Blood 2: The Blood Group

A lot of users compare it to One Unit Whole Blood, saying it is worse and nowhere near as good. Do not let yourself fooled! Blood 2 is an ode to the '90s unique horror theme I just call "action-horror". It isn't about fearing in the dark but instead massacring in foggy moonlight. You're an action hero who went in a horror movie to kill everything moving. The moves are basic, but that isn't a surprise from this era of FPS. To make it fun however there are tons of weapons, some which can be carried in both hands, aka akimbo, but if not then it have primary and secondary fire mode. The firepower is brutal here, basically spamming hitscan bullets everywhere till everything explodes in blood. Of course the good old "magic weapons" are present with regenerating ammo. The stages always makes me think about Duke Nukem. Starting simple, and later like a labirinth of death, spending an hour just to find out your goal. Ammo can be found on the stages, and some enemies also drops it. The world is rather dark and sometimes hard to see what you're face and where, but nothing you couldn't get used to it. Stages sometimes have bosses that harder to kill than a NES final boss. There isn't advantage and disadvantage on the maps depending on your weapon loadout, you're free to use the one you want. The sounds are fitting. The voice acting is awesome just like in the old game, the musics are authentic, the SFX maybe not that perfect but good for feeling the action... or fear. There is a solid multiplayer for some matches where you can set your stats. Changing the speed of your character, the maximum healt, or the weight they can carry. There is also focus for the mental based weapons. As closure this game is definitelly a classic one. You just can't ignore it because the first game.

SHOGO: MOBILE ARMOR DIVISION, another Monolith game, uses the same Lithtech Engine. That's great. But why does Blood 2 have to LOOK like SHOGO? SHOGO was an anime-inspired FPS where it had sequences of being in a giant transformerable-mech bot and stomping thorugh cities blasting other mechs (it was not as great as that sounds, trust me). That game had a particular style in the 3D characters, in that they didn't even look like anime but blocky mutants. They look like skinny 3D model character from Dire Straits "Money For Nothing..." video. Terrible. Terrible even by the standards at the time. So now we get Blood 2, and they look just as bad. The game feels like I'm playing SHOGO but playing a "Blood mod" made for it by some fans. The 3D graphics are terrible, the physics are pretty much non-existant. The weapons look and feel cheap, like right outta SHOGO. The way NPCs and others move and "react" appears almost exactly like those in SHOGO. What a let-down. Kudos to GOG for at least bringing it back. The original Blood 2 was a buggy hot mess. As for the rest, the sound is cruddy, very low quality, some elements in the story/gameplay that rip-off Halflife, feels very tacked on. The sterilized 3D graphics, "puzzle"-level design drain all the fun. It's hard to take it seriously. It is no comparison to the original Blood and its gritteness. The whole "future" setting seems tacked on so they can rip-off Halflife with portals, future-y weapons, and stuff. Overall, the game feels uninspired. It was like the only fun the developers making it was putting in the cheesy jokes. Fans may wanna get it to (sort of) how the story progresses (to the toilet). Side note, the GOG version graphics framerate drops to single digits when looking at lighted enviros. Playing in software mode fixes that. Ironically, the software mode gives it a more "retro" look like the first game, and while terrible, it helps (to slighlty help) give the game the atmosphere it should have had.

This game merges all of the aspects of 90s FPS games. You get the comedic one liners similar to Duke, with a proper storyline (albiet weird), with a great true 3D world (true XYZ grid) to fight through. While the mechanics may be a little lacking, and the overall game may be left a little unpolished, this game is a perfect example of what a good FPS is. It seems like some people didn't like the game for it's story and setting. Well, to those people I would say that while Quake 2 wasn't set in the same setting as Quake, that didn't make it a bad game. It was an excelent game. (And yes, I'm still waiting for a return to the Lovecraft themed story line in that game) The same can be said here. This is a really good game. But it does have an unpolished feel to some areas. If you've never played it, it's worth the cost.

This game doesn't have the blood feel to it. It feels like some modders took some of the very basic elements of blood while missing the most important ones and made a mod called half life: blood. That is all..

Fun, Sweet and hard.