September 9th, 2008 by Craig (email author)

Description

“You are a feared gunslinger, until you attempt to help a woman whose life has been destroyed by a mysterious Cabal. You too are sucked in and killed; when resurrected you are out for revenge.

Ken Silverman’s Build engine is the basis for what was possibly the goriest first-person shooter ever made up to this time. The environment is fully interactive, with moving floors and active vehicles. Destruction of landscapes is possible, and bullet holes being left by misplaced shots. The Build engine is 2.5D, so there are rooms above rooms and puzzles which are based on this.

People explode violently when taken out, to the point that you can use a zombie’s head like a football. Impaled victims can be found lying around, and people die in different ways depending on how they are attacked and in which part of their body.” [mobygames]

Revisited

Blood was one of the later games that was produced using 3D Realm’s Build engine, following other classics such as Duke Nukem3D and was one of my personal favorites on the engine. It very much feels like a Build engine game, which isn’t a bad thing at all.

True to it’s name, Blood gained a reputation for being a bit of a gore-fest. Enemies didn’t just die, they died with style. You could decapitate zombies, detonate enemies or set them on fire and listen to their screams of “It burns! It burns!” before watching the flesh fall off their skeleton. It all sounds quite horrific, and probably would be if the rest of the game wasn’t any good. However, Blood doesn’t rely on shock tactics to entertain and provides some very good level design and gameplay to keep things interesting.

The available weapons are your standard FPS set. A combination of hand weapon (a pitchfork, in this case) and various guns for different situations. Also present is dynamite, which takes the place of the grenade but seems to pack a very large punch.

Whilst playing through it, I was quite surprised at how little of the game I remembered. I definitely didn’t remember how hard the game was. Maybe I’ve been spoilt by modern games, or maybe I originally played it on an easier skill level, but just getting through the first few levels can be a tricky task, especially when even mice can take your health down at an alarming rate. This results in a slower gameplay style, as you make sure you are not caught by an unexpected shotgun blast, which is a shame because it feels like you should just be running through levels like a madman blowing away anything that gets in your way.

All in all though, it is still a fantastic game and well worth playing through (if you are happy with taking the difficulty down a notch or two).

Screenshots

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