Every genre has its defining games that fans should play at some point. For first person shooters, that list is pretty long; but at the top of it, top five anyway, should be 1997’s Blood, by Monolith. Created from a modified BUILD engine (Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior), Blood is a legendary 90s shooter from the heyday of the genre that can’t be missed. Despite being twenty-two years old, it’s still fun as hell, too. About a week ago, Nightdive Studios, the crew that’s built a reputation for revitalizing old games (System Shock and Turok for example) have utilized their KEX Engine to bring Blood — and the official Plasma Pak expansion, as well the Crypic Passage expansion — to modern PCs.
Where to start with Blood? The story is serviceable, although it’s not why you’re playing. Caleb, an undead antihero, rises from the grave, determined to exact revenge on the evil god Tchernobog that killed him and his beloved Ophelia. We don’t know why this evil god did this, but a very low quality cutscene at the start of the game gives us this basic, and sufficient, backstory. Cutscene over, the carnage begins in earnest. Blood is known for a lot of things, including the numerous, creative weapons, challenging and interesting enemies, awesome level design, and over the top violence. You’ll get to experience this right from the start, as Caleb fights his way through a funeral home on his way to a train station, a carnival, a lumberyard, a destroyed city building, and much, much more.
Weapons include your trusty pitchfork, a sawed off shotgun, Tommy gun, napalm launcher, three types of dynamite, a tesla cannon, flare gun, a voodoo doll — there’s some really cool stuff here, and each weapon has a secondary fire mode, too. For the voodoo doll, you burn up a lot of its ammo and do a room-spanning (though rarely clearing) attack. The sawed off shoots both barrels, and the flare gun blasts multiple flares in one go, perfect for igniting a crowd of zombies or cultists. A variety of power-ups are availability to find as well, many of them hidden in secrets that require you to keep a sharp eye out for suspicious changes in wall textures or objects like a bookshelf that might actually be a door. Power-ups are sometimes activated upon pickup, like Reflective Shots (which causes enemy fire to bounce back at them), and Guns Akimbo (gives you double weapons for a time, essentially doubling firepower but drains ammo very quickly). Others are placed in your inventory and can be toggled on/off at your will. Things like the Jump Boots let Caleb leap to great heights, Beast Vision highlights enemies, a Diving Suit allows you to stay underwater longer. Other pick-ups include various armor boosts (Basic, Fire, and Spirit), and yet more. The variety of weapons and power-ups, combined with the level design, enemy types, and smart ammo supply, make for a really balanced and fun approach that will have you using your entire arsenal. About the only thing I never found that useful was the Beast Vision, but everything else gets routine use (even the pitchfork, great for taking out rats and spiders to save projectile ammo).
To this day, having played dozens of FPS games since Blood, I still find the design and blend of those in Blood highly compelling and fun. Zombies with axes that often rise out of the ground or smash through walls to surprise you, gargoyles, phantasms that you can only hit when they’re not in ghost-mode, cultists that wield shotguns and toss dynamite, fire breathing dogs, and many more. Enemies attack from above, in water, and all points in between. Blood is a tough game, Caleb loses health very quickly. I used to play on the Well Done difficulty, but I decided to dial it back one notch to Lightly Broiled and have found the balance of damage-received to challenge to be pretty much perfect. There is a new difficulty setting in Fresh Supply called Made To Order that gives you numerous options for adjusting your experience, even to the point of removing all enemies (if you’re studying for bloodbath multiplayer or hunting for secrets). Naturally, you can quick save anytime and load times are instantaneous. One small gripe is that while you can save your game anytime in numerous save slots, no screenshot of your save game is provided, so it can be hard to know which save slot corresponds to which save. Plus, when you go to reuse/overwrite a save, the name blanks out instead of being preserved, so you have to retype a name. Minor stuff, easily patchable, but worth mentioning.
Speaking of patches, Nightdive has fixed and tweaked a whole lot of things with Blood: Fresh Supply since launch. There were graphical glitches, missing sounds, and a variety of other things from what I read about and saw fixed in the release notes, but this all seems to have been resolved. It’s not like Nightdive to miss so many details, but their patches have been fast and significant. The current version is 1.8.8-5, and it’s played like a charm for me.
As far as presentation, the artwork for Blood still looks great. There are some DX11 graphics features added, but they don’t make much difference. If you’re hung up on graphics, you probably won’t think much of Blood, but it’s a perfect reminder that gameplay trumps graphics every time. Between the artwork and the sounds, Blood’s presentation is outstanding, even twenty-two years later. The music is spooky and intensely atmosphere-building. I love the death-screams of the cultists, Caleb’s quips, the intense screams of the phantasms, and numerous other sound effects like picking up armor, the sounds of the weapons, creaking doors, etc. Sound is a huge part of the experience because a lot of what happens is out of your field of view, so paying attention to the sounds gives you a much more immersive experience.
The single player content of Blood and its two expansions remains superb. Level design was such an art back then, I used to dabble in it myself. I marvel at the level design throughout the game; the way most levels ultimately ‘wrap around’ and how intelligent the design was with the various key doors, hidden passages, and so on, it’s ingenious. In addition to preserving the single player content, Nightdive spruced up multiplayer for the modern age. Bloodbath, co-op, and even eight-player splitscreen support (!) is all here. I haven’t played a whole lot of multiplayer, but what I have played has worked well and has been fun, just like it used to be over dial-up back in the late 90s.
Blood is (perhaps obviously) high on my all-time list. It was such a pleasant surprise when I heard that Nightdive was working on a re-release, and I’m glad they have. Priced at $10 or less ($5 at the time of this writing), there’s no reason not to add this classic to your collection.
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