Playing BLOOD reminded me of a similar game from somewhat more recent memory-- Darkwatch, a dark shooter from the middle 00's. Despite the game's many flaws, I've always had a certain affection for it; what you see here is a direct refinement of a conversation a friend and I had on the game, exploring its conceptual merits and testing its logical fiber.
All right... to begin. Darkwatch was a dark supernatural horror western shooter for the Xbox (and probably the PS2), released sometime in 2003 I believe [it was actually 2005]. It focused on vampires, or what passed for them, hitting all the usual tropes while not paying much attention to the reasoning behind them.
Given the volume of behind-the-scenes material, extras and other production insights, it's clear the designers put a lot of time and effort into designing the game's setting, tone, aesthetic and story. You wouldn't really know this to look at it. This is a good chance to look at the creative process that goes into making such a game, and see if we can identify the flaws in it.
The game seemed highly derivative, compiling a lot of ideas without really giving them any meaning, and what makes it worse is that it was likely done because those elements were considered "classic", and thus good regardless of context.
Consider the main character's motivation: revenge. He seeks the villain for the purpose of getting even, sprinkled sparsely with some kind of nebulous moral issue that never sees fruition, or is elaborated on at all-- Jericho has no dialogue, even textually.
Let's also consider the Darkwatch itself. An organization that has supposedly existed since around the fall of the Roman empire, and has been protecting the world from supernatural evil (mostly vampires) ever since, using bog standard action weaponry dressed up in era-appropriate yet stylized aesthetics.
Of course, the game's manual can't help but add the vampires are the real reason Rome fell. Odd that nobody wrote that down. I find this especially annoying, and it's a pervasive attitude throughout the Darkwatch-- that they know "The Truth" about history and the supernatural, while the world remains ignorant, and that this is absolutely vital to their operations. It's supposed to be impressive and awing, but it simply makes them look like paranoid conspiracy theorists with far too many guns.
This is kind of like if police agencies the world over decided their job would be easier if nobody outside the police knew that crime existed. Considering the many different individuals, philosophies, ideologies, historical events, and political issues that have come into police work and crime over the *millennia*, it's certain that someone would spill the beans. That, in fact, some whole country might undergo a radical populist revolution and the new government might try a more open approach to this sort of thing. Or a huge and dangerous plot might blow up in the middle of some publically frequented area. The Secret Society aspect of the Darkwatch is probably worth quite a bit of dissection (not to mention denigration).
A collection of Darkwatch images: http://quizilla.teennick.com/stories/2953211/pictures-for-my-darkwatch-story-daughter-of-the-storm
Who exactly was going in for symbols like that in 66 AD? It doesn't really match my impressions of the contemporary styles. But then, the Darkwatch seems to be fairly timeless. I imagine they found some way to have rocket launchers and proximity mines even in the time immediately following Christ's ministry.
...say, there might be something there. Inspired by Jesus? *Started* by Jesus? Investigated Jesus?
The image page also adds:
>Their very unnoticeable too after all how many people really pay attention to a train going by?
1) lots of people, 2) especially if it looks like THAT.
Actually, that one's not even as crazy-looking as the one I remember in the game. It had that badge logo emblazoned on it the size of a storefront. Tip: if you want a train that won't be noticed, normal-looking trains are both commercially available and quite easy to build. You don't have to emblazon your logo on it if you don't want people to know who runs the train. Really.
Speaking of the train, apparently they keep captured vampires stored in a vault, exactly like the kind used to store gold at the time. Said vault also has the logo on it-- or rather, *is* the logo.
The game tries to combine the wild west with vampires and related supernatural horror monsters like zombies and... well, zombies. Not necessarily a bad idea. See also Deadlands RPG, and Tomahawk comics. Indeed, it isn't really a bad concept on its own, although I do tend to be wary of "X meets Y" setting concepts.
The problem lies in execution. As an FPS, I suppose it's probably expecting too much for there to be a detailed plot or story or, most importantly, characterization of any kind. However, Darkwatch seems to have the framework for these things, while failing to provide them. They'd might have actually made for a better game experience if we could be made to care about the characters involved.
They have a story, or the rudiments of one. They have named characters with sharp visual designs and decent voice actors, but what little story we get feels *rushed*-- and this is a problem in all of the game's cutscenes, both in terms of narrative and pace of editing. It feels like the game is in a big hurry to tell you about all these ideas it has, rattling off one thing after another in a sequence of not-necessarily-related snips.
Here's the trailer, which depicts Jericho wielding weapons with rapid automatic fire, which is a lie as bare as a monkey's ass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=qNsBVvVsY3o
And while I'm at it, the prologue video, featuring that train: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbnSI3fUDno&feature=endscreen&NR=1
The point about the automatic fire is one I feel the need to emphasize; there are no proper automatic weapons in the game. Every gun requires you to manually pull the trigger to get a shot off. The one exception is the Warmaker dual pistols, which have this terrible recoil effect that means your view is kicked upwards. You have to compensate by pushing your view down or risk shooting off into the sky.
It's a change from virtually every other FPS I've played, and it's especially noticable on the Xbox controller, which has these big heavy spring-loaded triggers for the L and R keys. Especially when fighting many enemies, you would often find yourself desperately yanking R trying to fire fast enough to save yourself. Even Blood doesn't have this problem; simply hold the button down to saturate the area with fire.
The plot begins with Jericho Cross in a tan duster and broad-brimmed hat trying to rob a train-- this is something he makes a living at, apparently. The difference is that this last train (and for some reason the game emphasizes that he intends this to be the last train he ever robs for unstated but presumably unrelated reasons) does not contain gold, but a vampire.
Just as Jericho reaches the vault to set his bomb, Cassidy, a Darkwatch agent, shows up to explain to him that he's doing something stupid. Of course the fuse has already been lit, and a moment later the vault is blown. Lazarus Malkoth, with his hunched stature, huge inverted cross tattoo and tight leather pants escapes the vault and bites Jericho. This doesn't turn him into a vampire entirely, but begins the vampirification "process", which admittedly looks a whole lot like being a full-blown vampire.
So does Cassidy kill him? No, she just sort of goes "welp, there goes that. Better join the Darkwatch now, since we know about this kind of thing and can probably help you recover, even though we've hated your kind passionately since before the birth of western civilization." She's got more than enough reasons to kill him: 1) he just tried to rob her train, releasing a dangerous vampire in the process, 2) he's seen the secrets they're dedicated to keeping secret, and 3) he is becoming a vampire. For that matter, if he robs a lot of trains, he was probably already a wanted outlaw.
And yet, she does no him no harm. In fact, she spends the rest of her short life defending him in battle and helping him to get from the wreckage of train-- pursued by a winged Lazarus and tons of undead ryders (note the "Y")-- to the very heart of her vampire-hunting organization in the mountains. She quite literally dies for him-- and then comes back as a ghost to continue helping him through spotting and running commentary.
I think the idea is that he's not *really* a vampire yet-- only part. Even though barely a few hours after escaping the train he's burning in the presence of crosses and unable to ingest anything but blood without retching. But even without the vampire issue, she's got no reason to let him live.
Neither does any other living or non-living being he encounters. And yet, everyone allows him to live. Even Lazarus himself, right after killing Cassidy, has the weak and frightened Jericho at his mercy, but chooses not to kill him, and then to put him through the trouble of fighting through a haunted mine to "prove" himself or something.
One thing I think is worth mentioning here is one of the game's ongoing mechanics; the moral choices. These have no bearing on the plot, but determine the powers you get.
At this point, Cassidy's beheaded body is lying at the bottom of the mineshaft with you. You can choose to respectfully leave it be and continue to resist becoming a vampire (Good) or feed on it and embrace your monstrous nature (Evil). This is a very common theme in vampire fiction, and it surfaces here in the familiar form.
Anyway, before that happens, Cassidy finally delivers Jericho to the Darkwatch outpost, which features a gigantic levitating rock in which are a number of important facilities. How the rock is levitating is not explained, but it doesn't need to be since it exists only to suggest that these people are anachronistically advanced technologically in the most concise way possible-- again, hurrying things along at speed. They certainly do like to advertise their powers, too. As well as choosing a base location which is hard for normal humans to get to, but provides no protection against enemies who can fly.
The first that happens is Jericho is shot in the head with a high-powered sniper rifle. He does not die. In fact, this was probably done for no reason other than to say "THIS is how tough vampires are in this setting".
It would seem that the Darkwatch was able to detect his vampirism by his big stonking glowing red eye (singular; for some reason the empty socket where he used to wear an eyepatch lights up red). So our sniper could see that he was in custody, and could also see that he was a vampire, and yet shot him, with a weapon that doesn't work on vampires. It punctuates the end of the cutscene.
Jericho is then taken into custody, where he's locked in a maze that comprises the citadel's sewer system and apparently something to do with their power plant. They also keep scads of captured vampiric zombies in there.
This is where Clay Cartwright shows up. The apparent leader of the Darkwatch, with Colonel Sanders facial hair and a southern accent. Not to mention a rather intimidating walking stick.
He's the leader of the local chapter, anyway; the impression I got was that this particular citadel is only one base; they have others elsewhere in the world, and probably some huge main one somewhere. Maybe Rome, since they seem to like to mention it.
Anyhow, this is where Clay gripes about how much he hates vampires and rattles off all the charges against Jericho-- Clay is the only person that actually has Jericho's criminal record handy, it would seem-- and then... sends him through the "training maze" to see what he's made of. The idea seems to be to test how much humanity he has left. If he has enough, they'll let him join the Darkwatch and lend him their support in going after Lazarus.
How does getting through a maze prove that he isn't a dirty lousy no-good train robber/vampire? It's full of vampire zombies, and also some civilians they kidnapped and locked underground. They count how many of them he killed, if any.
Wait, the organization *protecting* the world from vampires and zombies kidnapped civilians and put them in a maze full of vampire zombies and one potential psycho? What if he'd been a real vampire and turned them all into vampires?
Then they would need to kidnap more people to replace them all. Obviously. And then they'd have that many more vampires on their hands, and given their demonstrated procedure so far they'd have to get more civilians to test each one in the maze...
This is where we can no longer really deny Jericho's Gary Stuism. There is no logical reason for anything to work in his favor, and yet everything does. It's clear that the Darkwatch would never waste their time testing any other half-vampire for purity; they did it special just for Jericho. Also, for some reason it appears that most of the civilians they've captured have gone insane. Alternatively, they were acquired from insane asylums. Or the vampire zombies had something to do with it.
Come to think of it, what's going to happen to these civilians? I mean, they've seen the secret base and the vampire zombies and stuff, right? Isn't that supposed to be secret? Yes, it is. Which is why none of them will ever be released. (In fact, I'm not sure how any of them are alive at all. One almost gets the impression the entire gauntlet of townies and monsters was set up expressly for Jericho to run.)
So what is Jericho being tested for here? What is the behavior expected of a Darkwatch operative in this situation? The measure the game seems to use is how many people he kills or otherwise abuses. I apparently passed one particular part of the test with flying colors the very first time I played the game because it never even occurred to me to kill any of them; I just ignored them entirely, and suddenly Clay is cussin' in surprise.
But... in this situation, standard Darkwatch procedure *would* be to do what Clay is doing, i.e. kill or permanently imprison them. I mean, *he* didn't leave them alone. They're never going to leave the citadel again in their lifetimes, and they're being indefinitely detained for the purposes of vampire testing, agent target practice and scientific experimentation (of course they have a whole bunch of scientists who seem to have mastered mass levitation without knowing much of anything about human beings).
So is Jericho being held to a higher/different moral standard than Darkwatch itself? Yes. Granted, something of a point is made of that, but not much of one. It essentially boils down to Cassidy saying "hey, you guys didn't used to be like this," and then the matter dropping like lead.
Maybe the "civilians" are actually Darkwatch operatives pretending to be civilians for the purposes of the training exercise? That would make some sense, except that Darkwatch operatives are known to enjoy running wild through towns murdering people for fun. There is an entire level predicated on this. It is a stupid as it sounds.
Jericho ultimately completes the maze, and is immediately inducted into the Darkwatch. They give him a custom-fit black leather outfit (complete with pre-shredded coattails) and relatively privileged access to their armory. Their security on him seems inversely proportional to their distrust.
This is also where Tala comes out, the Indian slut with the huge breasts. I wish those words didn't have to go together, but that is precisely what the game presents us with at this point.
Actually, that raises a question. Before Europeans landed in the New World, what was the situation there vis-a-vis vampires etc.? Several possibilities occur:
1) It was in fact overrun with them, and historians either failed to notice this fact or chalked it up to strange native customs.
2) There weren't any because vampires hadn't come to the New World yet either.
3) There was a native equivalent of the Darkwatch taking care of things.
4) The Darkwatch already set up there in secret long before other Europeans did, and took care of al the vampires and zombies without anyone knowing.
5) Nobody was doing anything about it, but it still wasn't a problem, and the Darkwatch is useless.
It's interesting, because there really don't seem to *be* very many vampires around. In fact, Lazarus may well be the only one in the entire territory of Arizona. Somehow I doubt this is due to the effectiveness of the Darkwatch. So it does beg the question. Are they needed, or can society get along just fine without them?
It's hard to say. They certainly give the impression of being vital, and given the sheer number of monsters that spawn throughout the game it does seem likely that some large paramilitary force armed with anti-supernatural knowledge and training would be necessary to keep them in check. As for keeping them secret... I honestly don't think it's even remotely possible. Lazarus casts out a wave of undead summoning the moment he escapes; the thing spreads across the desert for probably hundreds of miles, reanimating every dead body into a zombie. He probably performed similar (and larger) summonings later on in other places, and *he* certainly doesn't care whether people notice.
Now, to look at things from an objective creative standpoint, the reason there are Native Americans in the setting *at all* is because it is a western, and you can't do a western without injuns. The creators obviously didn't think of them in anthropological terms, and especially didn't think about what their presence means and implies. I think most of their effort went into making loads of concept art, the better to give the impression that their setting was a big thing.
I would call the point moot, as we have no proof that Tala is, in fact, Native, besides the statement in the manual and the feather in her hair-- but then we later have levels where you fight Native zombies in burning Native villages and burial grounds, so obviously they do exist in sizable numbers. And indeed, a New World that was devoid of human presence before European arrival would probably make for a rather drastic alternate history. The whole point of using the wild west motif at all was to work from established history and tropes.
As for Tala, that is the sum of her character; Native American whore with large breasts. She doesn't really grow beyond that. I can't find it offhand, but the cinematic where she appears has her literally standing in a doorway (revealed by a quick shift of the camera) where she introduces herself by name and makes a suggestive remark. It takes all of seven seconds. There isn't anything more of consequence about her until after the sex scene, which is after all the citadel missions.
The three citadel missions you can choose from involve fighting through the aforementioned burning Native village (which for some reason involves lots of large, complex adobe buildings).
Which reminds me that there are no Mexicans or indeed Hispanics of any stripe in the game. Apparently they felt it would be racist. Probably what they mean is that it would be racist to include the Mexican characters *they* had in mind.
Oh, wait, there is one; the bandito zombie with the hangman's hood. They don't talk at all, so we're spared their undead impersonations, but they do have a really ridiculous run.
My memory may be fuzzy, but I think they occasionally pretend to play mariachi-style guitar on their shotguns. I may or may not be misremembering.
There's the Coyote Steamwagon level, which passes through... another adobe village. The Steamwagon is a one-man wheeled contraption that has a great swinging minigun mounted on it which has infinite ammunition. The wagon itself appears to be indestructible, although Jericho can still die while riding it. Especially since his seat is right on the front of it with no rails or supports and barely even a seat. He would need to be crucified onto it to be more exposed.
The Darkwatch made it. The result of decades of cutting-edge scientific research. It's apparently experimental and the team transporting it back to the lab after testing was killed, hence the need for Jericho to go-- alone-- to retrieve it and kill the remaining enemies with it.
Picture: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_sA1YX1TmnEc/SdO5McFZOuI/AAAAAAAAAjc/HYUgMa7KtzE/s400/CoyoteSteamWagon_concept.jpg
It looks like the bottom half of a car. I bet it would be shaking quite a bit, especially if you were driving it over rough terrain. There is a seat, but it's apparently the sort from a bicycle.
It's too bad whoever made it had never heard of coaches, trains, boats, or any other sort of vehicle that provides a modicum of shelter and something to brace oneself against. Even Leonardo da Vinci's prototype tank sketches from I think the 1600s included armor plating that goes all the way up and over.
I distinctly recall dying on the steamwagon level many times because of all the mounted machine guns the zombies had. I had to drive the stupid thing all the way behind the buildings and very carefully poke out to fire.
You could also just hop out of the thing and try fighting on foot, but the level gave you so many enemies you had no chance at all unless you rode the wagon and used the gigantic machine gun.
Still, must give them some kind of points for having zombies that actually shoot back. Often with superior firepower.
One of the other levels was a fairly nondescript combat crawl through a town, with some lingering around a saloon (since the old west had those and all). That one I remember because the agent shouting "Reapers!" to announce the coming of that particular type of enemy sounded like "Rapers!" due to his absurd accent. I always wondered why the zombie's lower bodies were always more intact than the upper.
The last level in that batch was to do with a MacGuffin called the Deadlight Prism, which is a solid black sphere with green rays coming off it and apparently enables vampires to survive in sunlight. Where did this come from? Nowhere. It just exists.
There may be some feeble attempt at justifying its existence, but as far as the game itself goes, it is a thing and it does a thing and therefore we must stop the enemy from getting it, which guarantees that he will.
This sounds like something it would be really good to destroy. Sure, the Darkwatch has one vampire working for them now, but the vampires have, well, all the other vampires, and the odds are that the bad vampires would find it more useful.
And you know, it occurs to me that this is the second Darkwatch caravan to be attacked and lose important cargo, only for it to sit around untouched until agents are dispatched to collect it again. The third, actually, if you count the original train Jericho tried to rob. Just where are they sending all these vital high-risk things that they keeping getting lost out in the middle of the desert? These guys are pretty accident-prone. You'd think they were deliberately trying to cause as many undead incidents as possible for no other reason than to create relevance for themselves.
For that matter, why would something like the Prism need to be transported at all? If the Darkwatch had it in the first place, and for some reason decided not to destroy it, wouldn't they already have it stored in the most secure place they've got? Unless they were sending it as a present for Jericho.
If they were, he didn't get to keep it. It went straight into their maximum-security museum as soon as they got it back. It's possible that it had just been discovered and was being transported to base the first time, but it still doesn't bode well for them.
Anyhow, once those missions are done with, you get the Hangtown mission, where Darkwatch regulators run around laughing slowedly while sniping innocent bystanders and I guess drinking or something? They're all acting pretty stupid. Tala is around there somewhere scouting ahead. Remarks are made on her posterior in one of these missions. How would this organization stay secret for so much as a week? There is little to distinguish Darkwatch agents from slovenly drunken thugs.
By the end of Hangtown, you've killed a slew of monsters, but also pretty much an entire town of normal humans besides. Tala votes to lie about the damage, which Jericho does not do. Clay Cartwright is *exceedingly* peeved at their behavior, which is a rare point in his favor. I guess this is what happens when you start recruiting whatever random bandits show up on your train. They have no one to blame but themselves.
This is where the sex scene comes in, titled "Prom Night" in the menu screen. (They misspelled "pr0n.") After being yelled at profusely by Clay, Jericho storms off and Tala goes to sweet-talk him for a bit. They then go and hump on the roof of what looks like St. Paul's Basilica if it had existed in Gotham City. Tala is, of course, butt-naked, while Jericho remains fully dressed.
(random note: an *entire page* of absurd outfits for Tala : http://pandakimmi.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/darkwatch.jpg )
During the fairly tame proceedings, Tala tempts Jericho with her blood (cutting a swathe around her neck with a fingernail in what I guess is supposed to be a sexy gesture). He drinks her blood, and then I guess falls asleep on the roof after? He wakes up in a bed inside later on, so I'm not sure what happens there.
Jericho is awakened by alarm bells as Tala, now a vampire herself, proceeds to destroy the Darkwatch base from the inside out.
Yup. She deliberately seduced Jericho for the express purpose of getting bitten and turning into a vampire. She may very well have joined the Darkwatch for the purpose of finding a vampire to get bitten by.
She was counting on them not expecting it, and it worked. I guess it also helps that for some reason her eyes never went glowy, despite being an even more powerful vampire than Jericho ever was. I seem to recall some vague mention of her being some kind of shaman and having Indian Powers of some kind, which may contribute to this.
One way or another, she kicks a bunch of agents in the throat, takes some guns, puts on an even more absurd outfit consisting of olive low-riders and some lace and takes the Ghost Door out to somewhere. Did I mention the Darkwatch have teleporters?
What do they need the blindingly conspicuous and vulnerable trains for, then? Well, you can't put the logo on the warp portal. Nobody will see it.
Why not just teleport the Prism (and Lazarus, for that matter) to whatever its destination was? Because if there was no train, there was nothing for Jericho to rob. And it's very important that Jericho's personal needs be provided for
Then the self-destruct sequence starts. And Jericho has to fight his way down into the mechanical bowels of the citadel and shut down the reactors.
The Darkwatch base apparently runs on several atomic reactors. At least two of them, or something. When you get down there, there are these two huge machines with lots of electrodes and stuff that you have to throw the switches on to shut down.
Wait, atomic reactors? For that you'd need uranium, and at this point nobody in the mundane world even knows what that is, and you need to go mining for it, and people will *notice* someone digging a whole new mine, and then figuring out enough of the physics to get power out of it is a whole other boondoggle, and assembling all the parts and tech would take a large industrial base and a whole lot of people with wide-ranging skills, people who have spent their lives studying this very topic, and you can't just...
Levitating. Rock.
I liked how this was handled in Galaxy Quest, where the main characters have to shut down the aliens' neutron reactor before it overloads, and they point out that (being from present-day Earth) they don't *know* how to shut down a neutron reactor. It turns out to be a rather complex procedure.
Of course, in Jericho's case, shutting down the citadel reactors is pretty easy, since, again, big on/off switch. Right on the front.
But then again, nobody said it was a *fission* reactor. Maybe there's two kidnapped civilians chasing one another in circles around a magnetic coil inside each one. Or they might just be burning coal or something. There is no evidence of coal anywhere in the base, but then they use so much black in the decor and uniforms maybe I just couldn't see it.
There's no failsafes or anything, just these big ON/OFF levers. At some point Cartwright set them to overload, hoping the explosion would vaporize Tala and the rest of the monsters invading his base. At some point during all this chaos, Lazarus attacks.
Lazarus' attack is announced by him breaking into the museum through the skylight and grabbing the Deadlight Prism which is inside a glass case right in the middle of the room.
http://www.absolute-video-games.com/video/127/lazarus-triumphant Take note of the game's tendency towards snappy, whiplashesque editing in CG cutscenes.
Well, Lazarus gets the prism and hulks out. He then begins hurling these ugly brown fireballs all over the place and everything up in flames. Jericho tries to fight him and after emptying maybe four hundred clips into him he finally kills him. This marks the big moral turning point of the game, where standing over Lazarus' body gives you the chance to either give up being a vampire, or claim the "Curse of the West" for yourself and take his place.
So vampires can be killed by shooting them enough times? Sort of. They mention at one point that only Jericho can kill Lazarus because Lazarus sired him and he's not full vampire yet and also because plot.
At any rate, Jericho does, in fact, kill Lazarus. The rest of the game plays out more or less exactly the same except for the plot, based on whether you chose good or evil. You may have seen this coming, but Cassidy represents good and Tala evil. Whichever side you pick, the other one becomes the final boss. The boss fight is identical either way, and they both use the exact same list of powers as Lazarus, with maybe one more that's slightly more powerful.
This doesn't happen immediately after the Lazarus fight; you do have to complete a level or two in between. Deadwood is the name of the last town level, which is full of towering black spikes erupting from the earth and lots of lava and leaning buildings.
If you chose good, you meet Cassidy's ghost before it goes up to heaven (or the moon; she disappears into the full moon) and get your vampirism cured, shown by Jericho's eye-light going out.
If you chose evil, you have one last violent snog with Tala before killing her, drinking most of her blood and getting two glowy eyes as you become full vampire. Also a bit where Jericho throws his Darkwatch badge away.
I feel like some comparisons could be made to BLOOD, and many of them would be unfavorable. Both of them are quite similar aesthetically and plotwise, sometimes suspiciously so; I would almost call Darkwatch the spiritual successor to BLOOD, except that it doesn't quite deserve the relation.
BONUS: Similarities between BLOOD's Caleb and Darkwatch's Jericho
- Black hats and coats
- Glowing red eyes
- Wild West Outlaw
- Supernatural powers
- Drinks blood
- Serves Secret Organization
- Fights Zombies
- Wields Dynamite Recklessly
In speech, they differ, as Caleb has a fair amount of speech in the game while Jericho is mute. That's about it.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
I have been playing BLOOD
And I have been enjoying it.
BLOOD is a well-aged FPS from the DOS days, expertly crafted, thoroughly playable and full of atmosphere. I've only discovered it quite recently, and I find myself struck by it; I've played shooters, and I've played horror games, but never a combination quite like this. It is unique, effective and satisfying.
The game uses the Build engine, the same as Duke Nukem 3D, Lo Wang and any number of other clones made in the late 90s. This means the gameplay is smooth, active and eminently functional.
The setting is a mixture of the old west and the roaring twenties, with a heavy dollop of Satanic influence. Mercifully the game avoids the use pentagrams, inverted or non, preferring actual crosses, inverted or non, and other more obscure occult symbols. The plot is sparse at best, but what little there is informs to the main character's actions with simplicity. Caleb and his fellow cultists, including the woman he loves, have been disavowed by their dark god Tchernabog, many of them killed in the process. Caleb among them. By some means, Caleb comes back from the dead, searching for the corpses of his former companions to drain them of their power so that he can stand against Tchernabog on equal terms. While Caleb's intentions are generically vengeful and violent, the story is as much about finding out why Caleb and the rest of the cult were punished as seeking revenge, which to me seems unusual, and somewhat refreshing.
The weapons are earthy and evocative, well-suggestive of the periods it draws inspiration from. Your melee weapon is a pitchfork, which combines well with Caleb's aesthetic and alludes to his demonic nature. Instead of a pistol, you get a flare gun that sets enemies on fire. Following that is the trusty sawed-off shotgun, then a slick tommy gun, and bundles of TNT for grenades-- for which Caleb even has a lighter for igniting the fuse, which shows more attention to detail than most games would afford.
Some of the other weapons are more offbeat, like the napalm cannon that has red running lights (which make me think of range top burners) and fires balls of burning gasoline-- essentially a rocket launcher. The spray can combines Caleb's lighter with an aerosol can to make a flamethrower (and I'm still trying to understand the reasoning behind that one. My feeling is that it's an element of realism, a dangerous but powerful thing that a person could really do with easily obtainable materials; there's something more immediately forbidden about it than even the firearms or magic weapons.) The oddest one is the fairly nondescript Tesla Cannon, a kind of grey tube that rapidly fires a stream of extremely powerful blue electric blasts-- causing your victims' skeletons to glow through their bodies on impact. Compared to the others, it's conceptually sound but visually bland; adding some humming electrodes or at the very least some cabling would have gone a long way to making it look like the electric execution machine it purports to be.
Last are the two magical weapons. One is the Life Leech, a skull staff that spits explosive fireballs while rays of light spray from the eye sockets. Just watching it in action is fun. Finally, we have the voodoo doll. It does exactly what you might expect; face an enemy, then "fire" to jab it with pins until the enemy dies. The alt-fire completely expends the doll's ammo, but kills the target instantly, and Caleb's wizardly hand-wave as he activates this power just makes it that much more boss.
I really like what the game does with the alt-fire modes. It creates a lot of variety in combat, giving you choices about how to use your weapons beyond simply pointing and shooting. The shotgun can fire either one shell at a time, or let loose with both barrels. The tommy gun can shoot straight or go into a deadly lateral spray. Dynamite can be thrown or dropped, set to explode on impact or with a timer (the fuse visibly burning down to let you know how much time is left). The napalm cannon can fire a single blast or unleash a raging ammo-guzzling inferno that can set an entire room ablaze-- you included. While simple, these options add tangible flavor to combat.
The most common enemies are zombies and cultists. The zombies are stubborn and tend to get back up two or three times after being shot down, but are limited to axes for weapons. Cultists have shotguns and tommy guns, but are otherwise easy to kill. Other enemies include gargoyles, which are frightening in their speed of movement, howling and roaring loudly. They fly around overhead, swooping and circling at a dizzying rate, and their close-up attack is painful besides. They are genuinely scary in a way that very few game enemies have been in my experience.
One of the best things about the cultists is also one of the best things about the game-- sound design. The sound effects and voice clips are excellent; cultists shout phrases in their fictitious pseudo-Latin cult language, zombies howl when killed, all of the weapons have powerful, punchy effects, every kind of surface makes a unique noise when shot, doors creak and slam, machines whirr and hum, fire crackles and roars. The CD music, of which there is a decent amount, sets a richly creepy atmosphere with an undercurrent of ambient sound, using plenty of choral elements and rattly percussion. One piece even features a distorted recording of a group of children laughing and playing, as if things weren't eerie enough.
I should talk a bit more about the cultists. They speak a great deal in the game; according to what I've read, their strange language is a hodgepodge of Latin and Sanskrit, made up by one of the game designers just for the sound of it. The cultists have quite a few voice clips, and have a number of animations and actions besides simply shooting like ducking and throwing dynamite; one gets a sense that these are characters, not merely sprites you shoot at, and this too contributes to the atmosphere.
The thing that I keep coming back to is atmosphere. The tenor and aesthetic really sell the darkness without becoming bitter; while it's serious about the horror elements, it knows better than to take itself seriously. There are decomposing and disemboweled corpses hung on chains in meat lockers, cultists massacring civilians even as you come upon them, brains suspended in bloody jars, altars to evil powers accompanied by deep-throated chanting-- but there are also moments of levity and even jocularity, largely in the form of Caleb's quotes and references, to keep things from becoming truly miserable. It achieves, I think, a healthy balance between splatterpunk and humor, accomplishing darkness while avoiding grimdarkness.
There are some flaws, of course. My primary complaint-- and it's not much of one-- is that it lacks a sense of climax. Even after completing all of the campaigns, I never really felt as if the situation presented was truly resolved. It doesn't help that the ending is extremely short and not a little vague. Also not helping is that the cutscenes are all FMVs, and the limitations of 1990s 3D graphical technology show bitterly.
All told, this game is a rich, evocative and finely-made shooter that would do good service to any collection. I consider it to be the best such game I own. The One Unit Whole Blood package containing Blood and all its expansions is available on GOG.com for only $5.99, which given the quality is an incredible value. I recommend it highly.
BLOOD is a well-aged FPS from the DOS days, expertly crafted, thoroughly playable and full of atmosphere. I've only discovered it quite recently, and I find myself struck by it; I've played shooters, and I've played horror games, but never a combination quite like this. It is unique, effective and satisfying.
The game uses the Build engine, the same as Duke Nukem 3D, Lo Wang and any number of other clones made in the late 90s. This means the gameplay is smooth, active and eminently functional.
The setting is a mixture of the old west and the roaring twenties, with a heavy dollop of Satanic influence. Mercifully the game avoids the use pentagrams, inverted or non, preferring actual crosses, inverted or non, and other more obscure occult symbols. The plot is sparse at best, but what little there is informs to the main character's actions with simplicity. Caleb and his fellow cultists, including the woman he loves, have been disavowed by their dark god Tchernabog, many of them killed in the process. Caleb among them. By some means, Caleb comes back from the dead, searching for the corpses of his former companions to drain them of their power so that he can stand against Tchernabog on equal terms. While Caleb's intentions are generically vengeful and violent, the story is as much about finding out why Caleb and the rest of the cult were punished as seeking revenge, which to me seems unusual, and somewhat refreshing.
The weapons are earthy and evocative, well-suggestive of the periods it draws inspiration from. Your melee weapon is a pitchfork, which combines well with Caleb's aesthetic and alludes to his demonic nature. Instead of a pistol, you get a flare gun that sets enemies on fire. Following that is the trusty sawed-off shotgun, then a slick tommy gun, and bundles of TNT for grenades-- for which Caleb even has a lighter for igniting the fuse, which shows more attention to detail than most games would afford.
Some of the other weapons are more offbeat, like the napalm cannon that has red running lights (which make me think of range top burners) and fires balls of burning gasoline-- essentially a rocket launcher. The spray can combines Caleb's lighter with an aerosol can to make a flamethrower (and I'm still trying to understand the reasoning behind that one. My feeling is that it's an element of realism, a dangerous but powerful thing that a person could really do with easily obtainable materials; there's something more immediately forbidden about it than even the firearms or magic weapons.) The oddest one is the fairly nondescript Tesla Cannon, a kind of grey tube that rapidly fires a stream of extremely powerful blue electric blasts-- causing your victims' skeletons to glow through their bodies on impact. Compared to the others, it's conceptually sound but visually bland; adding some humming electrodes or at the very least some cabling would have gone a long way to making it look like the electric execution machine it purports to be.
Last are the two magical weapons. One is the Life Leech, a skull staff that spits explosive fireballs while rays of light spray from the eye sockets. Just watching it in action is fun. Finally, we have the voodoo doll. It does exactly what you might expect; face an enemy, then "fire" to jab it with pins until the enemy dies. The alt-fire completely expends the doll's ammo, but kills the target instantly, and Caleb's wizardly hand-wave as he activates this power just makes it that much more boss.
I really like what the game does with the alt-fire modes. It creates a lot of variety in combat, giving you choices about how to use your weapons beyond simply pointing and shooting. The shotgun can fire either one shell at a time, or let loose with both barrels. The tommy gun can shoot straight or go into a deadly lateral spray. Dynamite can be thrown or dropped, set to explode on impact or with a timer (the fuse visibly burning down to let you know how much time is left). The napalm cannon can fire a single blast or unleash a raging ammo-guzzling inferno that can set an entire room ablaze-- you included. While simple, these options add tangible flavor to combat.
The most common enemies are zombies and cultists. The zombies are stubborn and tend to get back up two or three times after being shot down, but are limited to axes for weapons. Cultists have shotguns and tommy guns, but are otherwise easy to kill. Other enemies include gargoyles, which are frightening in their speed of movement, howling and roaring loudly. They fly around overhead, swooping and circling at a dizzying rate, and their close-up attack is painful besides. They are genuinely scary in a way that very few game enemies have been in my experience.
One of the best things about the cultists is also one of the best things about the game-- sound design. The sound effects and voice clips are excellent; cultists shout phrases in their fictitious pseudo-Latin cult language, zombies howl when killed, all of the weapons have powerful, punchy effects, every kind of surface makes a unique noise when shot, doors creak and slam, machines whirr and hum, fire crackles and roars. The CD music, of which there is a decent amount, sets a richly creepy atmosphere with an undercurrent of ambient sound, using plenty of choral elements and rattly percussion. One piece even features a distorted recording of a group of children laughing and playing, as if things weren't eerie enough.
I should talk a bit more about the cultists. They speak a great deal in the game; according to what I've read, their strange language is a hodgepodge of Latin and Sanskrit, made up by one of the game designers just for the sound of it. The cultists have quite a few voice clips, and have a number of animations and actions besides simply shooting like ducking and throwing dynamite; one gets a sense that these are characters, not merely sprites you shoot at, and this too contributes to the atmosphere.
The thing that I keep coming back to is atmosphere. The tenor and aesthetic really sell the darkness without becoming bitter; while it's serious about the horror elements, it knows better than to take itself seriously. There are decomposing and disemboweled corpses hung on chains in meat lockers, cultists massacring civilians even as you come upon them, brains suspended in bloody jars, altars to evil powers accompanied by deep-throated chanting-- but there are also moments of levity and even jocularity, largely in the form of Caleb's quotes and references, to keep things from becoming truly miserable. It achieves, I think, a healthy balance between splatterpunk and humor, accomplishing darkness while avoiding grimdarkness.
There are some flaws, of course. My primary complaint-- and it's not much of one-- is that it lacks a sense of climax. Even after completing all of the campaigns, I never really felt as if the situation presented was truly resolved. It doesn't help that the ending is extremely short and not a little vague. Also not helping is that the cutscenes are all FMVs, and the limitations of 1990s 3D graphical technology show bitterly.
All told, this game is a rich, evocative and finely-made shooter that would do good service to any collection. I consider it to be the best such game I own. The One Unit Whole Blood package containing Blood and all its expansions is available on GOG.com for only $5.99, which given the quality is an incredible value. I recommend it highly.
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