Alright, I just recently completed all achievements in Blood: Fresh Supply which is my method of knowing if I've fully played the game or not. As a general rule of thumb, I try to play on the recommended difficulty as I'm not a big fan of difficulty levels and would rather just pick whichever the director would intend you to play with.

With that said, I've played the game on "Well Done" difficulty (the second hardest one, as the hardest one is truly criminal) as I've heard that's the most popular one to play with. I've also played it on the easiest difficulty to collect the few achievements I had left. And there have some attempts with the hardest but they never went anywhere, but I might try them one day.

This is to say that the following review would be considering the game on the "Well Done" difficulty.

Blood is one of the old build engine games of the DOOM era. While definitely not as popular as its contemporaries, it carved a unique niche for itself. Funnily, Blood is actually the first build engine game I've played, and perhaps it's nostalgia goggles blinding me, but I truly consider it to be the best one (not that I've played them to properly compare them anyway). From the floaty movement to the wide array of crazy weaponry; Blood delivers a lot.

Back when I played it as a child, I had it on a CD, and apparently, the cutscenes never worked on it. After viewing them now, I can safely say that I didn't miss anything worth of value. But that's fine. Because the game knows what the players want: gameplay. And oh boi does it deliver that in spades.

It's fast-paced action reminiscent of the olden FPS era, with a map that isn't some convoluted mess for once. In fact, figuring out secrets and finding out shortcuts reminds me of another well-known game. As a fan of map design, every inch of this game's map design was orgasmic to me. Not to mention it also caters to my horror fetish by providing me with easter eggs on different horror characters.

My only gripe is that the shortcuts ultimately mean nothing. Because once you die, you restart the level with nothing but your pitchfork, and all the shortcuts have reset. This means there's zero reason to actually just respawn and not just use quicksave/quickload. This was truly a shame because I was hoping this way they'd reward you for exploration.

Then there's the action part itself. Oh boi oh boi mamma mia on a spittin' hot fire pan, is it some top tier action. I recommend this game to anyone looking to just shoot shit with some of the most unique (in design, not function) weapons. Also that burning animation. Zoo wee mama, that's some amazin' shit right there. Game of the century material straight up.

Now Blood is known for its brutal difficulty, especially when compared to other build engine games. After watching civvie's videos on it, I felt that I'd be expecting the same level of brutality. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I never really reached a point where it felt too hard. Like yes, I know the cultists have hit scanning, which is terrible and has killed me multiple times, but overall, it wasn't that hard.

This isn't to brag that I'm good at hard games, it's more to say that advertising it as a hard game just seems false. The secret? Napalm launcher. While yes, you could argue that the game is challenging otherwise, but the napalm launcher trivializes everything. I'm normally very picky with ammo and tend to save the good ones for later, but when you find the ammo for it fuckin' everywhere, then the game is just begging you to use it lmao.

Quite frankly, I had more or less moved on from FPS games. They just didn't excite me anymore. Even going through Bioshock, a game I actually liked a lot (until latter half of game anyway), started feeling more and more like a slog to go through. But after trying Blood again after so long, it revived my love for FPS games that I had long ago, and has tempted me into trying other build engine games too now.

I have a feeling it might have to do with the story elements they put on the game. Don't get me wrong, story in video games aren't bad at all. It's just that when the focus is story and not gameplay IN AN FPS GAME, it starts to stale out. For example, most of CoD is simply boring even though some of them have a good story. Half-Life is probably the pioneer of proper narrative in an FPS game, but at least it did it right. Like I said, story itself isn't bad.

There is a story at play with Blood as well. But let's be honest, no one plays these games for the story. In a way, I miss simpler times when games would focus more on gameplay than story elements (not saying that story is bad, mind you). But for now, I'll have to keep myself content with Caleb's lines (all of which are quality lines.)

"Good, bad, I'm the one with the gun." being my favorite. There's just something charming about the man's voice, so mad props to the voice actor for bringing the psychopath to life.

Oh and the OST? Absolutely marvelous. If there's one thing that gets me harder than a flat-earther's mindset, it's the atmosphere. And what helps build the atmosphere? A solid OST. And other things, like the environment and shit. But my point is that Blood excels at creating an excellent atmosphere that never fails to deliver.

​

Anyway, this has gone long enough. I recommend you play it if you don't mind old school shooters and want to just have some solid fun. Meanwhile, I'll be trying out the Death Wish mod now.