Some thoughts on Blood (when DOOM is your favorite game of all time)
Blood finally coming to consoles (in my case PS4) this past December was a godsend for me after learning of it a decade prior. Blood is a Build Engine game but it looked like a completely different animal from Duke Nukem 3D, a game I was infinitely more familiar with and one I...not really sure I "enjoy" but I've put in some considerable time with it in Blood's absence.
As of right now Blood has been a game I've played more or less nonstop for three months now. The immediate thing to note with Blood is that it does not hold your hand. For clarity sake I have done UV-MAX pistol start runs in DOOM for both TNT Evilution and the Plutonia Experiment. Blood's default difficulty (im blanking on the name right now) is the equivalent of DOOM on Ultra-Violence. I made the mistake of desperately grinding through Blood's first episode on Well Done before just playing on default for episodes 2 - 4, but now I've gone back and played them on Well Done. Even the most basic enemies should not be taken lightly, a cultist in this game is closer to a Heavy Weapons Dude than a Zombieman.
One of the learning curves with Blood is that every weapon has an alternate firing attack. These aren't mods like in DOOM Eternal mind you but something that you can automatically do, so yes this is an FPS with two firing buttons. So on top of having 12 weapons by episode 4, each one beyond the pitchfork has a separate use case. Even now it's rare for me to find which one I "should" be using beyond just defaulting to the shotgun or tommy gun, because oftentimes I just mentally tune out the amount of choices I'm presented or I just save weapons like the voodoo doll or life leech for very specific purposes. Mostly the alternate firings are more or less fine, but the life leech's basic attack is more or less useless whereas its alternate attack (becoming a stationary turret with unlimited ammo that automatically attacks any enemy in range) would be broken if some bosses weren't insane to deal with.
Though, special mention needs to be made of Dynamite. Dynamite, if it didn't hurt you as well, would be considered the default weapon. How to aim and long your throw arc should be are skills you will have to learn on the job if you want to make any sort of headway into Blood. The alternate firing mode lets you light Dynamite before throwing it, which means it can bounce off walls instead of exploding on contact. This means you have to be proactive and learn to throw Dynamite around corners before stepping into a room or taking a 90 degree turn around a hallway. I haven't found any real usefulness for remote detenators or trip mines because they all just kind of feel the same to me, if I have Dynamite I just have Dynamite.
Let's talk about some enemies. Blood features "small" enemies that more often than not are just nuisances (bats, severed hands, spiders, etc.) and to be honest if these were gone entirely I wouldn't miss them, just fucking eye rolling to deal with. Your standard enemies are cultists (kill on sight like literally on sight) or zombies (actually hoodoo zombies despite saying "more brains" like ghouls), the latter of which is the only thing you can count on killing with a pitchfork. Everyone else is basically a full-on mini-boss. I personally hate the gargoyles entirely because they will fly all over the place at light speed and just stay at the skybox ceiling of a given stage until they at some point actually feel like attacking you. I'd day it's rare for you to be absolutely swarmed like in DOOM so you can piece meal fights at your own pace, at least.
The bosses, dear lord the bosses. Cheog is basically the Cyberdemon with the mobility of a Lost Soul and the ENTIRE reason why I cannot do saveless runs of Blood. I fucking hate Cheog so much for being a bullet sponge on top of having one of the most damaging attacks in the game and being able to fly. Anytime you see Cheog, if you don't have a quick save ready you're going back to the start of the map. Sheol isn't terrible to deal with but Blood triggers my arachnophobia so badly that I just start to lose it IRL when I have to deal with Sheol and there have been some Sheol fights that made me want to literally cry. I like Cerberus and Chernobog well enough but them being grounded opponents automatically makes them so much easier to deal with compared to Cheog that they're a non-issue most of the time.
Blood in general kind of gets under my skin. I can play Resident Evil(s) and be scared but I'm more or less completely fine by the time when I turn my console off. With Blood? If I don't unwind with a play session of Metal Slug or something I will genuinely feel unclean.
I like the map layouts of Blood, they're oftentimes non-linear but they play fairly in terms of where you're supposed to go or where secrets are compared to DOOM. I've rarely had to consult a video on where to go next. I feel like this greatly improves on Duke Nukem's attempts at constructing realistic locations in the Build Engine (the exception being the mall in the episode 4 secret map which is just oblong and weirdly shaped) and so many maps literally having their starts directly connected to a previous map's exit really does hit home the world building. I don't super care for a lot of the horror references when they're more overt, like no I don't think Army of Darkness (1992) is funny and this won't convince me. Certain maps like The Overlooked Hotel or Crystal Lake work because they're more concerned with general impression of their inspiration more than winking nods.
There's a new map set included in Refreshed Supply called Marrow, which, despite using the "silly" enemy types of Blood proper, is kind of what I wanted out of Blood in general. The worst thing about Blood is that the music either sucks or is non-existent and that really makes you wish you were listening to some Bobby Prince. Marrow emphasizes use of shadows (you literally cannot see some areas you're in and are forced to use the automap) and music to convey a sense of dread that is genuinely palpable, though Marrow gets so excessive in this regard along wit difficulty that it sort of sinks down to base Blood for me. Womp womp.
