Written by: Rik
Date posted: January 1, 2004

Remember Comanche? Never mind if you don’t; it was the just the first in a long line of titles from Novalogic boasting graphics that utilised ‘volumetric pixels’, or voxels for short. Requiring substantially less processor power than polygons, it was thought that with a little bit of work they could become a viable alternative. However, despite the best efforts of developers like Novalogic, the results were largely unconvincing, with the advent of 3D acceleration hastening their demise. Recent games to feature them include the interminable Delta Force series, which alarmingly required a heftier PC to run it adequately than its more graphically-impressive polygonal competitors.

Anyway, Blade Runner uses voxels, and they look bloody awful. The backgrounds themselves are impressively rendered, but the characters are horrendously blotchy and lumpy, especially up-close. It even seemed like a strange decision to use them four years ago, especially as their pixellation problems were well-known. Certainly, other adventures of the time such as Broken Sword, The Curse of Monkey Island and Toonstruck have aged somewhat more gracefully than Blade Runner, owing largely to their more cartoony style which allows for better integration of characters and backgrounds.