I love Ken Silverman’s Build Engine. I toyed around with it when I was a kid, and I recall a period in early adulthood where I dove into its inner workings, as well as Silverman’s other projects. It is the perfect 2.5D engine, with the right balance of limitations and sophistication.

But I only really played Duke Nukem 3D. Well, okay: Duke Nukem 3D, Nam, WWII: GI, and William Shatner’s TekWar, and Ion Fury. So, Duke Nukem 3D was the only good Build Engine game I played.

I tried Shadow Warrior, but I found it boring after the first couple levels. Blood, on the other hand, kept repelling me with its difficulty. This is embarrassing to say, but I struggled to get past even the second stage on the medium-ish “Lightly Broiled” setting. Before you judge, just try it. Brutal. However, as a Build game, it was only a matter of time before I returned to it to try again, and this time, I’ve plowed through its five episodes, plus the Cryptic Passage expansion by Sunstorm Interactive.

I CAN’T BELIEVE IT TOOK UNTIL ’97 TO NAME A GAME “BLOOD”

Blood has a pretty cool, pretty ‘90s storyline. You play as Caleb, a dude who was part of the inner circle of some big bad. However, the big bad betrayed said circle and had them murdered. Caleb is back from the dead, and he’s pissed. So, he’s not a good guy, he’s just the guy you’re rooting for. And, y’know, playing as.

The original game was four episodes, with the first being shareware. The typical 3D Realms/Apogee formula. Except, while 3D Realms was originally slated as publisher, Monolith bought out the developer, Q Studios, and publishing went to GT Interactive. But, still, it’s clear that 3D Realms is in its, er, blood.

Being, um, built in the Build Engine, it’s not far off from Duke Nukem 3D. However, it’s as different as it can be. The arsenal is all new, as are the enemies. Everything has a pervasive horror veneer, and the palette now leans heavily on the brown spectrum. It’s more violent, if you can believe it, but it is called Blood, so that’s appropriate. But more than the blood and gibs, my favourite addition to the violence is how explosive will throw enemy bodies. Hurling a wad of dynamite over a ledge and watching a cultist rocket upwards is just wonderful.

Caleb’s a typical vocal ‘90s FPS protagonist, there’s still wall-humping for secrets (though, Caleb doesn’t grunt), and explosives can blow holes in certain walls. Also, true to the times, you’re hunting for keys in order to progress. Blood brings its own gravy to the table, but it’s still very much a ‘90s FPS not far removed from Duke Nukem 3D.

SONUVA BITCH MUST PAY!

So, circling back to what I said about the difficulty. This is going to get a bit technical, but I’m not the most technical person, so hopefully not too technical.

Blood’s difficulty is front-loaded. Only the first episode is really difficult on Lightly Broiled. That’s not to say it’s easy after that, but the first few levels were the only place I felt like throwing in the towel.

There’s sort of two issues here. The first is that the starter levels don’t give you much in the way of supplies. Blood’s healing items are largely just dropped by enemies on a random (and seemingly rare) basis, so it’s easy to just be worn down through attrition. However, it also doesn’t like giving you ammo. You’ll find yourself forced to rely on unconventional weapons, like the flare gun or stacks of TNT. And even then, they won’t always last.

Later levels are less stingy about ammo. You might not find a particular type when you want it, but you’re usually provided with enough overall, so you can remain a deadly force.

I LIKE MY HANDS BLOODY

The second and bigger issue is that the main ground force of Blood are hitscan enemies. Hitscan is a way for games to decide where instantaneous projectiles like bullets actually hit. It’s death by math, essentially. However, in 2.5D games, enemies aren’t 3D objects, and they usually only face a small few directions and have a wide angle that would be considered pointing at you. It can make you feel cheated.

Wolfenstein 3D was the absolute worst (that I know of), since it took into account the speed you’re moving and what direction, as well as semi-random numbers, to decide how much damage is done to you. Doom and Duke Nukem 3D get around the unfairness by having most of the enemies throw slow, dodgeable projectiles. The enemies who do ballistic damage have slow reactions. They’ll often be given the instruction to move a few paces before they’ll fire the first shot. Sometimes, they’ll even grimace or something before firing to give you the chance to hide behind cover or shoot first.

The cultists in Blood don’t do that. They can fire instantaneously. They’re often placed around blind corners, meaning you’ll round the corner and immediately have your face filled with buckshot. I once hit a switch and heard a door open, and before I could turn around, I was dead because the sound was a monster closet opening directly behind me.

Clearly, this isn’t an unforgivable problem, since I was still able to enjoy the game. I flew through some of the episodes and probably could have raised the difficulty. You can find yourself overwhelmed by a lot of enemies in small spaces, and you can be cut down quickly by huge monsters that dish out huge damage, but most of my deaths were because I entered a new room and couldn’t immediately react to several cultists who all opened up the moment my ass showed. And that is much more frustrating than getting stomped on by something bigger than you.

VICTIMS. AREN’T WE ALL?

The other issue I have is more of a personal and petty issue. One of the reasons I love the Build Engine is because it can sort of render real-world environments. It does it well enough that you can recognize the interior of fast-food joints, but struggles enough that it still requires a lot of creative, abstract level design.

I lose a bit of interest when that isn’t utilized. The Lunar Apocalypse episode probably has some of the best level designs in Duke Nukem 3D based on creativity, variety, and flow, but I don’t enjoy it as much as the other episodes, because it’s all sci-fi spaces. Blood does some dingy versions of realistic spaces sometimes; usually at the beginning of the episodes. But the other half is spent going through canyons, caves, tombs, castles, and so on.

Listen, I get it, I should be refined enough that I appreciate the level design for what it is, but that’s not how I feel. All the canyons, caves, tombs, castles, and so on bleed together for me. I can tell you about the department store in the last episode, or the hidden mall level, or the hospital level, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what castle is in what episode. I’m sorry. That stuff is important to me.

LUCKY YOU, KILLED BY THE BEST

The weapons are good, though. They each have secondary fire modes, which was unusual for games at the time. Predictably, the shotgun fires one barrel for primary and both for secondary. However, it gets creative. The Soul Stick can be planted in the ground to act like an automated turret. The dynamite can be planted on the ground rather than thrown. The Napalm Cannon will fire a cluster bomb. I was always afraid to try the secondary fire on a new weapon, however, because of the chance I would just waste ammo. Or blow myself up.

Like Duke Nukem 3D, I really just started figuring out what weapon is most effective against whom. Like, in that game, the shrink ray may just feel gimmicky, but those chunky guys with the rockets butts? Deals with them quick. In Blood, I figured out that firing both barrels of the shotgun at point-blank dealt with axe zombies and cultists pretty well, the Tesla cannon makes short work of gargoyles, and dynamite is best against the chubby zombies. Feels good, like an FPS should.

So, despite my gripes about difficulty and a dearth of grocery stores, I still respect Blood. It’s maybe not the Build Engine FPS for me, but it’s still made well enough. It’s not Duke Nukem 3D, but since we never got a Duke Nukem 3D 2, it helps fill a void. If you’re like me, and you feel like you’re forever searching for that same high that Duke Nukem 3D gives you, play Blood.

As a last note, as the headline implies, I played the Nightdive remaster, Blood: Fresh Supply. It is, I’ve discovered, not the best way of playing it these days. I’m not entirely sure what the best way actually is (NBlood and BloodGDX source ports seem to come up the most in conversation), but the community harshly criticized Fresh Supply, even when the consensus wound up leaning more toward “good enough.” However, it seems like the experience was bad enough that Samuel Villarreal, Nightdive’s star programmer, has soured on the idea of remastering Build Engine games. I say this, because I once mentioned William Shatner’s TekWar to him, and he essentially told me he doesn’t want to touch the Build Engine again.

The port seems fine with me (after turning off the weird ambient occlusion), but it’s my first time playing the game, so what do I know?

7/10

This review was conducted using a digital Steam version of the game. It was paid for by the author.