Blood

aka: Horror 3D
Moby ID: 980
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Caleb was once a feared gunslinger, until he met a woman who was involved with a mysterious cult known as Cabal. Caleb, too, is sucked in, and soon becomes one of the Chosen - the most favored worshippers of the evil god Tchernobog. But one day, Tchernobog inexplicably kills the four Chosen, including Caleb. Mysteriously resurrected years later, Caleb is out to get revenge, and learn why his lord cast him down so abruptly.

Blood is a first-person shooter with horror elements, which uses the Build engine. Similarly to Duke Nukem 3D, the environment is interactive: many objects can be physically moved or affected in other ways. Destruction of landscapes is possible (although only in specific spots), with bullet holes being left by misplaced shots. The Build engine version is 2.5D, so there are rooms above rooms and puzzles which are based on this.

The game consists of four episodes, each containing a set of maps that have to be traversed by the protagonist in a specific order. The levels are usually realistic-looking structures, e.g. a carnival complete with twisted attractions, a city district, a moving train, etc.

Throughout the levels, Caleb will have to find keys (up to six in a level) and hit switches in order to work his way to the exit. On the way, he will meet a variety of enemies, such as zombies that tend to come back to life after killed, cultists armed with shotguns and tommy guns that shout in pseudo-Latin language, crawling hands that attempt to choke him, hell-hounds that can set him on fire with their breath, and many more. Boss battles await Caleb at the end of each episode.

To defend himself against this menace, Caleb utilizes a variety of weapons: a pitchfork; a flare gun that can set enemies on fire; a sawed-off shotgun; a tommy gun; a napalm launcher; TNT bundles which come in three different varieties; a home-made flamethrower made of an aerosol can; a tesla cannon that electrocutes enemies; a magical staff dubbed "Life Leech"; and a voodoo doll.

There are items to pick up strewn around. Unlike most other 3D shooters, the protagonist's health is not replenished via medikits, but by "Life Essences", heart-like power-ups randomly dropped by enemies upon their death. It is also possible to find armor, which comes in three different varieties - Physical, Fire, and Spiritual, each one defending Caleb from different attacks. There are also other power-ups: some (such as Jumping Shoes or Doctor's Bag) can be picked up and activated at any time, while others (such as Partial Invisibility) activate immediately when taken.

As the title implies, violent and gory imagery plays a significant role in the game. Enemies might explode when taken out; it is possible to kick severed heads; impaled victims can be found lying around; enemies die in different ways depending on how they are attacked and in which part of their body, etc.

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Credits (DOS version)

123 People (103 developers, 20 thanks) · View all

Game Designer
Project Manager
Build Engine, Editor, and Tools by
Additional Tools
Lead Programmer
Game Programming
Network Layer / Setup Program
Level Design
Additional Level Design
Lead Artist
Additional Artwork
Character Modelling
Sound Engine
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 25 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 146 ratings with 12 reviews)

Bloody Good Fun

The Good
GAMEPLAY: Refined. Comfortable learning curve. Superb level design. Feels very good to play. Difficulty just right. Awesome weapons. Dark humour and pop-culture references. Fun and addictive. [5/5]

GRAPHICS: The Build (Duke Nukem 3D) engine pushed to its absolute limits. Nice crisp look. Detailed and attractive. Not state-of-the-art but refined. Enemies are 2D but I don't care -- they're quite detailed. [4/5]

AUDIO: Cool. The weapon sounds are crisp and punchy, although a tad more bass would be good (although just EQ it and you'll be right). Music is just there, mood enhancing but never intrusive. The one-liners are... odd. [4/5]

PLOTLINE: Utter rubbish. But fun, like a B-grade slasher. The dark god has forsaken you and you'll get even. Therefore, kill a bunch of boss monsters. Seriously, that's about it. Stylishly, of course. The mood is dark, menacing and grim, with a slight goth-western flavour, unlike Hexen which was goth-fantasy. [4.5/5]

The Bad
Did the weather have to be overcast ALL the time? Some rain FX would've be sooo cool for this game. Ah well, opportunity missed.

The Bottom Line
Duke Nukem 3D with a gothic-western flavour. That is, a tough but comfortable shoot'em'up with incredible level design and not drenched in puzzles. [4.5/5]

I utterly LOVE this game!

DOS · by Tom White (12) · 2004

I live...again!

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.

DOS · by Mr. Hapton (13) · 2005

A Doom clone, but a very good one

The Good
It's probably immediately obvious from the game's title that this isn't exactly a game for the sensitive, but I'll go through the usual caveat anyway. Blood is one of the most violent games ever made, certainly the most violent I've ever played. There's so much red stuff in this game you wonder if it affected the developers' vision. You can shoot limbs off bodies, aim at heads and watch them explode like cans of tomato soup, and splatter gore over the walls when you blast enemies to their component parts with the sawed-off shotgun. Along the way of your blood-soaked journey you'll frequently encounter mutilated human bodies nailed to the walls: some of them are still twitching. The game's violence is so over-the-top and campy it isn't really scary or disturbing -- quite the opposite -- but it's still the reason many people should avoid this game. But those who can handle the ultra violence will find a fun and memorable shooter.

The story: at the age of 18, Caleb already has a reputation as a merciless gunfighter in the mid-1840s American West. He comes across a destroyed homestead and a weeping woman, who tells him that her name is Ophelia and her husband and everything she had was destroyed by a cult of demon-worshippers called the Cabal. Her husband had been a member of the Cabal, but had tried to escape from it, and retaliation had been swift. Tearfully, she asks him if he wants to join the Cabal, and for some damned reason he accepts. The demon the Cabal serves, Tchernobog: The One That Binds; The Sleeping God; yadda yadda, invites a select few of his followers to a secret ceremony. There, he kills everyone, (including Caleb and Ophelia) and uses their power to augment his own. But Caleb survives (well, not really, he dies and gets resurrected. The game never tells us how), and from there on the plot unfolds along fairly familiar lines. Caleb sets out for revenge on Tchernobog and his army of followers, and hopefully I don't have to explain anything else about Blood's story.

The first thing that struck me about Blood was its incredible detail. Get up close to the walls, and you can actually see small details like fungus and slime in the brickwork. Your enemies have several death animations each (one from getting shot dead-on, another from getting shot from the side, another from getting burned alive, etc.), and, true to Ken Silverman's Build engine, you can destroy, move, or interact with almost everything. It's one thing shooting exploding barrels in Doom, but in Blood you can do things like crush enemies by pushing a wooden crate off a ledge on to them, and kick decapitated enemy heads around like footballs. Blood is an insidiously fun, destructive game.

Blood is technologically adept, featuring things such as transparent water, realistic lighting, and great physics. The Build engine is probably the most advanced 2.5D engine ever developed, and Blood takes full advantage of this with things like rooms above rooms (the game's most tense moment is when you're walking a treacherously narrow causeway across a pit of snakes). As far as visual appeal goes the game falls a bit flat, the sprites get pixely and blurred when you get up close (but that's true of every raycast game) and the colours seem a bit bland and washed out. The game is using very old technology and it shows. But the game's system requirements are certainly modest, and I haven't encountered a single bug or glitch while playing -- not even on Windows XP, which apparently is the bane of Build games.

The game's levels (for the most part) are simply awesome. I really pity anyone who is trying to create a mod of Blood 2, all the good ideas have already been used in the game. Rather than just endless levels that take place in a dungeon or building, you'll blast enemies to shreds in locales such as on board a ship, in an abandoned amusement park, and in a snow-covered forest. The design of the levels is top notch, with a good balance of puzzles that require thinking and areas that you can just blast your way through, there are blessfully few "fetch the silver key" style puzzles, although completing some levels usually entails unlocking a secret area somewhere. The weapons are diverse and satisfying. Some enemies are resistant to certain weapon types, so you'll have to be prepared to switch around a lot. Of course, there's the requisite shotgun and pistol, and a few more unusual things like the aerasol spray can and the voodoo doll. I liked it how you could dual wield, with a weapon in each hand. The monsters, I'll admit, are unremarkable, mostly just copies of those from Doom and Quake, with a few rats, bats and spiders thrown in for good measure. But in all fairness they are extremely detailed and have so many different animations that it almost makes up for the fact that Monolith is firing creative blanks.

Blood's multiplayer, I think, deserves its own section. The server Monolith had set up for the game (games.lith.com) was taken down years ago, but as with almost all popular titles that have been abandoned by their developers new servers have been set up elsewhere by fans. Bloodbath (as multiplayer mode is affectionately known) is as exciting as multiplayer FPS games can get. There are just so many varied weapons and powerups, (not to mention Blood's naturally flexible engine that allows for things like bouncing grenades off walls to kill enemy players that are hiding behind corners) that Bloodbath mode kept me entertained for weeks after beating the game in single player mode. The game comes with 9 excellent multiplayer levels, and there's even a utility on the install CD that allows you to create your own.

And of course, there's the humour. There are the obligatory wisecracks from our protagonist (when entering a hospital Caleb will remark "hmmm...a hospital. I might donate someone elses blood.") and things such as the "No Zombies Allowed" sign at the amusement park. There are so many references to H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe novels that the game's trivia section would probably be twice as large if someone went and documented them all. The game has a morbid "gallows humour" attitude that I quite liked, cue being able to kick zombie heads around. And there are those annoying people that run around incessantly screaming as zombies chase them. They're cute at first, but after a few levels I started ventilating their skulls with a bullet whenever I saw them just to shut them up.

The Bad
here are few things I can really fault Blood on. It aims at providing Doom-style action and succeeds very well at that. The excessive gore is probably nothing more than an attempt to distinguish it from the crowd (there's no such thing as bad press, so the saying goes.) One thing I didn't like was that the game often falls back on jumping puzzles. Jumping puzzles shouldn't really be in FPS games, you can't see your feet and it's little more than an exercise in frustration because of that. A lot of E4L2 is just jumping from wooden pylon to wooden pylon over a pit of lava, and I believe I died more times in that part than in all the other parts of the game put together. That was the only time I was genuinely frustrated with Blood.

The Bottom Line
Other than the violence hook, Blood is a neat little game and a good example of the genre. Recommended if you've got a high gore tolerance and you can find it.

DOS · by Maw (832) · 2005

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Blood Special Edition Gazzoid Sep 2, 2023
Cooperative Multiplayer And Wan Dec 20, 2015
Blood manual Judicator Aug 18, 2009
Blood ... for Mac? Dae (7182) Jun 2, 2008

Trivia

3dfx patch

Monolith released an alpha patch for Blood that provided 3DFX support. Unfortunately, being an alpha patch, it only works with version 1.0 of Blood, not One Unit Whole Blood. It is also incompatible with Voodoo Rush and Voodoo 2 chipsets.

Cultists

The strange language spoken by the cultists is supposed to be a combination of Latin and Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the ancient language of India, from which several modern languages of that region originated.

Cut features

One early feature that Q Studios was planning to add to Blood was the idea of "BloodLust". According to this feature, each time when the player killed a minion of the Dark God, his BloodLust meter climbed a notch. If his BloodLust climbed high enough, he metamorphosed into the Beast. As the Beast, he was supposed to be stronger and faster than a human, but he was also limited in his choice of weaponry. Of course, BloodLust waned with time--if the player did not kill frequently, he reverted to human form. This feature was not added to the final release of the game.

Death Mask

Death Mask, the power-up that makes you invincible for a short period of time, does not tint your view with color while active, so it's impossible to see when it runs out, which makes it somewhat less useful. The Monolith team admitted that they forgot to implement this.

Development

Apogee were the ones who started production on this game in 1994. The developers were Q Studios Corporation (an independent game development studio). In the short while they were working on it, they called it Horror 3D. After a while the rights for the game was sold to Monolith which completed the game and changed the name to Blood, which we're familiar with today.

Extras

Some versions of Blood came with a second CD that contained demos and the video for Love you to Death by the appropriately gloomy band Type O Negative.

German index

On June 28, 1997, Blood was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. The game group contains more information about what this means.

Inactivity

When you stand still for a few seconds, Caleb starts to sing lounge classics. Some of the songs he knows are My Way, Puttin' on the Ritz, Somewhere Over the Rainbow. There's No Business Like Show Business and Strangers in the Night.

References

  • The game contains easter eggs with references to Jack Nicholson, Duke Nukem and The Crow. The tips & tricks section contains information how to reach them.
  • In the level after the train level, you will able to see in the rest of the train, the clothes of Harrison Ford's charachter in The Fugitive
  • The cheat code for god mode in Blood is 'mpkfa', where 'mp' stands for Monolith productions and 'kfa' is taken from 'idkfa', the cheat code for all weapons in DOOM. It seems like Monolith was paying a tribute to DOOM.
  • In the first level of the third episode, there's a secret room which is based on the infamous "Sloth" murder from the movie Se7en. There are those goody-smelly Wunderbaum trees hanging on the ceiling and the word "Sloth" is written in blood just above the bed.
  • In the level "Crystal Lake" you can find several locations from the Friday The 13th horror movies. Indeed, the name of the level itself references Camp Crystal Lake, the setting of many films in the series.
  • There is one gag available only in the Blood shareware that did not make it to the retail version of the game. During the first mission (E1M1) on the second floor of the Mausoleum there is an embalming room with a conveyor belt and a furnace. Among the items in this room are the "drips" that one would find in a hospital. Some a filled with what can only be blood. In the shareware version if one activates the blood drip one hears Caleb draw a big slurp, and exclaim "Aaah, tastes like Kool-Aid." This line was dropped from the Retail version, most likely due to copyright issues. Thus when Caleb takes a drink we only hear the slurping sound effect, and the subsequent "Aaah."
  • Axe-wielding zombies say "Brains" or "More Brains" and there are dormant zombies found in metal drums. These are all references to the Return of the Living Dead films.
  • A sign in E1M1 says "Welcome to Morningside Funeral Home" with the Morningside crossed out with spraypaint and replaced with "HELL." The name "Morningside" is likely a reference to the antagonist's name from the Phantasm movies.
  • In E1M1, if you try to use the sink, Caleb says "out, out, damned spot!" It is a reference to Lady Macbeth washing her hands of blood in Shakespeare's play Macbeth.
  • In E1M2 the train station is called Central Miskatonic, a reference to H. P. Lovecraft's works.
  • The train in E1M3 has the name "Phantom 666" emblazoned on the side, a reference to the "Number of the Beast" 666 in Biblical prophecy.
  • When you have the Incinerator equipped, Caleb will occasionally remark "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," a reference to Apocalypse Now.
  • In E3M2, enter the wine cellar and Caleb will comment on a certain barrel "A cask of Amontillado!" Edgar Allen Poe wrote a short story with the same name. Destroy the barrel and you'll find several sawn off limbs and body parts inside.
  • In the secret level "Butchery Loves Company" you can find a hidden area with a Duke Nukem arcade machine. Caleb will remark "I don't have time to play with you," a corruption of one of Duke's many one-liners.
  • Caleb's opening line "I...live...AGAIN!" is lifted out of Army of Darkness.
  • One of the lines spoken by Caleb while massacring enemies is "Da-da-da-dat's all, folks!", a reference to the famous closing line from Warner Bros. cartoons, as delivered by Porky Pig.
  • And if you 'activate' Eric Draven's gravestone on the first level of Blood, Caleb will say 'Nevermore'. As in "Quoth the raven: 'nevermore' " of course, from Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven".
  • In one further piece of homage in this densely referential work, on the second page of the "default keys" reference, characters from Blood will comically re-enact gameplay from Pac-Man, Asteroids and Donkey Kong.

Shareware

The shareware version of the game contains many things that are not present in the full version, such as mushrooms that cause you to become delirious. The shareware levels are also slightly different in the full version. For example: E1M2 has been updated to include civilians which are not present in the shareware.

Tchernobog

The name Tchernobog means black god (crno bog) in Slavic dialect. It is a pagan deity dated from ancient 12th century Slavic religion.

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart required special editions of this game to be made before they would sell it. Identical to the original game in most aspects, they toned down the gore and removed any nudity.

Information also contributed by 88 49, B14ck W01f, bächtërmän, ClydeFrog, Corn Popper, Emepol, Goteki45, JudgeDeadd, Maw, MDMaster, Michael Palomino, Pseudo_Intellectual, Roger Wilco, Scott Monster, WildKard and Xoleras

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Related Sites +

  • Blood - Coming from 3D Realms
    game development page at the Apogee/3D Realms website, snapshot from 1996 preserved by the Wayback Machine
  • Blood Cheats
    from 3D Gamers
  • Blood Pool
    Ring of sites dedicated to Blood. Some may be down but there are many still working.
  • Blood Wiki
    The Blood Wiki, a wiki devoted to the first-person shooter game Blood, its sequel Blood II: The Chosen, and their respective expansion packs. Also available is information on the various mods, fan projects, development details, and the fictional world in which Caleb and the others live in.
  • Control Z's Blood Site
    A good Fan Site for Blood
  • Crapshoot
    A humorous review on PC Gamer
  • Crudux Cruo
    A fan site that contains custom level reviews, a "Blood Bank", and links to other sites. In the cultist language "Crudux Cruo" means "Fresh Blood."
  • Deathmask.net
    A personal fan-page that contains some downloads and other things relating to Blood. It also hosts the famous "Build on XP" tutorial.
  • PlanetBlood
    Featuring downloads, reviews, hosted sites, fan fiction/art... just about everything that has to do with Blood 1 and 2. The perfect site for any Bloodite.
  • Purgatory
    The site of a large, four-episode Total Conversion for Blood.
  • The 13th Realm
    A Blood total-conversion that aims to include more "traditional" horror elements in Blood's levels.
  • The Official Blood Homepage
    official website of the game from 1997, preserved by the Wayback Machine
  • The Postmortem
    Sort of a monument-like fansite built for Blood and Blood II: The Chosen to keep it's soul alive for the next generation of Bloodites.
  • Zaphod's Blood Page
    One of the oldest existing fansites for Blood, Zaphod's contains screenshots, custom maps, and some hints and tips.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 980
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Accatone.

Additional contributors: Kate Jones, Xantheous, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Frenkel, retinadesgastada, Dae, Maw, Havoc Crow, oct, Patrick Bregger, MrFlibble.

Game added March 6, 2000. Last modified March 5, 2024.