#178: Blood
You’re soaking in it
This review was originally posted to Twitter on September 6, 2019.
Initial release: March 7, 1997 (Shareware)/May 21, 1997 (full version)
Platform: PC
Developer: Q Studios/Monolith Productions
Video games are full of imitators, and no genre was as obsessed with chasing the flavor of the month as the 1990s first person shooter. Duke Nukem 3D was an edgy, irreverent title that stood out amidst a flood of generic shooters inspired by Doom. So it was inevitable that ol’ Duke himself would have a few imitators, but where Duke was a pastiche of action movies, Monolith Productions’ first big hit — a sharp little title with the ever-straightforward name of Blood — was a pure horror spoof.
Beginning life as a much more serious game using the Build engine by the name of “Horror 3D,” under the auspices of the Apogee-sponsored Q Studios, the game soon morphed into a comedy horror shooter after a disastrous leak of an early alpha version and the rip-roaring success of Duke 3D. During Duke 3D’s development, Apogee would rebrand as 3D Realms, and poached legendary mapper Richard “Levelord” Gray from Q Studios. This among other issues led to Q Studios merging with the nascent Monolith Studios and eventually splitting from 3D Realms entirely.
(Man, was everyone at Apogee a dick?)
Now with GT Interactive as their publisher, Monolith finished the game, releasing it with a particularly eyebrow-raising ad campaign that only added further fuel to the video game violence debate. I mean, fucking look at this thing:
At any rate, the final product became an instant sleeper hit. While some reviewers dismissed it as too derivative, this is one of the few FPS games from the era — and probably the only Build engine game — that has managed to stand the test of time in terms of public opinion. Part of this is because of how timeless it is. Duke Nukem 3D is a great game — a comfort game for me actually — but it’s very much a product of the era it came out in, resulting in a lot of its humor seeming dated, even sexist or misogynist; Blood has no such issue. It’s just a pure horror pastiche, and it knows it.
The story is darker than you’d expect, which reflects its roots as much more serious, Lovecraftian tale. You play as Caleb, a murderous gunfighter from the Old West who gets recruited into a sinister cult that eventually betrays him and his friends, leaving him to seek revenge.
When starting the first episode you’re treated to a cutscene that manages to be dark and disturbing despite its simple 3D modeling; the dark god Tchernobog suddenly accuses a confused Caleb and his friends for failing him, and tells them, “consider my power in a hollow grave.” The game begins proper with Caleb crawling his way out of a long-forgotten tomb, armed with only a pitchfork. It’s now 1928 (at least according to the sequel) and the cult is spreading. Caleb launches into a rampage to avenge his friends’ deaths and get back at Tchernobog.
So how does it measure up in terms of gameplay? Very well in fact. While it doesn’t have the most robust bestiary or enemy variety, it makes up for that with a truly eclectic arsenal that includes a flare gun, an aerosol can flamethrower, and a voodoo doll. I hope you like setting things on fire, because this game is full of ways to do that. Every time I play this game I go through a cycle where the cultists screaming IT BURNS IT BURNS AHHHH is funny, then I get used to it, then it’s funny again. There’s a lot of that kind of mayhem in this game. There’s plenty of dynamite, both from you and from cultists. A napalm launcher serves as your RPG stand-in, and whatever it doesn’t obliterate, it sets on fire. And there’s so much stuff to blow up.
Most of your weapons all have alternative fire options as well, that can come handy in a pinch. You’ll likely be double-barreling that shotgun almost all the time, but other weapons use much more ammo for their alt-fire, relegating them to special-case use. In spite of a relatively limited enemy variety in actual gameplay, 17 types of enemy is nothing to sneeze at. You’ve got two varieties of cultist, zombies, gargoyles, fish monsters, among others. It’s a good bestiary, and clever enemy placement keeps you on your toes.
That said, it’s not all blood and roses. This game can be brutal for an inexperienced player; cultists can blow your health down to nothing in an instant. Hellhounds can set you on fire, forcing you to watch as your health and armor melt away like butter. Sometimes it can feel like trial and error where you’re pushed into a bad situation that you barely scrape out of, leaving you starving for health and armor and knowing that there’s more pain on the way. And some enemies are just plain annoying to deal with.
Of course, lest we forget that this is a horror game on top of all this action, Monolith have managed to effectively balance the knife-edge between high-tension creepy shit and all-out bloodbaths, while also cheerfully enjoying a bit of gentle funhouse shenanigans. The sound design goes a long way towards making this game atmospheric as hell. Aside from a great soundtrack (which differs depending on if you’re using MIDI or CD audio) there’s a lot of ambient sound; sometimes the game forgoes music entirely in favor of the ambience.
The game is split across four episodes of eight to nine levels each, all featuring one secret level. While the first episode was meant to be shareware and as such mixes a few themes, episodes 2 and 3 very strongly stick to one particular theme. Episode 4 is another mixed bag, in more ways than one. The middle two episodes are the highlight of the game, as they feature most of the best levels in the game as well as generally being high-quality overall. In contrast, while episode 1 is a fun time, episode 4 is kind of a disappointment as it fizzles out towards the end.
Aside from a legion of user-made maps, there’s also a pair of expansions. The first is Cryptic Passage, done by the legendary Sunstorm Interactive featuring Caleb shooting his way through the Carpathians in search of a legendary scroll. The other is an official 5th episode by Monolith themselves, as part of the “Plasma Pak” that updates the game and adds several new features, including alt-fire options on weapons that didn’t previously have them, as well as some new enemies for the episode itself.
All in all, Blood is a solid title that pushes the envelope on what the Build engine can do and how it can be used for a more narrative experience while remaining true to its theme in a way that’s charming and frightening and laugh-out-loud funny. For retro FPS games, there’s few better.
There’s lots of ways to play the game these days, too. The game runs just fine in DOSBox, but there’s also a couple of different source ports. The best of the bunch is NBlood, based off of popular Duke Nukem 3D source port EDuke32; BloodGDX (now part of a broader project called BuildGDX) is another option, but issues with the code not being open-source may be a deterrent if you care about that sort of thing. From the GZDoom developers we have Raze, which covers a variety of Build engine games (and even will faithfully play Duke Nukem 64 if you have the ROM!) Or, if you don’t feel like dealing with all that, you could always go for the official remaster, titled Fresh Supply, but that’s a less popular option in large part because of the game being ported to an entirely different engine. (The assets will still work with a source port, however.)
One last thing before I close this review: inspired by the hardest-working reviewer in Doom fandom, KMX E XII, I’ve gone ahead and written up a map-by-map breakdown of each level in the first four episodes — I even dusted off my tumblr for it!
