I Live..... AGAIN! (Blood (PC))

Member Name: Burning_Darkness

Product:	Blood (PC)
Date:	01/07/09 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great fun to play, hugely imaginative, funny and full of character, great level design

Disadvantages: Graphics are dated but still possess a lot of charm

Released back in 1997, Blood is an early first person shooter that uses same 3D engine as Duke Nukem 3D, and shares a lot of similarities in terms of gameplay, level design and humour.

A vintage rendered cutscene outlines the story: you are Caleb, an undead Old West gunslinger who, along with your wife Ophelia, rose through the ranks of The Cabal- an ancient occult sect, until its Godhead, Tchernobog, grew tired of you and killed you both, with Caleb rising from his grave in search of vengeance and answers.

Emerging, at the start of of the game, from a crypt and wielding a trusty pitchfork, Caleb utters the immoral line "I live.....AGAIN!", borrowed from one of the 'Evil Dead' films, and representing just one of myriad film references that pop up throughout the game. Set in some bizarre cross between the Old West and a half-dozen different horror films, Blood stands as a homage to all that is dark, gory and frightening in the worlds of cinema and literature, bearing references from the works of Mary Shelley, HP Lovecraft, Sam Raimi, George Romero, Clive Barker and Steven King amongst others.

The levels are immensely varied, including a rest home, a moving locomotive, a railway station, an eerie Cathedral, a hospital, a circus, an ancient castle, a deserted city, a lumber mill and an abandoned mine, all of which are in a Victorian/Edwardian style, in keeping with the game's setting. One particularly excellent level is a full-scale haunted mansion, named "The Overlooked", and complete with kitchens, drawing rooms, a cellar and a pool, with exploration of its grounds revealing one axe-wielding Jack Torrence, sat frozen to death in one of the garden maze's many dead ends. Elsewhere there is a shopping mall, complete with zombies and kooky elevator muzak in a tribute to 'Dawn of the Dead'. The level design is cleary a labour of love, and everywhere there are nice, oftten funny touches many of are commented on which the brilliantly voice-acted Caleb.

The weapons are also hugely imaginative and well impemented, including a double-barrelled shotgun and a tommygun as well as a flaregun and a zippo lighter/deoderant can combination, both of which can be used to set enemies on fire, causing them to flail around screaming "IT BURNS! IT BURNS!" before finally collapsing into a smouldering heap on the floor. The guns can all be used two-at-a-time in the excellent 'guns akimbo' mode, and all of the weapons have a secondary fire mode, such as firing both shotgun barrels at once, or, in the case of the tommygun(s), waving them crazily from side to side like some deranged 30s gangster, spraying bullets everywhere and killing everything in sight. Other weapons include a voodoo doll, repeated stabbing of which will cause enemies to scream and drop dead, a necromancer's staff, which fires great pillars of flame, bundles of TNT which can be hurled at foes, a napalm launcher and an automatic telsa cannon, which electrocutes enemies with balls of blue flame.

The enemies are fantastic too, including axe-wielding zombies whose heads fly off when they die, their corpses collapsing whilst arterial sprays spew upwards, whilst their heads can then be kicked about the level. There are also huge winged demons, undead, cleaver-wielding butchers and best of all fanatical, tommy gun and shotgun wielding monks who speak in an evil, backwards-talking languange and hurl TNT at you inbetween blasting at you with their guns.

Multiplayer mode is immensely fun too. I remember playing it back in the days when multiplayer PC gaming meant everyone hauling their computers round to one friend's house and setting up camp in their living room for a weekend of non stop fragging, and watching from a corridor as two of my friends whizzed past sideways ahead of me, one chasing the other, tommygun blazing away, only for the tide to turn seconds later, with the pursuer now running back the way he had came, chased by my other friend as he blazed away at his former tormentor with a tesla cannon. Ah, the memories....

Its important that I mention the music as well, which consists of a professionally produced, cd-audio quality soundtrack full of eerie keyboard melodies, moody Gregorian chanting and ominous dungeon-like ambience. its all incredibly well done and is quite simply one of the best game soundtracks I have ever heard, adding buckets of atmosphere to the game.

Blood is as fun now as it ever was, and remains an absolute joy to play. And whilst the graphics are of course vary dated now, they still possess a great deal of charm and character. A fantastic blast from the past- they just don't make them like this any more.

Summary: A dark, funny and hugely enjoyable first person shooter