Ballistics Report

Performance:
What can we say? Bleem just doesn't perform enough to live up to its hype. In fact, the only times it performs even playably seem to be fluke happenings. Most games run either too slow or too fast based on your machine's speed, and those that run too fast are brought to the "too slow" side of things if speed limiting is enabled. Add on top of this the fact that all but one game we tested either had problems reported or wasn't in bleem's database at all, and you've got pretty darn shoddy performance for a commercial product.

Innovation:
Well, it is nice that bleem's creators thought to enable 3D acceleration and high resolutions. Both things have the potential to contribute highly to the Playstation game playing experience. The innovators may not have completed their goals successfully, but it is something new in the field of emulators. However, the program itself is just that - one in a field of many.

Graphics:
When Bleem works on D3D graphics, it works. As you can see from the images, Gran Turismo in high res is much crisper than the Playstation's (and television's) lower resolution offerings. On other games, we saw polygon popping, sprite and decal artifacts, and general annoyances, which unfortunately take away from the immersiveness and polish of any game.

Sound:
Ugh. Few of the games ever really sounded right, even with full sound-processing capability enabled. Street Sk8er plain and simply didn't have working sound, and the rest of the games rated on a scale of sub-par up to a lofty acceptable. Sound isn't touted as bleem's strong point; in fact, it isn't touted at all, and for good reason. It's extremely mediocre at best.

Ease of Use:
Darnit bleem! You have so much potential! Bleem looks up every game that you put into it, and pulls any info about it from its database. Why then, can't it adjust settings accordingly, or at least determine whether D3D support should be enabled? In fact, it doesn't even tell you whether a game is D3D enhanced when you put the game in - you have to check the website. This, added upon the astoundingly non-intuitive setup of bleem, drove me buggers for the duration of the test.