For most of my life, I’ve been stuck on older hardware that wouldn’t be able to emulate anything older than PS1, and it could barely run games that came out past 2005. Yet, despite running through one “retro” game after another, I never got around to Blood. Duke, Doom, Triad, Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage, Hexen, I at least tried all of them, but never even touched Blood, despite it often being hailed as one of the best Build engine shooters.

Well, got around to fixing that, and for once, I’m quite happy to say that the game actually lived up to the expectations, even though it didn’t start that way.


My experience with Blood started on the wrong foot. I saw six different difficulty options with novelty names, so I thought, “hey, let’s see what people recommend”. A lot of these older games typically didn’t treat the highest difficulty as an option for experienced players. More often, it was a sadistic challenge that wouldn’t even try to be fair. This is very much the case here.

While many people recommended Lightly Broiled, I thought my experience with FPS games would be enough to enjoy it on Well Done, which should be similar to Doom’s Ultra-Violence, in theory. People said that Well Done is a pain in the ass in this game, but I really thought it’s fine. I started the game, then got to the first cultist enemy and was immediately concerned.

Hitscanners are like QTEs of FPS games, they provoke anger just by the virtue of existing, but it’s only really the case because of how many games used them wrong. Doom had hitscanners, yet they were handled exceptionally well, even on UV the zombie enemies are a fun part of the Doom sandbox.

Blood? Blood’s use of them is shockingly bad, like straight up abysmal. It’s a failure on almost every front. Their reaction time is near instant, and their weapons are relatively accurate, which means you will take damage simply for daring to look at these enemies. They also aggro from quite a distance, and on Well Done, getting hit hurts quite a bit.

You can, of course, offset it by being exceedingly careful, slow, and methodical. You can chuck dynamite around corners, and abuse your fate defying power of quicksaving. But at that point, I was just not having any fun with the game because it completely kills the pacing, and trying to clear out cultist while minimising the eye contact borderline felt like I’m trying to cheese the game and exploit the AI.

I complained about this after the first few levels, and decided to just start over on Lightly Broiled. Suddenly, the game was a lot more fun. Who could’ve imagined? The cultists still hurt, especially close range shotgun cultists, but overall, you could actually afford to be more aggressive, but not reckless, which is more or less perfect.


Or at least as perfect as it probably can be in a game with combat as basic as this. Compared to something like Doom or Quake, the bestiary here doesn’t push or challenge you in any way, outside the aforementioned hitscanners taking half of your face off. Almost every single enemy in the game loses to simply turning around them. Hellhounds, zombies, spiders, gargoyles. You can even beat most bosses by simply running around them with a pitchfork.

If this was an isolated case, it would’ve been fine, but when everything loses to circle strafing, it greatly undermines the combat. Any new arena is not a unique challenge to overcome, or a “combat puzzle” to solve. It’s just another area where you will circle around the enemies and kill them with any weapon you want. This isn’t something that is really impacted by difficulty settings. Hitscanners are an ever-present “but” here, they do indeed require a unique approach in the worst way possible, but they typically don’t mix with other enemies in any clever way.

My gameplay in the first episode vs. the last episode was basically the same. The only difference is that I started switching weapons just for the hell of it. Electric rifle for hellhounds, napalm launcher for gargoyles, flares for zombies and fat guys, tommy gun for cultists, etc. It wasn’t necessary, enemies don’t require a unique approach, altering your movement, picking weapons, nothing, but it was more fun to play that way.


Normally, that would’ve been a death sentence for an FPS, especially one where combat is 90% of the game. Sure, the weapon sounds are meaty, the sense of impact is fantastic, you got enemies just outright blowing up into fountains of blood and viscera. Flame weapons envelop them completely and make them crumble into dust. The gunfeel is great, but that’s rarely enough to carry the whole game, and it’s not enough here.

That’s where atmosphere and level design come into play. Blood has a very distinct horror aesthetic and it completely nails it. Unlike the later FEAR or Condemned, it doesn’t stick to just one style. Instead, you get a smorgasbord of different horror influences and genres. One level might take you to an occult cathedral, another will put you inside a fleshy cavern lined with skin, mouths, and eyes, the next one will give you a classic cabin in the woods, not far from a swamp with a creature from the black lagoon.

This is consistent with every aspect of the presentation. Voice lines, enemy design, weapon choice, keys, and other pick-ups. Anyone who’s into horror will be bombarded with a constant barrage of references and inspirations. I know that references typically aren’t held in high regard, but Blood doesn’t just go for “hey, recognize this?”, it’s more like a loving recreation of the many things that people like about horror as a genre and as an aesthetic.

As I mentioned, the level design is another strong suit of this game, but I struggle to pinpoint the exact reasons for this. Perhaps it’s how open they are? Even linear ones, like the dead straight train level, still feel like they have room for exploration and a bit of wandering around. Naturally, this feeling expands tenfold with more open levels, especially when you have the jumping boots item. It always feels like there are several intended routes to choose from, and extra places you could get into with the boots.

In spite of that non-linearity, I never felt like I broke the game, I never felt stuck or soft-locked. It’s like the designers knew every possible place that a player could get into and planned around it. Instead of excessive backtracking and dead ends, the levels instead looped in on themselves. It created the same sensation you might’ve felt in Dark Souls when you find a new shortcut and find out that it seamlessly connected two different areas.

The secrets were also quite fun to look for because of this. You never know what you will find. Sometimes it’s useful items or weapons, other times it’s just something fun or interesting to look at, other times it will give you a completely new route through the level. The way they’re hidden is also brilliant. Many hide behind a simple cracked wall texture, others demand activating something, collecting special items, or simply paying attention to your surroundings. It really made exploration feel exceptionally fun and rewarding.

I still got lost from time to time, and there were moments where I’d have to backtrack a great deal to utilise the new keys, but overall Blood blows many other FPS games out of the water.


Blood is quite an unusual FPS that somehow manages to justify its iconic status despite having the gameplay that is far below its peers. I would never recommend it to someone who only wants tight combat in their shooters, but to anyone else, this could be a very worthwhile experience. Funnily enough, it also made me understand why people compare Dusk to it so much. Both games have fairly underwhelming FPS design, but excel through visuals and levels so much that you don’t really care about the flaws.