What would happen if you took the pulse-pounding action of Unreal Tournament (commonly referred to as UT), removed all the blood and gore, and replaced the awesome weapons with non-lethal Nerf-brand guns? You'd get Nerf Arena Blast, a surprisingly good kids' game which almost feels like a commercialized total conversion of UT. Although the game emphasizes its single-player mode, which this review will cover, there is also a multiplayer mode which is unofficially supported by an active community - complete with new game modes and maps.
The single-player mode plays similarly to UT's tournament mode, except you must win all events in an arena (there are eight arenas in all) before you can move on to the next. Exceptions to this rule are: the Amateur arena, which only requires you to win the PointBlast event to move on; and the Championship arena, which immediately takes you to a PointBlast match. These game modes are SpeedBlast, a race through the arena where you must touch all the numbered flags in order, PointsBlast, which is a traditional - albeit non-lethal - deathmatch, and BallBlast, a race to score all seven numbered balls (which are also colored to tell them apart) in any of the goals in the arena. With a sufficient number of points you can also unlock the BonusBlast event, which is essentially a PointBlast event in a special arena.
Although the PointBlast event is rather solid, the SpeedBlast and BallBlast arenas aren't as good. Your SpeedBlast opponents don't move as fast as you - meaning if you can manage to stay ahead of them and maneuver through the course - which can, at times, have a rather confusing layout - you'll win remarkably easily. Also, the BallBlast events can get very long if neither you nor your opponents can find those last few balls to shoot into a goal.
The arenas you'll play through are bright and colorful, ranging from space stations to dense forests to stylish, foam-covered arenas. Although they look appealing to the eyes, the layouts of the arenas are simple. However, they do contain secrets, typically activated by buttons on the floor or walls of the arena, or by gear-like triggers, which are activated by shooting their center. Arenas also typically contain various symbols, such as the Nerf Arena Blast logo, which can be shot for extra points.
Speaking of points, despite the variety of events, the only way you can actually win any of them is by scoring the most points. This means, for example, you might not have passed through all the flags (which give you lots of points for passing through them) in SpeedBlast first, but if you have the most points, you'll still win! This can, obviously, take the fun out of the non-deathmatch events. Also, the main way you'll earn points from player 'deaths' is not through the depletion of their energy (aka health), but through the plaques they leave behind. These range in point value, depending on the player's position on the leaderboard when they were 'killed'.
The weapons at your disposal vary from the realistic, such as a dart pistol and a foam rocket launcher, to the outrageous, such as the electronically-charged rocket ammo of the HyperStrike to the energy-ball-firing Whomper - which is the Nerf Arena Blast equivalent of UT's Redeemer. Most of the weapons have an obvious UT equivalent, and they also have the same 'death' messages - which can lead to some of the oddest notices in a kid's game, such as "Expack2 was surgically removed by Ryan."
The opponents are your standard UT bots, but obviously toned-down so as not to overwhelm young players. Thankfully, it's possible to adjust opponent difficulty when you create a new player profile, and I'd recommend the "Mega Nerf" option for those who actually want some sort of challenge while trying to play this game. They also vary in gender and appearance, from slim kids to bulky-looking, stereotypical bullies.
To sum things up, Nerf Arena Blast is a surprisingly good FPS game geared toward kids. It's not perfect, but it's strangely fun if you can get past the kiddie motif. Also, if you take advantage of the multiplayer community, you could end up forgetting you're even playing a kid's game!
You may find on more modern hardware that the Direct3D and OpenGL graphics are a bit buggy - this is normal for games based on the original Unreal Engine. It's possible to fix this by using the surprisingly high-quality software renderer or, if you either have a real 3DFX Voodoo chipset or a Glide wrapper, the Glide renderer. You might also be able to use other, community-made renderers with this game, but I can't guarantee they'll work.
Also, whenever the game uses music, it will play whatever audio CD you have in your first CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive.
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