Posted July 23, 2010
This game will never win any awards for originality. In spite of the many wonderful pop culture references tucked away in the levels, and the overt homage to H.P. Lovecraft's work, there is simply nothing in this game that hasn't been done before, and done since.
But that doesn't matter, because Blood focuses on fun instead of drawing attention to it's story in a self-conscious manner.
By the end of the first episode, though, the game started to wear on me a bit. The level design is okay, but the slightly limited amount of enemies makes strategy kind of a moot point, especially because this is before AI really existed in FPSs.
There are not a huge variety of enemies in Blood, and many of them are small creatures like bats, rats, spiders, and fish that move very quickly and are very hard to shoot.
This wouldn't be a problem if Blood's targeting mechanic were not so ponderous and inaccurate. It's true that the targeting in Blood is not much worse than other games from it's time, but why purposely design several enemies that highlight the game engines limitations?
At the end of the day, the small creatures are easily defeated, but it takes a lot of time to squirm around the screen and get clear shots at them, and its not fun at all, it make me want to stop playing.
Nevertheless, Blood is pretty solid, and while the enemies begin to get boring, the interesting levels and horror theme kept me going.
Also, the "secrets" in this game are fun to find, just like in quake and doom, but the computer doesn't always register the secret as found. Sometimes I had to walk over the secret spot several times, or use the item that was inside of the secret area before the game recognized that I had found the secret. That got a little annoying.
One time, I couldn't understand why I had one missing secret at the end of the a level, and I had to go back and look around for a secret that I had already taken, but the game didn't register it. I had even taken the life seed in the spot, but it didn't work until I went back to the spot and walked around in circles!
All of those little complaints aside, Blood is a nice change if you have only played the ID games from the mid-90's, and it's a cool game for anyone who likes old horror flicks.
Just don't expect something as epic as Quake.
I personally don't think it's as fun, varied, or challenging as either Doom or Quake, although I like the theme of Blood so much, that I wish it was. I also wish that it had no bugs, but, in reality, it's not really more buggy than any other game from it's time.
Final Verdict: It's fun, buy it, but don't plan on beating in one sitting. I predict that you will need a break from Blood after every episode, possibly every other level.
But that doesn't matter, because Blood focuses on fun instead of drawing attention to it's story in a self-conscious manner.
By the end of the first episode, though, the game started to wear on me a bit. The level design is okay, but the slightly limited amount of enemies makes strategy kind of a moot point, especially because this is before AI really existed in FPSs.
There are not a huge variety of enemies in Blood, and many of them are small creatures like bats, rats, spiders, and fish that move very quickly and are very hard to shoot.
This wouldn't be a problem if Blood's targeting mechanic were not so ponderous and inaccurate. It's true that the targeting in Blood is not much worse than other games from it's time, but why purposely design several enemies that highlight the game engines limitations?
At the end of the day, the small creatures are easily defeated, but it takes a lot of time to squirm around the screen and get clear shots at them, and its not fun at all, it make me want to stop playing.
Nevertheless, Blood is pretty solid, and while the enemies begin to get boring, the interesting levels and horror theme kept me going.
Also, the "secrets" in this game are fun to find, just like in quake and doom, but the computer doesn't always register the secret as found. Sometimes I had to walk over the secret spot several times, or use the item that was inside of the secret area before the game recognized that I had found the secret. That got a little annoying.
One time, I couldn't understand why I had one missing secret at the end of the a level, and I had to go back and look around for a secret that I had already taken, but the game didn't register it. I had even taken the life seed in the spot, but it didn't work until I went back to the spot and walked around in circles!
All of those little complaints aside, Blood is a nice change if you have only played the ID games from the mid-90's, and it's a cool game for anyone who likes old horror flicks.
Just don't expect something as epic as Quake.
I personally don't think it's as fun, varied, or challenging as either Doom or Quake, although I like the theme of Blood so much, that I wish it was. I also wish that it had no bugs, but, in reality, it's not really more buggy than any other game from it's time.
Final Verdict: It's fun, buy it, but don't plan on beating in one sitting. I predict that you will need a break from Blood after every episode, possibly every other level.