Blood

The Good
The huge and unusual levels of the game are the best feature. Our character Caleb is memorable and so are his enemies. Players will especially remember the weird, crazed language of the cultists. Weapons that actually cause loads of damage leaving behind pools of blood and severed limbs! Even the limbs of the enemies can be kicked around by Caleb like the Zombie heads!

The Bad
It may look out-dated now, because of it's build engine and 2D sprites. But, real FPS fans don't care about that! It has a few bugs that may cause it to crash. Although, I never encountered them!

The Bottom Line
Blood is one of the most innovative, atmospheric, humorous and bloody FPS game ever made. Here's why, each level is unique with lots of movie references like a whole level dedicated to camp Crystal lake (from Friday the 13th movies), a level based on the movie, Shining and references to H.P Lovecraft characters such as Pickman and Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm street series) etc. There is even a level in which Caleb gets to ride a train! The story is unique, because we are told Caleb is not our typical hero, but he's a hired gun-slinger, who fell in love with a woman, joined a dark cult, Cabal. But, he's betrayed and killed by the god of the cult, Tchernoborg. So, he comes back from the dead to take revenge and eliminate all the members of the cult. It's atmospheric, because most of the levels are dark and scary, with a haunting music. It's humorous, because our hero has amusing one-liners for each bloody occasion, usually inspired from movies in the style of Duke Nukem. It's bloody, because Caleb has a whole arsenal of weapons to eliminate his foes and with alternate fire for each, it doubles the fun.

The Good
Not much really. It has excellent controls and a good variety of weapons, which make it a truly excellent multiplayer game (also has some good multiplayer levels). It's not a good game mind you, it's just amazingly fun in multiplayer gaming.

The Bad
Blood has among the most terrible engines to date, filled with bugs and horribly slow (but what'd you expect from Ken Silverman, the man solely responsible for the catastrophe named Ken's Labyrinth?). It less than makes up for it with unbelievably terrible graphics, horrible one player experience, terrible sound effects and generally crappy gameplay.

And who the hell heard of raycasting in 1997, for Christ's sake?!

The Bottom Line
Blood is crap. One of the worst Doom clones ever to come out, it somehow makes up for it by being a great multiplayer game.

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