Blood: Refreshed Supply™

A GREAT remaster of a GREAT game at a not so great price, Buuuut I don't blame Nightdive entirely for it and I'm someone who GOT the deep discount for owning Fresh Supply. Blood: Refreshed Supply is the 2nd remaster of the hit Retro FPS cult classic, Blood! Worked on by Nightdive Studios, it is easily the most inclusive package of Blood all in one place. All 4 original episodes, plus Post Mortem, plus Cryptic Passage, plus a Vault with tons of developmental content and beta maps, PLUS the fan campaign Marrow, PLUSSSS the absolute pinnacle of Blood mods, Death Wish 2.0. There is a insane amount of content packed in, hassle free, with more or less no game breaking bugs outside of weird Build Engine jank. As I have already reviewed Fresh Supply and more or less kinda already covered the gist of the gameplay I'll just link to that to save space, though it is kinda old so in a nutshell, Blood is good. It's way more challenging than other Build games, demanding a lot more attention and knowledge on weapon and enemy mechanics. But when it comes together it's some of the best Retro FPS action you can get that no other game has 1:1 compared to. (CULTIC is pretty close though) [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/Kyezoar/recommended/1010750/ ] Fresh Supply Review [/url] As such, this review will kinda be around the new stuff included in Refreshed by default and my thoughts on the whole price and delisting debacle. Firstly are the two fan-made campaigns included with the remaster. Which ARE, as far as I know, available for free to play with your source port of your choice at the time of this review so no gatekeeping here. Marrow is a 2-episode, more horror focused campaign by Nickolas Palsmeier. It follows Caleb as, after going back to rest after defeating Tchernobog, the Cabal made the genius decision to try to resurrect Cerberus and have him burn Caleb to non-existance. Obviously, Caleb doesn't take too lightly to that idea so does what he does best. As mentioned, the mod features more of a horror vibe with more grounded levels in the sense that they're being used or are under Cabal control for their dark schemes without feeling cheesy. At least from a level design perspective, the gameplay is unchanged so Cultists and Zombies will still go flying when they get hit by dynamite, and, etc. etc. It's overall a really solid mod with fun, haunting levels and the new music does wonders helping to set the tone. Next up we have Death Wish 2.0, the updated version of the famous mod Death Wish by Dustin Twilley. A mod so distinct that Fresh Supply was tested with it back then to make sure it worked and now it's officially included in this remaster! Death Wish 2.0 specifically, a major overhaul of the existing 3 episodes as well as including a brand new episode so if you're familiar with Death Wish already there's something new to poke at! The story follows Caleb as wayyyy after the events of all the previously mentioned episodes, expansions, and campaigns where Tchernobog, yet again, regains his power and the threat of his impending revival is once again up to Caleb to stop him. One of Death Wish's biggest strengths is in it's variety and the quality of said variety which is saying something when the mod features 48 levels. While there are your standard affairs of Cabal controlled facilities and other horror-esque locations like the original game does. Death Wish either features more of that in new ways and/or completely blowing out any expectations of what is capable in the Build Engine. There are so many levels that are themed after a specific gimmick, like a amusement park, zoos, evil scientist manors, a museum, just to name a few as well as tons of levels that are references to other movies but still play well even if you don't get the source material. Even the secrets levels usually include a transition level where it's the level you just came from to play the secret level but altered as a "after Caleb has ran through" scenario JUST so getting back to the main level path is fluid. That such a fun attention of detail that's just here and Death Wish is just full of that, detailed levels with well thought out encounters that made getting to the next level so excited. Honestly my only nitpick with Death Wish is the Speedrun achievements added with the remaster, and specifically the one for E3M6 cause it's the only one in my opinion that's significantly more difficult and infuriating. I explain it more [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSLxd02WYx8/ ] in this video [/url] but basically: it's just more annoying than the rest just due to what you have to do in a very tight time frame while fighting against Build's jank. All the other Speedrun achievements felt more fair cause you had more control and consistency to make it under the time limit with enough practice and room for error. Now for the last and least fun thing about the Remaster, the controversy with the price and delisting Fresh Supply. Personally, with all this content, if you're not someone who already owns Blood somehow, I think there is a enough content here to justify the base price since it's about 30+ hours of Blood. However, it absolutely should have been a free overhaul or upgrade for people like me who owned Fresh Supply and not a very brief discount. I'm not 100% certain, so take this with a grain of salt, but this situation reeks of the publishers deciding that letting Nightdive simply just update Fresh Supply wouldn't nearly get them as much money if they just made a new remaster for way more dollars. I feel like if this was priced exactly the same or a tiny bit more than Fresh Supply the reaction to Refreshed existing as different game wouldn't be nearly as harsh and it's a unfortunate series of events that it played out this way. If anything, I'd recommend waiting for a sale cause Refreshed Supply is overall very solid and I have yet to play a Nightdive remaster I didn't appreciate from them so it can make the financial swallow from being extra crispy to lightly broiled. Not the easiest solution but way more reasonable given the circumstance. Maybe then we can get a Blood 2 remaster where it's actually works as a enjoyable experience.