Blood

The Good
A small company known as Monolith Productions, Inc. rose to fame with their first (and probably most brutal) game, Blood, and like most FPSes out there, it actually has a story. Although I don't quite know what the plot is, I can tell you that you play Caleb, and you must fight the forces of Tchernobog and his minions. If I haven't made myself clear, then perhaps the individual cut-scenes that you can watch during the game will make the story clear. If you're playing a pirated version of Blood, chances are that you won't get the required files that store the cut-scenes. I'm afraid that I can't help you there.

There are four episodes: "The Way of all Flesh", "Even Death May Die", "Farewell to Arms", and "Dead Reckoning", and there are a total of nine levels, including a secret level. Like Duke Nukem 3D, Caleb can tour each level based on real locations. For example, whereas Duke3D lets you explore nightclubs, sewer systems, movie studios, and space stations, Blood will have Caleb explore graveyards, carnivals, train stations, shopping malls, and hotels to name a few. In fact, I believe that Blood has more real locations than Duke3D.

In addition, there is varied gameplay on some levels. For example, on E1M3, you are traveling on a train, and you must find a way to stop the train by turning a series of valves. As usual, no level would be complete without a few enemies placed here and there to stop you from completing the level, and these enemies include, but not limited to, cultists, undead skeletons, gargoyles, spiders, piranhas, and butchers that puke slime all over you, plus the average bat and rat. As usual, when you reach the end of each episode, there is a boss waiting to bring you down, but except Tchernobog himself, almost all of the bosses are basically a preview of what's to come in the next episodes.

You have several weapons at your disposal like the flare gun, the sawed-off shotgun, the tommy gun, dynamite, life leech, and the remote detonator. Plus you have the powerful voodoo doll and your gardener's pitch fork. Most of these weapons have alternative firing modes, which are much more powerful than normal firing modes. You are offered some help, as in a few levels, you'll likely find young teenage boys going about their business. When you approach them, all they do is run away, then scream like little girls when hit. However, if you start shooting at them, they come running at you, chanting "Go away!" and "There's no place like home." These boys provide a distraction for the enemies, because when they start running away, they end up shooting them instead of you. Quite often when you not doing anything in the game, Caleb will chant things like "Strangers in the night, exchanging glanches" and "Sailing, Sailing, over the bounty bridge". But you'll also hear his chanting after he defeats a boss. One of these chants I love him say when he defeats the boss on episode two is "Along came a spider and sat down beside her, and said 'What's up, bold bitch'"

This game is one of the bloodiest games I've ever played, even the cut-scenes show Caleb killing things and do sick things like taking a heart out of a mummy and drinking its fluid. This sort of thing is not suitable for minors to watch. There are about five difficulty levels. Furthermore, the higher the difficulty level, the more bloodier the game gets.

It certainly seems that Monolith are a bunch of movie buffs, as Blood contains a lot of movie references that are possibly found in each level. For example, one of the enemies, the Choking Hands, scatter around and say "I'll swallow your soul", which is a direct quote from Evil Dead 2.

The Bad
Blood was apparently shipped with severe bugs. I remember when I first started playing the game, while I was playing the final level of episode two, I did a little bit of exploring, and the game would went to the Monolith logo. The bugs are so severe, that you may end up deleting it off your hard drive. Actually, that's what I did.

What's worse is that when bugs were discovered in the original game and get reported to Monolith, they released several patches to fix the problem, but every one of them introduced more severe bugs.

Fortunately, I was able to snag One Unit Whole Blood from my local computer store, and it's so much better. Not only do you get all the add-ons (Cryptic Passage and Plasma Pak), but you also get to play the game without the bugs, as the version of Blood is V1.21.

The Bottom Line
This game is so bloody, you better keep it away from your children. If you like this game, you might like Blood 2: The Chosen, and be sure to check out the web sites dedicated to the game. The game's official site was launched at the time it was released, but go there now, and you end up at a porno site. ***½

The Good
Blood is not a revolutionary game. But it did have the most unusual plot I have ever seen in a FPS. Let me start with level design, for you traverse many real-world locations I have yet to see duplicated in any other FPS. The weapon selection is better than in any other FPS ever made, for where else could you use an aerosol can or flare gun to set your enemies on fire and watch them scream, "It burns!" The enemies are also memorable, for you have cultists which shout Latin-Sanskrit phrases at you (which have real English translations), and zombies who emerge from the ground and say "More Brains." The graphics, while considered poor by today's standards, (though I like them) do add a certain atmosphere to the game. Also, the one-liners from Caleb, Blood's protagonist, are what set it apart from others of the same genre.

The Bad
The bosses are to easy to defeat. Shial is quite scary though. The violence in Blood is intense, so if you do not like violent video games stay away from this one.

The Bottom Line
One of the best FPS around. Much better than Duke Nukem 3-D. Find and play it, you are sure to have one of the best experiences ever in computer gaming.

The Good
BLOOD is possibly the best named game of all time...it's name tells you to get ready for a cultish, dark and with as blatant a gory name as possible, "Blood", a tongue-in-cheek experience...

Blood is definitely a cult classic. In it, you play as Caleb, an undead gun wielding zombie, a former cultist who died in the 19th century, who lives again in the year 1928, who seeks revenge on a the Cabal, who worship the dark god Tchernobog. Caleb takes "guilty" pleasure in nothing more than bloodily killing, and has sinister but drop-dead funny (pun intended) one liners. Caleb is not a hero, almost a villain. The weapons in Blood are great and original, such as a flare gun that will blow a flare into an enemies heart and burn it alive(Quote from the dying: "IT BURNS! IT BURNS!"), and the classic and painful voodoo doll... The atmosphere of Blood is unique, with a moving train level, a carnival, and countless more memorable levels. It is also really fun to kick enemies heads around!

In fact, even though Blood uses the Build Engine from Duke Nukem 3d, which was outdated even when the game came out, its "2.5D" graphics actually make the game better...enhance the experience, partly showed by Blood's god-awful sequel, Blood 2: The Chosen...

The Bad
It's too damn hard!...

Okay, so it's not THAT hard...but seriously, Caleb's easiest enemies, or rather, "target practice", are zombies, which come back to life a few moments after they are killed, and Tchernobog's cultists, which quickly blast you or something, making Caleb dead after a few shots. But in the cultists case this in forgiven, because of the hilarities that spew from their chanting mouth!

The Bottom Line
Blood, even with its outdated technology, is an awesome and very explicitly violent first person shooter. While a little too hard, this game is THE game if you enjoy VERY dark humor, and all the many horror movies which are given great tributes here! Highly recommended!...