Playing as a Werewolf should be fun and exciting, simple as that. Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood doesn’t come close to offering that. Between the dull and laborious Human and Wolf gameplay and the lackluster Werewolf gameplay, it’s difficult to recommend Earthblood to anyone. Above story and visuals, gameplay for this type of game should be king. Instead, Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood ends up being too sheepish.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood’s premise, on its surface, should illicit compelling gameplay.
Who wouldn’t want to play as a feral werewolf tearing apart ecoterrorists limb by limb? Instead, what’s offered is a gameplay loop straight out of 2005. While the promise of three forms (Human, Wolf, and Werewolf) is indeed there, only the Werewolf form provides any means of enjoyable gameplay. The Human form is used mostly as a necessary element to progress the story through its limited dialogue trees and sparse interaction with the game world, including limited stealth takedowns. The Wolf form is used for what I can only assume as a faster way to play stealthy through levels; even though using any sort of stealth strategy in Werewolf: The Apocalypse is never rewarded and almost always too tedious to bother with. The Werewolf transformation is the game’s main combat form and consists of button mashing the light and heavy attacks on the typical assortment of enemies: weak humans, some humans with some shields, and some giant Exo’s (humans inside of robots).
Combat is my biggest gripe with Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood. A lot can be excused for subpar dialogue options and story progression, and even visuals can be passed over if the overall gameplay loop is fun. The Werewolf form combat feels so flat and monotonous, that the initial rush of tearing through enemies is lost after the first dozen or so humans. While there is a skill tree to upgrade the various combat skills of the Werewolf, none of the upgrades end up making the moment-to-moment combat any more exciting. There is a combo meter to count how many strikes you have on an enemy that end up filling up a Frenzy meter, which allows you to do more damage, but I never really felt like I was building up combos and instead just felt like I was building up a button-mashing meter.
The combat leads into the overall level design of Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood, as every single level follows the exact same formula: big combat room, small tight hallway/computer lab where dialogue happens, big combat room again, then rinse & repeat. On top of that, these eventual combat arenas (which overall aren’t all that large) end up feeling too
repetitive that it just feels like I’m playing the same level over and over. But of course, you could stealth through the missions in Wolf form, right? You can, except the game forces the player to switch out of Wolf form and into Human form just so a line of dialogue between the main character and whoever is communicating with them. It became so incredibly tedious to stealth through any mission (there are no extra rewards for completing anything via stealth) that I ended up Werewolf-ing out every time I saw a large group of enemies. Even then, the game never allows you to stay as a Werewolf after the final enemy is defeated; it forces you to de-form back into a Human to progress through the level.
The bottom line is this in terms of gameplay: for a game titled Werewolf: The Apocalypse, I would expect more time playing as the Werewolf instead of forcing me to play as the human.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is definitely not the best looking game out there. Textures are flat, faces lack any extra detail and the environments look so similar to each other it’s hard to tell them apart. The Werewolf form’s animations lack any variety other than the same three or four move sets. As mentioned in the Gameplay section, a lot can be forgiven when it comes to visuals if the gameplay is solid. But here, Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood instead comes up short on both sides.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood’s story is based on the tabletop RPG of the same name. I’ll admit that I did not have any exposure to the tabletop RPG before this game’s announcement, other than some cursory research. That being said, those who know nothing of Werewolf: The Apocalypse will find themselves lost in many of the story’s intricacies and lore. Earthblood never truly allows newcomers in on the story, and that was personally a big turnoff from the very beginning. Fans of the tabletop RPG will almost assuredly be able to pick up on some bits of lore and references, but as an outsider looking in, I found the story’s presentation underwhelming.
That being said, what I can speak on is how the game handles dialogue and its RPG-lite dialogue trees. Players have the option to pick from a few different dialogue options when interacting with various NPCs, and they almost always serve as a means to provide context to the lore. What’s unfortunate, however, is that the actual dialogue itself is bland and lacks any sort of intrigue.
Playing as a Werewolf should be fun and exciting, simple as that. Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood doesn’t come close to offering that. Between the dull and laborious Human and Wolf gameplay and the lackluster Werewolf gameplay, it’s difficult to recommend Earthblood to anyone. Above story and visuals, gameplay for this type of game should be king. Instead, Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood ends up being too sheepish.
