Blood: Fresh Supply

Yep, at the first time this remaster was kind of raw and buggy, but devs finally fixed all critical gameplay and interface bugs, so after all we have stable high-framerate port of a cult classic with some modern enhancements like FOV slider and new graphics APIs. I've noticed only some issues with sound settings that affect only music and SFX without bringing any effect to Caleb's voice, so I'd recommend you to tweak ingame sound with OS settings.

As I indicated in the review's title, it was my first time playing any version of Blood. I've tried some other 2.5D shooters (Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, The Original Strife, Redneck Rampage, Wolfenstein 3D) but never got very far in them. This one is the first I actually finished. I'm glad to report the game still holds up fun-wise. It's likely I have some of the modern conveniences and improvements of this remaster to thank for that. The fun wasn't spotless, though, hence three stars (which is lower than my usual ratings). What I didn't like about the game: 1) The arsenal could do with slightly more variety, since three weapon slots are taken up by varieties of dynamite (fuse-based, proximity-triggered and manually detonated). 2) Gargoyles struggle with navigating towards the player, often just thrashing right under a high ceiling, out of shot. You have to run around the room to get them to come down for a fight. 3) Hit detection when shooting at enemies well below you (and, to some extent, small ones, such as spiders or rats) is dodgy at best (more so for differences in elevation rather than size). 4) One of the expansions has to first be loaded via the options menu, almost leading me to miss the expansion entirely. It also has to be re-enabled every time you launch the game before you load an expansion save. This is something that could - if not should - have been a part of the remaster's improvements: both more prominent presence of the Cryptic Passage episode and automatic loading of it contents when loading a CP save.

I grew up on Duke Nukem. Shadow Warrior is a classic. Ion Fury is a modern classic. But Blood... is perfection. The best Build Engine game. And now... it lives... again...

As someone who has played the original Blood over and over since the late 90s I can say that it's difficult to go back to build engine games. I only recently realized why this may be, and it really has mostly to do with controls. The old build engine games don't actually look up and down (I mean, you could, but it deforms the image because the engine was not built to do that properly) and so actually you shouldn't really even play them with a mouse. This update to Blood really shows how you remaster these games and make them enjoyable today. The mouselook is true mouselook, so when you look up and down it doesn't appear to deform the entire world. Since the NPCs are sprites, though, they remain flat images. This means you have to accept that the mouse look does not change the 1 dimensional nature of the sprites (they'll always be flat). Even still, and this was true of several build engine games, these games used voxel so there were rudimentary 3d objects in the world (such as pick ups, and certain objects like lamps and what not). It makes for what would now be considered a fairly interesting look. If the game was actually designed to look this way today it could be considered a weird throw back aesthetic choice that mostly works. The game play still holds up, despite it's simplicity. Blood was always my favorite of the 4 build engine classics (everyone always forgets Redneck Rampage). It has a wonderfully sinister and creepy atmosphere (especially if you play with the CD music) and I just always liked the over the top gore and cult aesthetic the game leans on. It's one of a kind, even still, and the cheeky nature of the quips that all build engine games utilize is in no short supply here either. Overall, even if this isn't the original Blood, it updates it in ways that makes it feel like it's the Blood you remember. It modernizes the controls so you can just play this awesome classic without the more dated aspects. Overall I highly recommend this remaster.

Personally I was a bit disappointed with this because I had just played the first episode with One unit whole blood + BloodGDX and after trying this out I can't help but think this is official port is not quite ready for publishing. There are a lot of bugs & weird differences between this remastered version and 'original' Blood that are mentioned already in different reviews. Some minor things that bugged me that I didn't see mentioned elsewhere: - Not being able to play splitscreen with k+m & controller (sure k+m is maybe a bit OP and 2 controllers provides better more even experience) - When saving and overwriting, you can't just 'double press' enter to save with the previous name. This deletes your savegame as it tries to save without a name - Slow respawn in single player i.e. not being able to load with use button (Yes, this is pretty minor. Still I'd like to see it being applied) - No option to make a private online game or set a password - No 'revive' functionality in multiplayer co-op. These are quite small things but considering that at this moment BloodGDX is better (atleast for singleplayer) and AFAIK it was developed by one guy. This was an official port with a lot more resources, so it feels like this was rushed to the market a bit too early.. Hopefully these problems will go away with updates!