camera pans around the remaining half of the asteroid to show several just like it floating in space, as the text "SEE YOU NEXT ADVENTURE" is displayed.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: If you use an ATM to access Elliot's bank account, you'll find that he only has 20 Kimra dollars in his account. During a cutscene where the clock crosses over to Christmas Day, Eliot remarks that it's also his payday. Accessing his bank account afterwards indeed gives you 2000 additional Kimra dollars.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: Dogs can equip shirts that teach him martial arts.
- Harmless Freezing: In the cold storage area, there is a large monster encased in ice. Should the temperature be set too high, it will thaw out and you will have to fight it.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The game takes place on Christmas Eve and a section of it is spent navigating a mall decked out with decorations and playing Christmas music. Eventually, the game crosses over to Christmas Day.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Eliot and Dogs take only a few bites of food items before throwing them over their shoulders.
- Improbable Weapon User: Eliot can find a "power mixer", which is basically a large immersion blender.
- Kill It with Fire: The Napalm Launcher for Eliot blasts a projectile that explodes into a fireball. Enemies caught in it are set on fire and take damage over time for a few seconds.
- Late to the Tragedy: Eliot arrives just in time to see a strange object drop from space onto the island, which puts a force field up over it, trapping him inside. Then the boat blows up and by the time he recovers all hell has already broken loose with few survivors.
- Laser Blade: A melee weapon for Eliot.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Dogs is Janine's father.
- Mercy Kill: Dogs threatens to do this to Eliot when the latter becomes mutated.
- Money Spider: Every formerly human drops money on death. And because Respawning Enemies is in effect specifically for those monsters (apart from the final mutation version), you can take advantage of this to farm up all the money you want.
- Organic Technology: Robotic fish are somehow vulnerable to poison. Hm...
- Product Placement: For Pen Pen TriIcelon, another obscure Dreamcast game.
- Stealth Pun: In order to get into the Hello Market, you need a Hello Card. Also known as a greeting card.
- Timed Mission:
- A warning about a shuttle's brakes failing gives you two minutes to activate the emergency sytem to save its passenger.
- You have 42 minutes to get a dying man his medication.
- Later, you have 30 minutes to keep Eliot from mutating into a monster. Unlike the previous two, this one is not optional though you do have a means to extend the timer by another 30 minutes.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: Takes place in 2018...
- Zeerust: ... but it looks more like the '90s with more advanced technology.
