Exhaustive
Now that leads me to the actual racing part. Wave Race: Blue Storm is a hard game. Everything effects everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. That's why you can call it a simulation racer. The controls are highly sensitive, so good luck trying to master them. From the weather variations, reaction effects from the different water and wave makeup, to the learning curve of the controls, you have a racer for the ages. Say you come off a wave and shoot into the air. Depending on the wave patterns in the water, you can't just hold the acceleration button down and hope to shoot forward when you land. If you land on just the water yeah you'll probably be able to do that. A lot of the time your landing other waves though. You have to position your vehicle the right way so your landing is as natural as possible so your speed doesn't decrease too much. Also if your landing on a wave you have to position your landing based off the wave itself. When your racing during inclement weather learning these techniques are a must or you'll just get thrown around by the waves and continue to lag behind or lose control.
That brings me to the multiplayer. It loses so many points for multiplayer because the game is so damn hard. Playing the single player campaign is challenging enough. If someone else wants to play you probably going to be ahead of them most of the time beacause of the learning curve. New players have to spend a good amount of time getting used to the mechanics, and even then it doesn't mean they will actually improve much. Some games are just meant to be owned by a lot of people. You know how everyone had Mario Kart so if you played it with someone else they usually had an idea of what they were dealing with. Blue Storm is one of those games, the only thing is that not a lot of players owned Blue Storm and thats where the multiplayer issues ariese. You can't jump into it with new players and have everyone for the most part on the same playing field. Its' too intricate and nuanced for that. So you could say the multiplayer is unbalanced. It just doesn't have that accessability.
As far as the graphics go they are nice looking. 128 bit goodness all through here. The water looks great. What is it with the Gamecube and water effects? When it gets done right it gets done RIGHT. And this game is no exception. Bluestorm is a great game. Its just a very trying experience. You might think to yourself, Hell, with all this work I might as well go out and buy a jetski. The game is hard. It's worth owning since its good and theres nothing else like it. Plus you can get it relatively cheap now. Would I recommend this to racing players? yeah. To players who don't play racers? Uh not really lol. If the only racers you play are stuff like Mario Kart I wouldn't recommend Blue Storm. To everyone else check it out, but proceed with caution.