As a huge fan of the Blade Runner original film (and the more recent sequel), I’m kind of surprised that this game slipped my radar. Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition marks the re-release of a title that came out back in 1997 on PC. Perhaps it was because I never had a decent computer during this era of gaming or what. But I was pretty stoked to finally check out this game, in what seemingly is the enhanced version of it. This “point and click” adventure has a lot that stood out to me, mostly good things, but the bad surely are difficult to ignore.
With a story taking place around the same time as the original film it was great to see similar settings as well as new places and characters. You play as Ray McCoy, a very novice rookie Blade Runner who is given the task of solving the mystery of finding a specific group of replicants that are killing animals. Ray has a pet dog named Maggie that lives with him, and just like any pet or animal lover out there, we need to get to the freakin’ bottom of this! Throughout the mystery you will be finding clues, asking questions to many people, and the way you examine these clues and the choices you make can fundamentally change the outcome of this story. Some characters from the film also reprise their roles here to my surprise. Sean Young lent her voice as Rachel once again, as well as James Hong as Hannibal Chew.
As far as this edition feeling enhanced, upon doing some research, it looks like this was a surprisingly difficult game to bring back, with source code missing and such, lots of reverse engineering went into this. Unfortunately, a lot of questionable choices I think were made, as far as the gamer’s standpoint is concerned. For example, the settings are all in upscaled resolution, and they look pretty good, however the characters themselves were not. I’m assuming they could not do it for one reason or another, but it makes each character stand out way more and not in a good way, they are all very pixelated. I wish they would have at least redesigned each character from scratch just so it matched with the rest of the game some more. The cinematics in the game still look pretty decent for a game of its time and I was impressed they managed to have them in 60FPS. The menu system was an issue for me, I’m not sure if they were preserving a bad menu system of the past or what, but there was nothing enhanced about it to me, as far as quality-of-life improvements go. The game is still in its original 4:3 aspect ratio and not enhanced for modern widescreen TVs, so this whole edition is certainly more a preservation of gaming history than it is something redone for modern technology.
For fans of “point and click” games, I think it would be good for you to check out one of the genre’s more ambitious titles of its time. With a good story, amazing soundtrack score that really makes you feel you are in the “Blade Runner” universe, there is a lot to enjoy here. While it can be a bit buggy and the graphics themselves can also be rather jarring, the pros just slightly outweigh the cons on this one. For a retail price of ten bucks, it’s not going to burn that big of a hole in your wallet to try out.
7/10
Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition retails for $9.99 USD each on the respective storefronts for PC via Steam and GOG, and for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch consoles.
Related: Reviews by Nick Navarro
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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