Yeah it feels great to shoot stuff, yeah it has a sick aesthetic, but the real star of the show here is the level design. There's so many cool setpieces in here, and somehow they manage to make them all flow like coherent levels with clear progression. Really feels like they learned all the right lessons from other shooters at the time, and it comes off as feeling very modern in that regard.

Also the CG cutscenes are so bad that they loop back around to being kind of unsettling, love that shit.

Despite representing the pinnacle of Build Engine art and level design, this still ranks under DUKE and SHADOW WARRIOR for me. Something about the balance has always seemed slightly off. The starting weapons and the low-tier enemies are too goofy, gameplay-wise, and I feel like that keeps me from finding that comfortable FPS groove like I can in those other two. But even so, there are moments when this one delivers pure mayhem on a level that nothing else from this era can touch.

Still a minor classic, even if it's the least of the big three for me.

As a kid, I played every classic FPS game that I could get my hands on, from forgotten gems like Heretic to bizarre relics like Redneck Rampage. Despite my love for the genre, however, I never got past the first level or two of Blood - for whatever reason, I found its gothic aesthetic to be off-putting, and its array of bizarre weapons confused me.

Now that I've finally played and beaten it, I can say for certain that I thoroughly misjudged Blood. Unlike the army of Doom clones that it was competing with, this is a legitimately unique game with a lot of interesting design choices that stand out even today. Protagonist Caleb isn't a badass soldier strapped to the gills with rocket launchers and flamethrowers - though the Thompson and your shotgun get a lot of use, they're often not the most effective weapons for the variety of situations that the game puts you in.

The most common enemies in Blood are prowling cultists with hitscan weapons that can tear you apart easily even on the default difficulty setting. Since ammo for your stronger weapons is relatively scarce, you have to think ahead and set traps to survive. My most used weapon after the Tommy Gun (its ability to stunlock the cultists is unmatched) was actually the default dynamite sticks - once you get the hang of their throwing arc, you can kill two or three bad guys at a time with it. The flare gun is also surprisingly useful, since its accuracy means you can use it to set targets on fire from afar, and its alternate fire can mess up a group of cultists in a hurry.

Though it does feel thoroughly modern in some aspects, Blood is still a retro game at its core. My biggest complaint with the game is that its difficulties feel a bit unbalanced and poorly-implemented - unlike other games of the era, higher difficulties boost enemy health and their response time, which means you can get torn to shreds by 2 or 3 cultists in a second or two if you aren't careful. I played through most of the first episode on Well Done (UV equivalent) before giving up due to frustration. I restarted on the default Lightly Broiled setting, which is a stout enough challenge, but was definitely a bit too easy in parts. It's worth noting that I played on the source port NBlood for the "authentic experience" but the Steam remaster of the game has a custom difficulty setting that allows you to fiddle with some of the options for a better experience, so I would recommend that if you're interested in the game.

Another minor complaint: the first boss of the game (the stone gargoyle) is by far the hardest, and I'm not sure the designers of the game realize that. I managed to beat the big bad final boss Tchernobog in about ten seconds, which was a bit underwhelming. As a whole, though, Blood is a thoroughly creative game with shockingly good level design and one of the best arsenals in a first-person shooter. If you're interested at all in the genre, I definitely recommend it. It does show its age in spots, but it's still a great experience.

I had only ever played the shareware version of Blood until I finally decided to sort this massive hole in my classic FPS knowledge out. It is a game that sits on a pedestal among the best in the genre and for the most part, is fully deserving of that place.

The setting is fantastic, a strange, timeless mix of present day and the old West via a particularly grim Tales from the Crypt episode. The enemy types are mostly great, with clear weaknesses and strengths that require you to weapon switch, be aware of the environment and prioritise targets way more than many other games in the genre. The weapons are memorable and satisfying to use, from one of the best shotguns around to a bloody can of deodorant and a lighter.

The level design... fuck me, the LEVEL DESIGN in this one, lads. The BUILD engine tends to be at its best when it is delivering these approximations of a real life location and Blood features some of the very best. Some levels are rapid fire gauntlets of enemies, some are almost Doom-esque puzzles boxes to solve while some are quite happy for you to get lost in, searching for keys and switches in some memorable locations.

Towards the back end of the game, I found the level design to drop off a bit, as you find yourself in caverns and temples instead of say, haunted manors and fucked up hospitals. The sheer amount of hit-scanning Cultist enemies can cause a few frustratingly unfair deaths and the boss enemies at the end of each chapter are a bit underwhelming when compared to Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior but these are all small complaints in the grand scheme of things. Blood is a belter, probably the hardest of the trinity of classic BUILD shooters so tailor the difficulty to your tastes appropriately (I'd probably say knock it down two settings from where you can comfortably play Doom).

Also: BUILD engine explosions are one of gaming's greatest pleasures and the ones found in Blood are truly top tier. There's a tangible sense of weight and force to them, with enemies and even you being knocked backwards from the centre of the blast and perfectly charging the strength of a dynamite throw so one lands in-between a pack of zombies and sends entrails skyward is life-affirming shit.