TECHNICAL DATA

 - Title: Blood

 - Release date: 1997

 - Publisher: GT Interactive Software Corp.

 - Developer: Q Studios/Monolith Productions, Inc

 - Genre: Action

 - Subgenre: Shoot'em up

 - Perspective: First person

REVIEW

"Blood" is, without any doubt, one of the bloodiest games that have been ever published. It's also one of the best games that uses the "Build" engine, made by Ken Silverman, the same engine that was used in "Duke Nukem 3D". Just after the success of "Duke Nukem 3D", the company "3D Realms" was preparing to make several games based on this graphics engine before it was too old to compete with games like "Quake" (people was starting to appreciate the contrast between the flat sprites from "3D Realms" and the polygonal enemies from "ID Software").

An affiliated company of "3D Realms", "Q Studios", would take charge developing "Blood", while "3D Realms" was making "Shadow Warrior". However, maybe by the economic difficulties of the company "3D Realms" or because the game progress was made slowly, "Q Studios" was purchased by the unknown company "Monolith", when they had already created most of the game's graphics. At that time, a very unstable and unfinished beta of "Blood"  was leaked to the BBS. It wasn't much to do with the Beta, but could be seen the graphics  from almost all enemies, which where used  almost entirely in the current version. The merit of "Monolith" was to end the game and give it a gameplay as good as that of "Duke Nukem 3D".

In "Blood" we get into the skin of Caleb, a legendary murderer in the days of the Wild West and was once the leader of the sect  know as "Kabbalah", a cult that  worships a dark god named Tchernobog. Caleb formed, together with three other persons, on the upper circle of the cult, called "The Chosen". However, "The Chosen" were betrayed by Tchernobog for something  that this god considered offensive (this point was never explained in the plot). Then, Caleb awakens in his grave hundreds of years later, bent of revenge. And that's where the game starts.

There's no major changes on the graphics in respect of "Duke Nukem 3D". The biggest progress is the first use of the "Voxel" technology on a "Build" game, for some items to be collected by Caleb. The "Voxel" is a kind of relieved pixel that took much criticism because the 3D object whit this technique looked like a toy of "Lego". There were patches that allowed to use "Blood" with 3Dfx accelerators, and although it only worked with the first generation of 3Dfx, the owners of "Vodoo2" and "Vodoo3" directly uploaded the game with this patch.

At playable level, the most remarkable aspect of "Blood" on "Duke Nukem 3D" is that almost all weapons have two modes of use: one normal and the other one more powerful, but consuming more ammunition (the shotgun, for example, shoot first a cannon and then another or, alternatively, two at a time). The difficulty can be very difficult even in easy mode, which can be quite frustrating. There's even a huge point of sadism in the game sometimes. Apart from that, the gameplay becomes identical with "Duke Nukem 3D", with the same controls and objects that you can destroy or interact with. The game is divided into four chapters that can be played in any order, but there is also two expansions.

The highlight of "Blood" is certainly a bloody (and for many people, controversial) content. The dismemberment, explosions or the possibility to set fire the opponents is normal in this game. You can even kick the heads of the zombies that have been killed. Another curious aspect is that many references are made to the work of HP Lovecraft, as well as tributes to horror movies and fantastic films (films like "The Raven" or "The Shining"  for example). Of course, everything is done with tremendous gallows humour in general.

The sound is the same as in "Duke Nukem 3D". There is ambient sound effects, as well as scathing comments from Caleb (an example is when he finds a mirror and says: "Uaaaah! Oh, that's me!"). And, of course, all the sounds from enemies, weapons and so on. Perhaps the sounds from some enemies can be a bit repetitive (the ones from the cultists are hateful), but in general is very correct.

Furthermore, "Blood" had two expansions, one from "Monolith" called "Plasma Pack" and the other one, called "Cryptic Passage", from a third company, "Sunstorm Interactive". Both added an extra episode with more levels and new enemies, although you could say that they are identical to those already there. There's only one new enemy, the plant that spits poison or fire, an enemy that already existed when the game was still on the hands of "Q Studios", but did not appeared in the final game until the expansion.

In short, despite its extremely difficult, "Blood" is an excellent game of terror that makes you stay stuck to the seat and which has excellent and sinister maps. Highly recommended.

FINAL VERDICT

The Adrenaline Vault -> 10 (A)
Electric Games -> 9.2 (A)
Game.EXE -> 9.1 (A)
Freak -> 9 (A)
Svenska PC Gamer -> 8.6 (B)
PC Gameplay -> 8.4 (B)
PC Jeux -> 8.2 (B)
GameSpot -> 8 (B)
Gamezilla -> 7.4 (C)
PC Player (Denmark) -> 7 (C)
Power Play -> 6.7 (D)
PC Player (Germany) -> 6 (D)

Raul_B

 - Addiction -> 7.5 (It gets to maintain the interest)
 - Playability -> 8 (As playable as is "Duke Nukem 3D)
 - Graphics -> 7 (Nice graphics, though somewhat old-fashioned to those dates)
 - Sound -> 7 (Correct)
 - Originality -> 7 (While it's not totally original, has its own identity)
 - Difficulty -> 5 (Difficulty frustrating at times)
 - Introduction -> 7 (The kinematics are certainly interesting but not too much perfect)

Final score -> 6.9 (D)

PROS

 - It's so well finished as "Duke Nukem 3D".
 - Large amount of blood, guts and destruction in general.
 - A lot of gallows humour.
 - Details on everywhere that makes you want to find all the secrets of each level.

CONS

 - The graphics, although they were good, were already outdated at that time.
 - The "Voxel" is not helpful to make the game more attractive.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

 - Pentium 75 MHz (or more).
 - 16 MB of RAM.
 - A graphics card with 256 colours or more.
 - 80 MB free hard disk space.
 - Microsoft-compatible mouse.
 - CD-ROM drive.
 - Sound card.
 - Windows 95 (or later) and DOS 6.2 (or later).

Translated by dvdcillo