Blood

One of Doom‘s major flaws was its relatively abstract level design. It iterated magnificently over Wolfenstein 3D in lighting, textures, and mood, but you were still reading level names like “Phobos Lab” or “Refinery,” squinting, and going “okay, I guess.” Even before Quake and true 3-D engines, there was room for Doom I & II to give up the throne to a sharp, fast-paced shooter with gorgeous texture work, great lighting, and enough level detail to crack jokes and parody real-world locales. That game is not this one.

Ken Silverman’s famous Build engine made it visually obvious that Duke Nukem was fighting through city blocks, a station on the moon, or a dingy porn store. This was enough in 1996 to earn it the coveted title of “Doom Killer.” More games using the engine would follow in the immediate years, hewing close to Duke 3D’s irreverent style and faux machismo, while creating exciting new settings of their own. Each also stuck to a unique theme. Duke aped sci-fi Hollywood blockbusters. Shadow Warrior did kung fu films. Redneck Rampage lampooned the deep American South. And finally, this game: the Build engine does campy B-movie horror.

Shadowed crypts, haunted mansions, and Frankenstein lab chambers are the order of the day. Zombies, ghosts, ancient creatures, and crazed, gibbering cultists are your foes. Explosions fling torn parts of blown-up creatures around the room. Decapitated zombie heads can be casually kicked around. Flayed victims or tubs of mismatched body parts decorate the levels. If you’re familiar with films like The Reanimator, Evil Dead, or Peter Jackson’s Braindead, you’ll get the idea of the kind of dark, gory humor Monolith is going for. Which is to say, there’s quite a lot of…

Blood casts you as Caleb, a gravely-voiced anti-hero who has earned the ire of the dark god Tchernobog. His story is told through some extremely ropey early-CG cutscenes, and otherwise, not all that important. You’ll (quite literally) rise from your grave in the first level, then head out on a tour of mayhem. Blood offers four episodes of 8-9 levels each, for a total of 34 maps (including secrets). While there’s enough horrific imagery, supernatural nasties, and gore to consider this a true Halloween kind of shocker title, that’s clearly not the intent. This is supposed to be good, messy, cheeseball fun.

Blood fits into the style of the other major Build games seamlessly. These titles were known for their showpiece levels and Blood does not disappoint. Highlights include a moving train, a city under an active bombing raid, a massive dam with long draw distances, and a carnival complete with working midway challenges (shoot the ducks and win a prize!) I especially like how levels keep the journey consistent, usually keeping part of the previous level as the start of the next. Meanwhile, Caleb (Stephan Weyte) cracks off contextual one-liners, showtunes when you sit idle, and whatever quotes Duke left out from Army of Darkness.

Parody references abound. You can find frozen Jack Torrance within a hedge maze, and a hotel bathroom resembling 237’s from The Shining. Elvira-like calendars are a constant decoration. A secret bedroom with a fleet of hanging air fresheners directly mimics the Sloth victim’s room from Seven. A boiler room holds Freddy’s sweater and glove. An entire level takes place in Camp Crystal Lake, complete with Jason’s hockey mask and trademark whispers. These are just the few I’ve found, with many subtle ones surely in there.

Enemy types fit the mood perfectly. Zombies charge you with axes and get back up multiple times, unless you happen to knock off their heads. Cultists scream a whole fake language, mixing Latin-like sounds into threatening curses. Hellhounds run around and breathe fire. Stone gargoyles sit as decoration until some of them spring to life and throw things from above. Phantasms are transparent and can’t be hit – you’ve got to wait until they start to attack before they’re solid and vulnerable themselves. Levels mix up different enemy encounters at once to keep you on your toes.

Weapons are equally creative, seemingly out to replace genre stalwarts with inventive alternatives. Instead of a pistol, you’ve got a flare gun that sticks shots into enemies – give it a few seconds and they’ll burst into flames. A voodoo doll lets you psychically stab any enemy in view. Caleb takes a lighter to a spray can to make a flamethrower. A staff topped with a skull shoots an inferno that clears out most enemies ahead of you. Nearly every weapon has a secondary fire, such as lighting the spray can and tossing it as a firebomb, or sacrificing the voodoo doll to kill all enemies in view. Many enemies even have a unique death animation for both fire and voodoo, on top of their usual.

However, this varied arsenal starts leading to the game’s biggest criticism – its uncommon difficulty. Lots of factors play into this. For starters, the game seems out to break the mythical shotgun. Since Doom, it was common to have weapons that shined in unique situations or against specific enemies. But there was always one weapon that could act as a default – effective at the most common ranges, good damage, plenty of ammo. For Doom and Duke it was the shotgun. Dark Forces had the classic stormtrooper rifle. Shadow Warrior was probably the Uzis. This was the weapon you ran around with, only switching to others as needed.

Blood doesn’t seem to want you to do this, instead preferring that you constantly cycle its arsenal. The Tommy Gun probably fits this “default” role the best, but its damage is quite low compared to the ammo it quickly chews up. You can’t afford to use it all the time. Blood’s own shotgun is maybe the first example of a sawed-off in an FPS. True to the name, it’s only worthwhile at very close range. Trying to use it at even a medium distance just wastes shots. Powerful weapons like the staff or Tesla Cannon just don’t have the ammo available. You’ll be flipping weapons constantly, and often, when you don’t really want to.

You could make a pretty good argument that Dynamite is supposed to be the default weapon. There’s three different kinds: basic, remote and proximity (which never seems to work). You can pitch bundles surprisingly far (if charged up), it’s plentiful, and it nukes multiple low-level enemies in one blast. But, it’s dynamite – it’s dangerous to you at close range, tough to get off in a hurry, and requires a lot of practice to target precisely or bank around corners. It’s also most effective when enemies don’t know you’re there – precognition courtesy only of many deaths and quick loads.

In Doom and Wolfenstein, enemies activated in a radius around the player when they “heard” you shoot a gun. This feature isn’t in the Build engine, and it’s never been as much of an issue as it is here. Tossing dynamite into a room won’t wake up all the enemies – just the ones hit by the explosion or the ones that see you. This means half the room is just standing by in ambush when you think you’ve cleared it out. Gunners on either side of a door are ruthlessly effective here, with shots that can drop 40 or more of your health in one hit – just on the medium difficulty!

Monolith also programmed enemies to activate instantly. Cultists – a low-level, common enemy – start shooting in milliseconds. It’s an unforgiving combination of instant-damage hitscan weapons with enemies that fire immediately on sight, resulting in you getting aired out as you round a corner. Reload and try again. There’s a dining car on the train level with ten or more cultists watching the entrance and no other ways in – I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get past this part.

Enemies also simply do a lot of damage that you can’t get away from. Brown-robed cultists throw endless supplies of dynamite you can only avoid with distance. If you don’t have it, you’re getting hurt. Similarly, Hellhounds are probably the most dangerous foe in the game. They rush up and light you on fire, which rips through your health in seconds and can only be manually put out if there’s water to jump into. If there isn’t, you’re dead before it burns out on its own. Gargoyles fly around over your head and into spaces the engine makes it extremely hard for you to hit.

Other Build games feel like a fair challenge. Blood flatly does not. You never feel this more than at the start of an episode, where you have neither the weapons nor the ammo to fight back effectively. It gets better as you build up a solid reserve, but you’re still battling enemies that can go places you can’t (from flying) or can react faster than you ever could. I like playing most FPSs on the hardest difficulty (or second-hardest, if enemies respawn Nightmare-style) while only saving at the start of each level. I couldn’t do it here. “Well Done” just puts belt to ass with no remorse, seemly expecting you to inch through it with quick saves and preternatural dynamite throws.

On the other hand, difficulties scale very well. “Still Kicking” and “Pink on the Inside” (the two easier difficulties) make you exceptionally hardy, while “Lightly Broiled” offers a better-balanced challenge for FPS vets. Blood’s difficulty settings change a lot, including enemy count, health drops, damage given and received, and available supplies. The different settings are tangibly customized in ways that other 90s shooters never seemed to bother – the difficulty that’s right for you is the one that you can beat the game on. Save scumming is also, arguably, not cheating here. It’s expected.

My other criticism would fall on some of the levels. The first episode has some of the best maps and was likely built last – it’s the shareware episode, so showing off makes sense. Interactivity is high through working light switches, explosive barrels that carve out whole parts of buildings, and plenty of Caleb wisecracks if you hit “use” in the right areas. This all falls off by the second episode. Like other 90s shooters, middle levels are stuffed with some boring trudges through sewers and canyons, featuring samey-looking rock and brick walls. No showpiece moments, very little interaction. They hook you in the beginning and bury the weaker, filler maps further into the episodes.

So that’s Blood. It’s much harder than the other Build titles, but it at least scales well at lower difficulties. I don’t love save scumming after every step, but that’s an option too. I still like Blood far more than current “throwback” FPS’s like Painkiller or Serious Sam. Those feel like they were trying far too hard to replicate something that already existed in the form of games like this one. It’s got some magnificent locales, some truly nasty effects, and a lot of fun all around. If you’re morally objected to such games, I think you already know what you’re not going to like about this one. If you want to be Ash mowing down Deadites, complete with a gravelly-voiced character tossing perfect one-liners like pennies into a fountain, then hopefully I’ve convinced you where to go.

 

The Good

Pretty damn fun all around if FPSs are your bag. Nearly unparalleled variety in weapons and locales. Greatest character voice and lines since Duke Nukem.

 

The Bad

Pesky to run on modern systems. Some pretty dull levels mixed in with the stellar ones. Six (!) different keys allow for some overly complex levels.