Arguably the best Build Engine game (Duke Nukem 3d, Shadow Warrior, etc.) that's a love letter to the horror film genre. Unique set of weapons (dynamites, flare, flamethrower and more) one of the best FPS shotguns, great visuals, great one-liners, great music, and very hard. Even if you're someone coming from games like Doom, Quake and Duke this game is much harder than those respective base campaigns. It all stems primarily from one set of enemies: the cultists. The cultists are hitscanners that have good damage and, more importantly, insane reactions. If they see you, even a pixel of your sprite, they are instantly on you. Prepare to play this game differently than you would a game like Doom. Design-wise I think the cultists are too much they really need tweaking but the game has so much style and I love a good challenge it's hard not to love Blood. Port works great. Much better than dealing with DOSbox.
Good gaiden game. Don't need to play the rest of the series to understand the main story beats. Technically Silent Hill 1 sets 4's story in motion but it isn't required playing. Good references to previous games too. This is the last "true" Silent Hill game; the last SH game developed by Team Silent. The sequels after this, in my opinion, lose the essence of what SH was. Gameplay is separated between first-person in your apartment (think of it as a hub area to store items, save, etc.) and third-person in a "dream" world. 30% of time spent in first-person apartment, 70% spent in third-person. This is a more actiony survival horror. You have limited item space and you'll mainly be utilizing melee weapons with the occasional firearm. Biggest criticism of the game is you have to run through all the levels twice though the second time through is slightly different. You get chased by powerful enemies and it's an escort mission the second time through. Monster designs are distinct from the other 3 in the series thus far. You had a different main artist working on it. Bit of a different flavor but do well and are quite horrifying in their own right. Port of this game works great. Now we just need SH 1-3 ports made by competent developers.
