Blood is a 1997 First-Person Shooter developed by Monolith Productions, based on the Build Game Engine. The game and its expansions can be purchased digitally from GOG.com and Steam.
Blood was one of the most unusual shooters of its time. It featured a mix of horror and deadpan humor, a charismatic Anti-Hero, an arsenal of exotic weapons and, of course, lots and lots of the eponymous red liquid. Playing as Caleb, a former pet murderer of an evil deity who was betrayed and transformed into an undead monstrosity, you go on a quest to avenge/harvest the powers of your former True Companions who did not manage to rise again and use them to wreak all kinds of unholy hell upon Tchernobog.
While the gameplay is your classic in-your-face, fast-paced shooter of The '90s, the arsenal is the interesting variation, as Blood ditches the Standard FPS Guns for a more... unique arsenal. While the shotgun and Tommy gun are typical, the pistol is a Flare Gun that shoots incendiary projectiles to set enemies on fire; the rocket launcher is replaced by a napalm gun that sets enemies on fire alongside the normal explosive damage; and there are bizarre weapons, such as a hairspray and lighter duo, a voodoo doll and a life leeching staff that feeds off of trapped souls.
Two expansion packs were released for the game, the first is Cryptic Passage, developed by Sunstorm Interactive and released on June 30, 1997. It's based around an ancient scroll that Caleb wants for his own needs. The second is called Plasma Pak, and was released in September 1997. It introduced a sixth episode, called "Post Mortem", which introduces new enemy types as well as the akimbo ability for the Tesla Cannon and new secondary firemodes for the Napalm Cannon and the Life Leech. In it, Caleb learns that the Cabal is training new Chosen in order to take the place of the previous ones, so he infiltrates the Cabal again in order to finish them.
A sequel titled Blood II: The Chosen was released a year later, boasting 3D graphics, new weapons, and a larger story.
An Updated Re-release of the first Blood, subtitled Fresh Supply, has since released on GoG
and Steam as well, courtesy of the folks at Nightdive Studios.
Game Mods with their own page here:
These tropes live... again...
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer:
- E3M3: Raw Sewage, features an entire level of it.
- E2M2: The Lumber Mill has an absurdly spacious cesspool under a latrine.
- Amusement Park of Doom:
- E1M4: Dark Carnival is a depraved gory version of a classic amusement park run by the Cabal with every single attraction being horrifically twisted. There's a freak show, a gargoyle carousel, a game where you kick disembodied zombie heads into a goal and a special feature "JoJo, the Idiot Circus Boy".
- The secret level of the first episode, "House of Horrors", complete with a "fun" ride on a water slide, and caged enemies.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Fresh Supply has a discreet one for E1M4's secret puzzle: if you play with the minimal HUD, the keys you collected will be shown in the same order as they should be in the puzzle.
- Artificial Stupidity: Flying enemies on the whole are pretty dim, and seem to have trouble with tracking the player's location. You will very frequently see phantasms and gargoyles zooming in circles around the ceiling, or flapping off to who knows where on more open-ended maps. It can take active effort to try to get their attention.
- Attract Mode: There's a couple of demos playing on the title screen.
- BFG: The Tesla Cannon and the Life Leech are the 8-inch cannons of Blood. Cryptic Passage added an alternate fire mode to the Incinerator (the "Rolling Thunder") that made it into the new, ultimate BFG of the game.
- Blood Bath: A magazine ad◊ featured a man, presumably Caleb, in a bathtub full of blood with the tagline "you're soaking in it".
- Bloody Handprint: On the game's box.
- Boss Rush: The game makes you re-fight the earlier bosses before Tchernobog finally shows himself.
- Cast from Hit Points: The Life Leech will use HP as ammo if you run out of trapped souls. Considering it also heals you for the damage you deal, it's not that bad a trade.
- Circus of Fear: The Dark Carnival level, with the appropriate Creepy Circus Music (made especially creepy by the calls of the barkers and the laughter of children).
- Creepy Circus Music: "Dark Carnival", to match the equally creepy carnival. The MIDI equivalent is even more somber.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: The normal exit from E3M4: Sick Ward is hooked up to a switch that immolates a cage full of civilians when thrown, and there's no way to get them out first. Many walkthroughs advise you to take the secret exit to "Catacombs" instead.
- Dead Character Walking: There's a glitch where, on occasion, enemies who are killed by being set on fire would continue to run around in their on-fire animation indefinitely, (usually) unable to damage you but also invulnerable to everything but splash damage.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Due to the arc trajectory, necessary timing, and being just as easily able to kill the player as it is enemies, the basic TNT has a bit of a learning curve. When properly used, though, it's one of the most powerful, plentiful and versatile weapons in the game, capable of clearing whole rooms even around corners and at long distances.
- Difficulty Levels: Unlike many other Build engine games, the game's difficulty levels don't just determine the placements and amount of enemies on each map, they also determine various properties and the vitality of monsters. This also makes each difficulty level an exponential jump up from the last.
- Easter Egg:
- In E1M2: Wrong Side of the Tracks, if the player decides to go down the train tracks at the end without entering the train, they'll eventually hear a train horn. Continue and eventually the player will be run over by an oncoming one.
- In E1M6: The Great Temple, there's a message written on the wall at the very bottom of the outside reading "Whoa, this is like, a really deep hole" (a somewhat mangled quote from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey). This sticks out, since seeing this quote involves jumping out of the building, which will kill you if you hit the ground (you can survive the initial hitting-the-ground part with the jump boots negating fall damage, but you'll die before long anyway due to the damaging floor).
- E1M6 also hosts a reference to Duke Nukem 3D's reference to Doom, in which the desecrated and abused corpse of Duke can be found hanging around, much like the Doomguy able to be found in Duke. If you interact with Duke's corpse (which is hanging from the ceiling), Caleb will comment "Shake it, baby."
- Early Game Hell: Brutally enforced. The first episode is considered the toughest one in the game due to harsh enemy placements, a lack of resources, and the player first getting used to the game. Once E1M3 has been reached, things get notably easier, as they have acquired enough ammunition and weapons to stand a decent chance against the enemy hordes.
- Everyone Hates Mimes: There are mimes stationed around E1M4, which are completely non-hostile and don't even move—they exist just so that Caleb can kill, or even climb on them. He even expresses disgust upon killing one."I hate mimes."
- Expansion Pack: Cryptic Passage and Plasma Pak.
- Cryptic Pasage is a third-party expansion that adds a new "Cryptic Passage" episode and four multiplayer maps.
- Plasma Pak, adds another episode titled "Post Mortem" along with new multiplayer maps, new weapon modes, new enemies, and additional bug fixes.
- Exploding Barrels: There are barrels filled with TNT and labeled as such. You can detonate them with bullets or your own bombs, or set them on fire for a delayed detonation. Bizarrely, wall-mounted fire extinguishers also serve this function, despite it running counter to their usual intended purpose.
- Flame Spewer Obstacle: There's the occasional flamethrower wall trap. These are especially dangerous because fire deals severe Damage Over Time, and the more a living thing (whether Caleb or an enemy) stays in contact with fire, the longer they burn for and the more damage it deals per second. Stronger traps fire explosive fireballs akin to the Napalm Launcher's, that deal high damage, cause Splash Damage and also sets things on fire.
- Flare Gun: One of the earliest examples in video games, the Flare Gun takes up the standard pistol slot. On a per-shot basis, it's Caleb's second most effective incendiary weapon, and it's the best choice against foes that can Teleport Spam or turn intangible.
- Foreshadowing: Even though he cast out the Chosen, Tchernobog provides Caleb with a vital hint for a puzzle in E1M5: Hallowed Grounds — almost as if he wants Caleb to keep going.Tchernobog: You will know what to do when the time comes.
- Game-Breaking Bug: A few in the first game. Installing the Plasma Pak fixes some of them.
- A glitch in earlier builds made it impossible to shake off Choking Hands once they've attached to you.
- E3M6: Monster Bait's exit door can be opened only once but closes after a while. If for whatever reason (perhaps you want to reveal some secret areas you missed) you don't immediately enter, you won't be able to proceed to the next level unless you cheat.
- E4M5: Fire and Brimstone was also missing a key in one version of the game that prevented the player from finishing the level without cheats.
- Gothic Horror: Of the Post-Victorian type (specifically, it takes place in 1928). In addition to having a Villain Protagonist (who's technically undead), the game has a rather dark and drab visual style, along with numerous classic horror story locations, such as haunted houses and cemeteries, an Amusement Park of Doom, and a Mad Scientist Laboratory.
- Cryptic Passage even moreso: it canonically takes place in Transylvania and pretty much the entire expansion is set in locations even more gothic then the base game, such as forbidden libraries, mountain-passes, and even a fully rendered Haunted Castle.
- Gratuitous French: In the CD versions of "Dark Carnival" and "Infuscomus", you can hear the French children's song "Loup y es-tu?" in its original language.
- Guide Dang It!: In Cryptic Passage, the button required to proceed further in "Gothic Library" is hidden on the far side of the fallen bookshelf in the "eye door" room. It's so poorly visible you may end up stuck in the level desperately searching for a way to proceed.
- Guns Akimbo: As a power-up that only worked for about a minute.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: From easiest to hardest, are Still Kicking, Pink on the Inside, Lightly Broiled, Well Done, and Extra Crispy. Fresh Supply adds "Made to Order" to the mix, which is a difficulty mode designed to allow full customization of a ton of difficulty modifiers.
- I Need You Stronger: Why Tchernobog revived Caleb instead of immediately trying to take Caleb's body as his next vessel.
- Just Train Wrong: E1M3: The Phantom Express - just about the only thing right about it is that the train runs on tracks. Let's see: absurdly spacious? Check. Exceeds every known loading gauge worldwide? Check. No doors on the car sides to actually board the train? Check. The tender having no water tank? Check. Walkways going all the way around the locomotive including its cab? Check. The steam engine having no actual boiler, just a furnace in an oversized cab without any front view windowsnote and no discernible controlsnote except a few switches only used to overheat the furnace and blow the whole engineering paradox up? Check, check, CHECK.
- Kill It with Fire: The flare gun, the spray can and the napalm cannon, best used on Bloated Butchers.
- Lock and Key Puzzle: As befitting a Doom clone, the game is chock full of them. This game in particular takes it up to eleven, as, rather than Doom's two mutually-exclusive sets of three keys, Blood actually has six unique keys, and some of the larger levels actually require collecting all of them.
- Locomotive Level: E1M3: The Phantom Express has you move through a train, starting at the engine and fighting through car-by-car before returning back through the rooms you missed. This includes a tender where zombies emerge, passenger cars full of cultists, a dark luggage car crammed with boxes, a huge open dining car with a small army inside of it, and all manner of other things, including a secret that can only be found by briefly jumping off the train. At the end of the level, Caleb starts messing with the train's controls, overloads the engine, and promptly crashes it.
- Loophole Abuse: The "Watch out for Pedestrians" achievement in Fresh Supply requires you to beat E3M1: Ghost Town without any innocents being killed. The game will award the achievement if you beat the level on "Made to Order" difficulty without NPCs, since there will be no innocents to be killed anyway.
- MacGuffin: The backstory of Cryptic Passage has Caleb head out to find an ancient scroll, supposedly "capable of upsetting the balance of power in the otherworld". Not that it matters whatsoever what it is.
- Mad Scientist Laboratory: Starting point of the fourth episode.
- Multiplayer-Only Item: The Crystal Ball allows you to spy on other human players. Since there are none in singleplayer, the Crystal Ball is not present.
- Night-Vision Goggles: The Beast Vision glasses highlights enemies in full-brightness regardless of how dark their surroundings were. However, it does nothing to cut through that darkness in those surroundings.
- Non-Indicative Name: E1M5 is called "Hallowed Grounds" despite it being a large church dedicated to Tchernobog, and thus the opposite of a holy place.
- Noodle Incident: We never find out exactly what the scroll in Cryptic Passage does or what's written on it, though the implication seems to be it's some kind of Tome of Eldritch Lore.
- Not His Blood: Caleb alludes to this at the start of E3M4: The Sick Ward, which takes place in a hospital."I'm here to donate some blood. Someone else's."
- Ominous Latin Chanting: The ambient chanting in E1M7: The Great Temple.
- Real Is Brown: The game uses mostly brown and grey shades, with some white in the second episode as it takes place up in the Arctic.
- Severed Head Sports: The game lets you kick zombie heads around. It even has a minigame in the fourth level and a deathmatch map dedicated to head football.
- Shareware: The first episode was released on its own in this format. One secret near the end explicitly provides you with everything that was in it.
- Shout-Out: Shares a page with the rest of the series.
- Take That!: It riffs on Duke Nukem 3D and its "doomed space marine" secret by stringing up Duke's own corpse in a hidden room at the Dark Carnival, with Caleb mockingly mimicking Duke's "shake it baby" line when you interact with it.
- Ten-Second Flashlight: The "Beast Vision", a magical set of glasses with funky lenses that lets you see enemies clearly in the dark and runs out in less than a minute if left on continuously.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Upon entering the final boss's chamber in Cryptic Passage:Caleb: "This looks...extraordinarily bad."
- Updated Re-release:
- One Unit Whole Blood, which contains all six episodes of the first game (original 4 episodes + Cryptic Passage + Plasma Pak) and extra features.
- Fresh Supply contains everything the OUWB pack does, but also ports the game to the Kex engine, letting it run natively on modern Windows/Mac/Linux systems for the first time, as well as optionally adding other graphical improvements such as ambient occlusion and "true" 3D aim.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- The most cruelty possible may involve unarmed civilians that will sometimes drop health if you kill them, or on some occasions must be killed because they carry a key.
- There's also head-soccer: you can randomly decapitate zombies on a kill and kick their heads around (it's even used as a carnival game to unlock a secret in the Dark Carnival level).
- Caleb hates mimes with a passion. In fact, other than their use as impromptu platforms to reach secrets, mimes exist in this game only to be brutally killed. Even the help screen of the registered version shows a mime getting killed by some monsters!
Caleb: [after killing one mime] "I hate mimes."
[after killing a few more] "Oh, I shouldn't have done that... Wait, I'm evil! I can kill whoever I want!" [maniacal giggling] - Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Generally averted in the main game.
- The Aerosol Flamethrower is tricky to ignite enemies for long periods with, but when you manage that, use the "Molotov Cocktail" Secondary Fire or generally against more flammable enemies like Bloated Butchers, it's quite devastating. Organic enemies such as Bloated Butchers are particularly weak to it.
- The napalm launcher is a cannon of fiery murder in Blood, and the secondary mode can clear out rooms in seconds.
- Violation of Common Sense: To get a certain secret in E1M3, you have to jump off a speeding train and onto a secret door along the outer wall. Unless you're perfect at it, you'll either take a good chunk of damage from landing or outright die.
- Voice of the Legion: The ominous Domus Durbentia chanting in E1M7: The Great Temple is apparently spoken by one.
- Vulnerable Civilians: The "innocents" do little more than run around in a panic and tend to show up in close proximity to cultists, making it difficult to either avoid accidental civilian casualties or take out the cultists in time (assuming that you aren't actively gunning for the former, anyway).
- Wham Episode: The final level of Episode 1, "The Altar of Stone". After crossing at least ten miles in one night, not to mention surviving everything his former cult is throwing at him, Caleb finally finds... Ophelia's bloodied and crucified corpse, and furiously calls out the beast that murdered her. If Caleb's more resigned response to finding Gabriel(la)'s remains at the end of Episode 2 is any indication, then he realized right then and there that he'd lost all three of his companions.
- Womb Level: E4M7: In The Flesh takes place inside some giant monster, which includes eyes and mouths on the walls, pools of bile, columns of rib like bone which you use as platforms, and a four-chambered heart at the end where you have to get past the beating walls that act like crushers.
- Word Salad Title: E4M6 is called "The Ganglion Depths". The ganglion being a part of the brain. What this had to do with the level (which is just a huge temple) is a mystery, although it might be foreshadowing for the next level, "In The Flesh".
- You Are Too Late: The game begins with Caleb tearing across the countryside in search of Ophelia and Gabriel(la), who (unlike Ishmael) were taken alive. He doesn't reach either of them in time.
