[h1][i]"Check the obituary, you'll find my career there."
~Bruce Campbell[/i][/h1]
The story so far. Nick Newhard, who was a big fan of horror movies, founded a company called Q Studios, which started developing its very first game—a dark horror game called, well, Horror 3D. Then Duke Nukem 3D came out and took the world by storm. Q's game instantly switched directions. The thing is—Horror 3D wasn't just a stand-alone thing; it was developed in an agreement with Apogee. And Duke? Despite not being the first game on Build Engine (even though the engine was made for it, there were a couple of games released before it, including Witchaven, which was much closer to BLOOD's initial ideas), it was so much fun that Nick and his team decided that this was the way, thanks to which the final version of BLOOD ended up being pretty much Duke Nukem 3D for the horror movie fans. Unfortunately to us all, before it was finished, the project was sold to Monolith, who, in a way, sold it to their “big daddies,” GT Interactive. It didn't ruin the original BLOOD, which not only became one of the very best games on the engine but even challenged Duke himself. But what about the sequel? Well, that's where the problems began.
The first problem with BLOOD II was that the original BLOOD, despite being awesome, was a dead end. Focusing on Build Engine was like buying a new PC with a discontinued CPU chipset, meaning it did the job in a moment, but there was no way to upgrade, to continue with it. The whole thing needed to be changed. Thankfully, Monolith had the solution—their own in-house engine called LithTech. They actually already worked on their first game that used it—Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. Was it a good engine? Well... About that. Even though eventually LithTech will end up powering some really good games (like No One Lives Forever and Tron 2.0), it wasn't nearly as good as Half-Life's GoldSrc (a heavily modified version of good ol' Quake Engine) and the engine of the first Unreal, both of which revolutionized the whole genre by allowing proper in-game narration without cutscenes. GoldSrc also became famous for its polish, while Unreal Engine showed some stunning graphics. LithTech? It had neither of that. It was built for the old-school formula from the 2.5D era, suffered from poor optimization, and felt rough. But again, it was possible to make a good game with it. Unfortunately, that's where the second problem came in.
GTI. Since they've paid money for BLOOD IP, they wanted for it to start generating an income. And they wanted it fast. Even despite the fact Monolith was already working on a game, they contacted them and forced them to start making a sequel to BLOOD, while giving them... Only 11 months. That's it. 11 months. To make a brand-new game on a new and heavily untested engine, while working on another game in the process. Smell something? Something that isn't success, even despite starting with the same letter? Well, Peter Freese (original BLOOD's programmer and one of the four key members of Q Studios) smelled it too and instantly quit. Smart man. Unlike Monolith's Jason Hall, who just couldn't keep his cake-hole shut. No idea what he was thinking. They had only 11 months to make the game. Yet what he promised? It was downright jaw-dropping.
We were promised seamless open world (ish) environment. We were promised deep RPG elements. We were promised more than one playable character. There was supposed to be a spell book of sorts with a complicated spell system, etc, etc. What can possibly go wrong, right? Somewhere out there Peter Molyneux is laughing really hard. I mean, [i]of course[/i] they didn't deliver! The fact that lots of those promises sounded suspiciously like something from Cyclone Studios' Requiem: Avenging Angel (which was in development around the same time too) aside, the actual BLOOD II wasn't just a failure, it was a spectacular flop.
The story didn't make any sense and felt like some random parts of something much bigger. Why's Gabriel (a part of the so-called Chosen, a group that includes Caleb, our main character) a woman now? I mean, you go girl, but... Mind to explain? Well, technically you can get the picture, but you're supposed to guess. It looks like the game was supposed to be, like, a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff. Ophelia, for example, is back. Ah, and there's an ancient Lovecraftian evil at the end of the game, because... reasons. Like I said, it feels like they've compiled everything they were able to finish and simply released it as a proper product.
But OK, who cares about the story. It's an FPS game. A pew-pew! stuff. What about the gameplay? Well, it's exactly like the the story. It's stupid, clunky, and doesn't make sense. Partially because of the engine and its limitations and partially because of the pressure, things like the spellbook and the RPG elements were never delivered. Same goes to the open-world environment. Actually, the levels here are so small and poor that you'll want to cry. It's one of those cases where you either keep walking forward and kill everything on your way or keep walking in circles trying to find that certain switch. And again, nothing makes sense. Sometimes that certain copy-pasted switch opens something somewhere. Sometimes it does nothing. Sometimes you open the door by pressing an action key. Sometimes you're supposed to shoot it. Or it can't be opened at all and sitting there just for the looks. What about the immersiveness? Well, you can answer the phones. And press Tab to check out your objectives (most of the time it simply says things like “kill 'em all!”). Heck, even the original BLOOD had more interactions. You can't even kick the ball here! Next-gen's here, guys, lol.
Weapons don't make any sense either. Like a couple of shots to the body from a certain weapon can kill a big enemy, but headshotting it with the sniper rifle will take a ridiculous amount of shots. You can still find some hints to the original plans here and there (it does look like complicated parts that aren't inclusive of shooting, akin to Requiem, were planned), but what's funny here is that, while badmouthing Half-Life, Monolith actually imitated it. Shamelessly. Monsters that pop out from portals, eggheads in white coats running around, screaming, heck, even the final level that takes place on another planet. It's a bloody Half-Life rip-off!
Ah, and don't expect this version to work on modern systems either. It'll work with dgVoodoo 2, but it'll require some work, and even then it'll crash now and then (the patch from ModDB won't work with this version, since Client.exe it uses is incompatible and will make all sorts of weird things to happen). Because yes, aside from other things, this game is ridiculously buggy, and Monolith never bothered to fix it. So yeah. BLOOD II is a disaster, on oh-so-many levels. To be completely fair, though, Jason Hall did apologize. He blamed GTI for everything, but also said that in the end it was him who decided not to self-fund game's support (something that GTI refused to do). Both did make an agreement to make an expansion, which did provide the necessary time window for bug fixes, but the price was the so-called Nightmare Levels ending up being just five stupidly short levels (you can beat the whole thing in about 30 minutes). Steam version does have it included, but seriously, BLOOD II is not a game anyone should play, like, ever.
BLOOD II is a history. A history of what not to do. Personally, I still hope to see Caleb to come back one day (Shadow Warrior's Lo Wang did, after all), but there's no way in hell I can recommend BLOOD II to anyone. The original one? Sure. Go play it. There's a pretty nice “refreshed” version of it too. This? With, like, 90% off you may buy it just to check things out for laughs. But if you'll expect it to be a proper product? Just... don't. Don't make the mistake many of us made in 1998. Dixi.
