Blood

The Good
There's far too much to list here! First off, the sheer amount of stuff you can do in this game is amazing! You can blow huge parts of the environment up! Destroy and entire train! Meet JoJo the Idiot Boy! Kill mimes! Blast zombies and cultists apart and laugh as their blood rains upon your parade! Quote Evil Dead and Shakespeare! And more! I've never seen a 3D shooter with so much wit and charm before Blood came around!

Now, onward...your in-game persona, Caleb, has a unique and sadistic sense of humor. I even think he's a better character than Duke Nukem ever was, and I also love some of the lines he comes up with (especially his "I...LIVE...AGAIN!" when he rises from his grave in the first stage), most of which will draw a few chuckles from the player. Also, there is a wide variety of enemies in this game, all of which also have their cool ways about them (check out the evil hands!), and all of which have some pretty damn good AI about them. Third, your weapons. Man, what variety of tools of death and mayhem have you got at your disposal! I mean...what other 3D shooter lets you kill your enemies simply by stabbing a voodoo doll near them? Or even better yet...grabbing the awesome Guns Akimbo Power-Up and mowing a whole room of baddies with two Tommy guns? Speaking of Power-Ups...they're plentiful, and they're all totally cool.

Graphics and level design are top notch, and I love some of the more unique levels (like the carnival stage!) and the little touches Monolith put into them. All the graphics are excellent for this type of game (which reminds me...who says you need polygons to get great graphics?), and the color scheme (for the most part) feels appropriate.

Sounds and music are both absolutely amazing. The music especially is awesome because it's all recorded in Redbook Audio format and each piece has a cool, errie, creepy feeling about them. Great for Halloween! Sounds are mostly the normal fare: explosions, gunshots, screams, and a few others, but they're crisp and clear, and I love hearing the cultists scream in agony when I stab my voodoo doll in the heart and watch them crumble into dust in front of my eyes. All in all, hardly anything was wrong with this game, except...

The Bad
The game had one big problem going for it: it was shipped with a lot of bugs still left in the program. One especially annoying bug was the fact that Monolith had the FMV sequences played by putting the video in one file, and the audio in another. For a long time, neither would play, because Monolith couldn't align them right. There are a few others, such as the game being unable to loop the CD Audio music properly, leaving you with no music for about half a level sometimes, as well as a couple of tiny level bugs here and there (nothing major though).

The Bottom Line
Despite the nitpicky bugs, I wholeheartedly recommend that everyone who loves a good 3D shooter or a good horror flick grab this game if they see it. Too bad Blood 2 sucked (IMHO), and also that Monolith seems to have vanished as of lately. I'd love to see Blood 3 done, but done in the same vein as that which made Blood 1 such a joy to play, and one 3D shooter I'll never forget.