Blood: Fresh Supply

I tried playing Blood many moons ago, but got turned off by its initial difficulty spike. What made it click for me this time is that I now approached the game differently: instead of running and gunning, I played it a lot slower and more methodical. Blood often gets paired up with Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior as "the holy trinity of Build engine games". There's a lot of similarities among the three games: tongue-in-cheek humour, a protagonist that talks in catchy one-liners, creative level design with lots of interactivity and explosions, ... The mistake I made was thinking that Blood would also have a similar play style as D3D and SW, i.e. you can usually run around guns blazing. I tried, but the cultists got me fast! (They're the hitscanning enemies littered throughout the entire game + they react very fast + throw explosives.) The game becomes really enjoyable once you figure out how each weapon works, which weapons to use in which situations .. and peek around every. single. corner. The enemy placement can be pretty sadistic sometimes :) With this in mind, there still will be an initial difficulty spike, so you'll be quick-saving & -loading a lot at first. A big part of it is that you start out with some unconventional weapons: a pitchfork, dynamite, and a flare gun where you have to wait a few seconds before your shot has any effect. (Oh, but once it takes effect, it's supersatisfying!) The game doesn't explain anything, so it takes some trial and error to get the hang of these weapons. Once you make it through the first few levels though, you can make it to the end. Apart from the uneven difficulty curve and some small quirks, I enjoyed Blood a lot; satisfying gameplay loop, great level design and atmosphere. A cultist classic.

Blood: Fresh Supply isn't the perfect modernization of Blood, but its good enough that I would easily recommend it to any newcomer or dilettante.

The first week of this re-release was awful. An unfinished and seemingly untested mess. But unlike some some ip holders that "remaster" and "enhance" old games (cough Beamdog) the current team working on Blood had a fire lit under their arses and started cranking out fixes right away. Good maps, amazing music, a variey of weapons that force you to employ tactics to succeed, and a fun horror theme, it still stands out. While still far from perfect or accurate, this is the easiest way to get into Blood without modding the unplayable Dosbox version with GDX.

I have played Blood three times now; first when it came out in the 90s, then a bunch of years ago with the first GOG release, and now I'm halfway through the new version. As many have mentioned, Blood is a fun game. But this version, with the KEX engine, is a very different beast to the original Build, um, build. And not in a good way. There are the problems that have been mentioned before; the cultists are freakishly accurate at any range, the butchers are somewhat flame retardant (although two flares will take care of them most of the time), and you can stand in a lit fireplace with no damage, but there are some issues are are just a pain in the bahookie... I'm currently on map 4:5, so about halfway through this release. On two occasions so far there have been bugs that have stopped me progressing, and requiring a noclip cheat code to finish the level. Not the end of the world, but did no one at Nightdive actually play through the game? I've not seen any issues with crashes as mentioned by others, and it's still a fun game. However, I support the earlier call to make the original Blood available again for people who would like to play the pure version.

I've played nblood, bloodgdx and of course the Dosbox versions and this version has the smoothest mouse control...no input lag or acceleration. So far I've this version for 10 or so hours on 2 computers without crashing,so it's definitely not broken to me