Blood is a game so good that I'm willing to play a game for a 3rd time. When I first played it, you could only emulate through Dosbox then they made a remaster and now they are doing it again and I can play it console now. It was the game that put Monolith Productions on the map and would later make more games I would enjoy like No One Lives Forever, FEAR, Condemned and Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor then they would later meet their unfortunate demise but that's the gaming industry for you. I still really enjoy Blood but I can't help but notice issues that I haven't before. It's still a highly enjoyable game and one of the best boomer shooters you can play released in this era especially before they went full 3D.
Anyways, whenever I booted up Blood before, I always dread playing Episode 1 but now lowering the difficulty to easy, I appreciate the design a lot more here. Yes, no doubt you will be overwhelmed by the the hitscanning cultists and the regular zombies before you even build up your wilder arensal of weapons. There is one thing Episode 1 teaches you and this will be learned even on easy mode.Enemies using hitscan weapons tends to be a hot topic among people who talk about shooter combat design. Blood is very unique in that instead of just tanking hits and hoping you recover from it. You have a way to combat them: The TNT. If you even casually play this game, this is a weapon you will have to get accustomed to. What makes it so unique is that basically a hitscan cultist or a group will be either hiding in rooms, corners, or just in tight spots. If you can spot one or hear the sound barks, you can lob in some TNT and get some quick and fast kills on them with no need to even tank any hits.
As a result, Blood can feel a bit more on the conservative or tactical side. You get no health packs outside of portable medkits, enemies just randomly drop health upon death. It's more about lobbing in and being as careful as you can before you can use your more powerful weapons later.
Speaking of more powerful weapons, Blood has the most punchy, gory and memorable boomer shooter aresnals of guns you could ever have. You got a useful flare gun. You got the awesome Tommy Gun that can tear into enemies and it's alt fire that can attacks nearby enemies with it's spread. The amazing sawed off shotgun where one shot can do a lot of damage but feels very satisfying to fire both shots to defeat higher level enemies. The beastly Tesla Cannon that can make little work of the tougher enemies. Of course, one of if not the beast rocket launchers in all of gaming: the Napalm Launcher. Which casuses a huge explosion upon touching an enemy and can spread to other enemies and slowly burn away at their health. The Remote Mines are also a decent follow back weapon for the TNT.
With that said, there are gimmick weapons that are just there like the Vodoo Doll, Aeresol Can, and the Life Leech is just kind of there. I will say the BFG from Doom and the Devastator from Duke 3D does have the Life Leech beat in terms of gamefeel and use.
The main weapons feel so good to use that I don't mind this.
Level design is mostly good with the scenery and locals getting better with each episode. Episode 2 being the most memorable in that you have a creepy carnivale then you got a real cool homage to The Shinning where you the level have you begin in a maze outside of The Overlook hotel then you actual visit and go through the actual recreation of it. Episode 4 starts off in creepy labs and then you start go through haunted temple areas. Blood is often said to be a parody of horror media like how Duke 3D is to action films and Blood does a good job at it. The only big issue I have is how in the penultimate level E4, Kaleb somehow gets inside of a giant worm. I'm not strongly demanding stories in these games but I wish it was explained how he got there since it's so random.
The enemies I'm more mixed on this time around. I find some of them to be really annoying to fight like the Hellhounds where if they hit you even once, they can slowly chip away at your health and you better hope you kill an enemy that drops some. The Gargolyes will take forever to finally fly down and start attacking you. Spiders can mess up you field of view by touching you. Phantasms can be really be grating if you don't have Sawed Off shotgun rounds ready and hit with it's alt fire when it reappears. Hands can be annoying if you don't know the button to get them off you. The Hellhounds are especially annoying since being ill prepared could lead you back to the restart screen.
It's strange, Blood for the most part is a really well made game but there are just enemies in it's roster that makes me start groaning by the mere thought of fighting them again.
Overall, while Blood can be frustrating in places, it's still enjoyable to play just held back by some very irksome enemies to fight especially in the moment before learning of their placement in the levels.
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