Around the middle of this month we took a look at Shadow Warrior, an over-the-top action FPS in the vein of Duke Nukem 3d. It’s cheesy, it’s over-the-top, and it’s delightfully offensive. It’s managed to come back in recent years, with the excellent 2013 reboot, and the relatively recent 2016 sequel. However, the subject of today’s 20th birthday & retrospective has sadly managed to exist within the misty realm of obscurity, apart from it’s still alive fanbase. Despite it’s obscurity, today’s game franchise in question is one of the most gore-filled series to have come from the 90s. A series that’s dripping with gothic & horror atmosphere, and owes more than it’s fair share of dues to iconic horror films & dry humor. So don your leather jacket & wide-brimmed hat, sharpen your pitchfork, and get ready for the 20th birthday of the sleeperhit Blood. Let the retrospective begin!
Blood (1997)
Reception for Blood was pretty good back in 97, and even here in the 2010s it’s still considered to be a classic of the time. Player Attack in 2011 described Blood as “the best of the Build engine games after Duke Nukem 3D, with its combination of scary atmosphere, great level design and challenging gameplay putting it above the rest”, and GamingOnLinux reviewer Hamish Paul Wilson said that Blood was “one of the most underrated shooters of the whole decade. Blood arguably built more on the legacy of Duke Nukem 3D than Shadow Warrior did, taking its gameplay to sophisticated new heights and offering its referential overtones with an even greater degree of refinement.” Personally, I think that both Shadow Warrior & Blood advanced equally in their own way, but that’s just me.
Best Aspect? If you’re familiar with the likes of Duke Nukem 3d, Shadow Warrior, and even Redneck Rampage, you’ll feel right at home with Blood. The formula is the same: run & gun, look for secrets, find keys, etc. What is different is the combat itself. Instead of future sci-fi tech, Caleb has access to more traditional weapons (ex Sawed-Off) along with more bizarre, magical, and even dieselpunk-like weapons (Roasting enemies with a can of hairspray is a treat). The violence has also changed, with enemies unleashing torrents of blood & gore everytime they get hit. If a bundle of dynamite or ball of napalm happens to hit them, then they immediately explode into a cloud of meaty organs. Getting lit on fire? Then they become a screaming, running pyre. The amount of ways enemies can die are endless!
Second is Caleb himself. Whereas Duke Nukem, Lo Wang, and Leonard & Bubba rely on more childish forms of humor, our undead gunslinger relies on jokes that are more sophisticated than his peers, and he also relies heavily on his dry wit & humor. If you leave him standing, chances are you’ll hear him sing a showtune or two. If a cultist gets loaded up with bullets, and a witty comment/insult will come from his lips. Often he’ll let out a comment that references something from pop culture (Particularly from Horror or something Gothic-related) That said, he’s not afraid to be at least a little childish from time to time, as he can say something unexpectedly silly. Just travel to the carnival level in the 1st episode & find the Duke Nukem secret. Trust me on this!
The atmosphere makes the 3rd best aspect of Blood. Thanks to the slightly modified graphics (3d objects & dark/faded color pallette), Blood has a look that different than the other Build engine games of the 90s, with maybe the exception of Redneck Rampage. There’s a grimy look over each & every single level. From Caleb’s return at a haunted cemetery, to the halls of the dark god Tchernobog, you get a constant feel of dark wonder & dread. The levels also have a healthy dose of horror & gothic tones both subtle & obvious. Blood’s music also help: instead of sci-fi sounds ala Duke Nukem, the music in Blood plays out like more like a horror/gothic film.
Finally, there are the expansion packs. It seems it’s a given that Build 3d fps games in the 90s get an expansion pack or two, and Blood is no exception. There’s the Plasma Pak developed & released in September 1997 by Monolith, and Cryptic Passage, which was developed & released in June of 1997 by those mad geniuses Sunstorm Interactive. Both brought something to the bloody table, with the Plasma Pak adding new content & fixes, and Cryptic Passage creating a side story for Caleb to trounce through. Which one is better? For me, it’s the Plasma Pak, but that’s only because I played that one. Cryptic Passage wasn’t added to Steam unlike Blood or the Plasma Pak, so there’s that as well.
Worst Aspect? Honestly, there isn’t much wrong with it. Monolith did such a good job with the game, it’s hard to find anything wrong or bad. The only thing bad one could point out would be the difficulty. Even on the middle option, it always seemed like the enemies were able to get to you before you got to them. I often found it infuriating when they were positioned in spots that seemed like they couldn’t hit anything, somehow they could get a shot or scratch in. The difficulty also impacts the health, as it always seemed harder to find in comparison to other games from the Build Engine 4. There’s hearts, Life Seeds, and medical bags, and that’s all you got. In the case of hearts you could only find them in the environment & enemy deaths, but even then it was not always guaranteed that a foe would drop a heart. Fortunately, chances of them spawning were a little higher in the easier/moderate difficulties.
Blood. A fun & challenging shooter from the 90s, with it’s only real fault being it’s more obscure nature. If you would like your 90s FPS a little more on the serious side, this might be that game. Next!
Blood 2: The Chosen (1998) ***
“Blood II: The Chosen was developed by Monolith Productions and featured Monolith's new fully 3D engine Lithtech, which was previously used in Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. The game was released on October 31, 1998 by GT Interactive, which was later purchased by Infogrames. An official expansion pack was released in August 1999 under the title of Blood II: The Chosen - The Nightmare Levels. As with Blood, a guide book was released for the game entitled Blood II: The Chosen Strategy Guide by Jamie Madigan.
Work on porting it, and LithTech in general, to Linux, and then later potentially to other systems like Solaris, was being done by employee Jeremy Blackman but was never completed.
Around 1999 the source code was partly released to allow easier modding. On April 29, 2010 Blood II was re-released by the digital distributor gog.com.”
Reception for Blood 2 was a little more mixed than the original game. Some people back in the day & now gave it great reviews, and other reviewers were more on the “Meh” to mildly bad side of things. Metacritic gave it a 72 out of 100, Thunderbolt Games gave it a 5 out of 10, and Steam gave Blood 2 a 6 out of 10. It’s disappointing to see review scores like this, but I can definitely understand some of it’s faults.
Best Aspect? Like the original game, Blood 2's goal is simple: kill everything you see! If it moves, it’s gonna die! Even if you’re an innocent bystander, you’re gonna be dead soon! This time around, your arsenal is more on the modern day/science fiction mixed with the occult. Original weapons like the Sawed-Off & Napalm Launcher make a return, but now you have tools of destruction like the Singularity Generator & Dread Orb to unleash upon the forces of CabalCo. Blood & gore isn’t quite as over-the-top as the original Blood, but there’s still plenty of it as you gun down everything in front of you.
Secondly, Blood 2 has a surprisingly good story behind it. Keep in mind this is a 90s FPS, and 90s FPS games were usually skimpy on storylines, but it’s interesting to see how Monolith advanced Blood’s lore. You learn how the Cabal changed since the original game, you see how Caleb has evolved since his more extreme days, and you’re given some new characters to follow along with. The only fault here is that while you’re given access to all 4 characters, you miss out on cutscenes if you pick anybody but Caleb. You can play through as Gabriella, Ishmael, and Ophelia (The other members of the Chosen), but you never see anything unfold in the game’s timeline. Even with that fault, I can still respect Monolith’s attempt to give at least...something.
Third & finally is the atmosphere. For starters, Blood 2 has a far more advanced graphics engine. Whereas the original game was based on a modified version of the Build engine, B2 is built from the ground up on the company’s own 3d engine (Blood 2's graphics also happened to be used in another game, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division). Better usage of color, better texture, better lighting, etc. For it’s time Blood 2 looked fantastic, but it has not weathered the storm well (More on this below). Blood 2 music has improved as well. While it’s not quite as gothic inspired as the game before, it instead comes across more like grimy modern-industrial mixed with notes of science fiction. It fits with the city & industrial areas you go through, but luckily that sense of dread from the original blood still manages to come through.
Worst Aspect? Similar to the first game, Blood 2 was built surprisingly well. However, the problems it has are far more apparent & obvious. For starters, the graphics have aged horribly since 1998. Though it was nice for it’s time, it has not weather the years well. Clipping, texture issues, dated particle effects, and blocky models are far more apparent now than they were then. This makes the levels feel not quite as atmospheric today, whereas the original Blood still somehow manages to stand the test of time.
Secondly, and more on the minor side, is the gameplay. Like the first one, Blood 2 is all about running & gunning through a horde of baddies, shooting up everything you see. That said, I wasn’t as fond of the puzzles in this game. Things seemed a little more confusing than before, the direction isn’t as clear, and often it devolves into a guessing game in some cases. The original Blood
Finally, there’s the lone expansion pack. Called Blood II: The Chosen - The Nightmare Levels, it was a small collection of 6 maps, with it’s own story of Caleb & his partners talking about points in their past & wandering through them. It’s a neat premise, and it’s cool to go through the minds of the rest of the chosen, but it goes by so quickly it’s almost not worth it. It doesn’t help the fact that there’s barely anything else new added in (2 New Weapons & 3 New Enemies & 1 New Boss), which add further to the lack of staying power.
Blood 2. Maybe not quite as memorable or flawless as it’s predecessor, but still has the essence of what made the first game so great. If you want something a little more advanced, then this game might soothe that craving. Certainly recommended, but not quite as much as the original Blood.
So that was a look at the late 90s cult-classic Blood. Beloved among it’s fans, but sadly lost to the sands of times. If you liked the gameplay of Duke Nukem but wanted something a little more serious, then maybe fighting alongside Caleb is more of your thing. See you tomorrow for a new summer festival, when things get quite powerful around here!
***
That’s all Wikipedia had. Trust me!
No comments:
Post a Comment