#BLUD is a game that lives with the heart of the Powerpuff Girls while maintaining the personality of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That is one helluva combination for a game to contain, especially when the visuals back it all up. And believe me, this is a visually stunning game on so many levels.
The game doesn’t live solely on its prettiness and powerful edginess, it also contains a wonderful backbone that isn’t too over-the-top with what it can do, but it’s just enough to keep you motivated to play. All this said it’s certainly not perfect, especially when it comes to how the narrative and quests are laid out.
So, sharpen your stake, and make sure you have your field hockey stick ready to go because we’re going to slay this review right now.
Digging up some phenomenal visuals
It was tough coming up with that header. I feel like I nailed it. Staked it? Anyway.
The first thing you will notice when you fire up #BLUD are the hand-drawn visuals. They are truly hand-drawn. I know a lot of games claim they are hand drawn but this one looks like a freaking cartoon. The animation smoothly moves with the action and carries a hefty amount of personality with it, as it is a mixture of innocent cartoonish charm with the brutality of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Thus, the PPG and BVS nod above.
Having played this game for hours, I’m still in awe of what it can deliver in terms of visuals. It’s playful, it’s fun, and the visuals might be the most striking part of the entire package. That doesn’t mean the game is void of everything else that makes an interactive experience good, but the visuals are certainly a hook to get you more involved with the rest of the gaming goods.
If you watch the trailers on Steam, please note that you’re truly getting a beautiful game that dances perfectly with the story and characters created.
Speaking of the narrative…
Story that slays
In the same vein as Fright Night or any other 80s horror classic that doesn’t take itself too seriously, the narrative of #BLUD follows a daughter who carries the bloodline of her vampire-killing mother who was revered as the ultimate vampire killing machine by the town folk she lives with. With a single line like that, I’m sure you can imagine how the rest goes. If not, let me enlighten you.
This is a coming-of-age story, where our main character meets her destiny and slowly becomes a defender of the light against the evil forces of the dark. It’s a simple story that has been told dozens if not hundreds of times in film, but it’s still an entertaining structure that feeds our need to be a hero – something that works well within an interactive experience. I love how the story of #BLUD unfolds and how it follows a traditional narrative flow that is familiar as it is fun.
The good folks at Exit 73 Studios knew what they were doing when they were putting this narrative and well-developed characters together. Maybe they watched a lot of films like My Science Project or Buffy the Vampire Slayer as inspiration to get their story where it needed to go. Whatever the case might be, the story doesn’t shy away from its influences and brings a traditional goofy vampire story to life very well.
I thoroughly enjoyed this vampire/monster-slaying adventure. It really did activate some long-lost emotional memories of movies from the 80s and 90s. I’ll take that with good animation any day of the week.
Not all stake are on target
Great visuals and a good story sometimes can’t hide flaws in the interactive portion of a gaming experience. #BLUD is one of those games that looks great, and tells a fun story but doesn’t quite nail a trifecta with its gameplay elements. It’s close but just a bit short on its delivered content.
The first big flaw that you will notice in #BLUD is how long it takes you to get the motor going with the story and to truly start seeing action. While I love some good dialogue, and #BLUD has some well-written dialogue with branching narrative moments, I spent the first hour of the game talking to people rather than getting into the crux of the action that is hidden behind a bevy of touch-and-go quests.
It’s like waiting for the first act of an action movie to end before you get to that pivotal turn where you find out something has gone horribly wrong, and you must get those weapons ready to correct it. If you have seen movies like Commando then you understand that it isn’t necessary to spend such a long time on exposition. Since this is a goofy horror structure from an 80s/90s film, the action needs to hit quicker. It needs a little reason and a whole lot of rhyming to follow.
Instead, the devs made the story the focus with the action in the backseat. I love a good story, but for a game like this, you have to give the player a reason quickly and then set them loose on their own. The action goes with the story instead of letting the user control the action to take them to the story. That doesn’t make the game bad in the long run, rather it just takes the action out of the hands of the user, which can sometimes delay the fun of hacking/slashing enemies. You spend the first bit of the game just wondering when everything is going to turn evil and when you can start the staking.
Once you get to the point where all hell breaks loose in the game, the game pushes the player to pinball-like quest bumpers that are supposed to build up the moment where you get to a mid-boss or boss but instead end up slowing down the gameplay and making the action points seem so far away from each other. It’s like eating a four-course meal and having someone give a speech in between each meal. It slows down the fun and you can’t get to the dessert as fast as you would like. No reason to delay getting to a dessert, especially when it is well-dressed like #BLUD.
These are my main complaints about the experience. The player has no control over the journey and the distance between content from point to point. Significant in some ways but that doesn’t mean the game is a train wreck by any means.
The game still brings some good times. Some of the bigger quests that lead to boss fights can be absolutely amazing. For example, when everything goes south in the game and act two begins, there is a goat that is possessed by a demon. You follow the goat from place to place in the game until you trap it and it becomes the dog-thing out of The Thing. It’s gross, terrifying, and a fun little build-up to a big payoff. While it’s bloody and terrifying, it does add some horrific charm to the interactive part of the gameplay and a good challenge with the messed-up goat. And trust me, it’s messed up.
There are good moments like this scattered throughout the game that remind us that the journey from point to point can be worth the effort put into it. The boss fights in this game are epic and they slowly build into more complicated events as the story rolls on. Certainly, something you would expect from an action-adventure like this. And don’t take any of the boss fights lightly because they can be tricky and frustrating as hell, but, nonetheless, worth it.
More added value to the game also comes from the somewhat complicated backbone that complements the action with how you can find weapons and build upon them as the game progresses. Nasty additions to a field hockey stick and cool runes to power its attributes help to keep the action fresh as you continually kill repetitive enemies. While this isn’t necessarily some amazing skills tree that you would find in games like Ghost of Tsushima or God of War (pick one), it’s still a good way to build a weapon out and make it the way you want it. It is customization in a sense, though necessary to power up our main character. It’s a simple and cool way to add another aspect to #BLUD’s gameplay structure.
Outside of the bosses, and the fun enemies that you run into that have great animated personalities and weapons, the game also tempts you with exploring the world to find its hidden treasures. Collectibles are a big deal in this game and the game wants you to feel free to search up the large set of maps that it delivers. You’ll find collectible coins, money, goodies, and a bevy of other things that will motivate you to keep searching above and below the town you traverse. These collectibles and large maps help motivate you to keep exploring everything, though it’s still restrictive in a way to the narrative it obeys.
Now, action and exploration aside, the game also has one dominating feature that will take control of you from beginning to end — the selfie. I can tell you without a single doubt that this feature in the game is the most addictive part of the entire gameplay experience. I am not kidding. It’s something you will instantly get hooked on.
The selfie gameplay element works like this, you pose with people or enemies, pick an expression, and then take a selfie with them and post it on the in-game social media platform. Your willing/unwilling participant paired with your main character’s appropriate expression dictates how well-received it is online. The best selfie I took in the game gained 3100 likes and a hefty number of comments. The responses to the selfie are fake, but they’re fun to read and see where the humor takes it all.
I cannot express to you enough how addictive this part of the gameplay is. I’m talking about Pokémon Snap type of addictive. You will want to take pictures with every vicious beast in mid-fight. I think I even surprised the game in the middle of the goat boss fight where it chastised me about taking pictures in a dangerous situation. Yes, it is that addictive. And I don’t understand why, as I’m Gen X and we didn’t grow up with such selfie-needs, but it is a good reason to keep playing the game.
Anyway, the gameplay has its problems with quests that seem to have long stints of staleness in between, but the juice you get out of squeezing #BLUD can be incredible at times. The exploration and selfies help to brush some of that staleness under the rug as well.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
#BLUD from developer Exit 73 Studios is a gorgeous game that contains a familiar and goofy 80s/90s horror movie narrative theme but falls short in handing the gameplay control completely over to the player. The boss fights and selfie moments do make up for some of its shortfalls and also help to keep #BLUD more entertaining than not.
