I'm a sucker for Werewolves so I thought HMMM Maybe this could be a fun game, and after I finished it.............EAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, it's not god awful but it's not all that good either.

The story sucks, the characters are bland and unmemorable, and the models look fuck ugly.
The only saving grace game gave to me was the combat.
I'm not gonna say that it's better than God of War, but it's very 2009 and 2000's hack and slashes are my fucking jam. While the combat did get repetitive near the last level I still enjoyed the game overall.

I can't say I didn't have an awful time with this game but I'll probably forget this game even came out in like 3 months.

I downloaded this on a whim on a bored weekend. It's a third person werwolf action game. How bad could it be. Well not great really. This seems like it's based on some established IP. At least it feels like it. I dunno but everything about this game is really dull. Every enviroment is the same. Get used to looking at the same facility level over and over again. Not a lot of animations and things are jank. It's hilarious how detailed the main character is compared to the other NPC's. They look like they could be from two different generations. I mean I like me so low budget games and jank is a part of that but man is the gameplay bad. I know people exagerate when they say the gameplay has no depth, but holy shit is that true here. It is just mindless mashing. Stiff controls and tons of enemies who either die in a single hit or have a crap ton of armor. Very limited movesets and tanky enemies just repeated over and over and over again. Not a good time.

World building looks like there was some effort put in, maybe cause it's an established IP? Again I don't know. What i do know is that the story is so boring and life less. Could be from the limited animations, bad character renders and stiffled voice acting. The game looked like an easy platinum that I could do over a weekend but I missed one collectible and there isn't any chapter select or anything to go back and get it, so I kind of lost any motivation to keep playing. Kinda a dumb reason to stop playing the game but the gameplay or story sure as hell wasn't going to entice me to continue. I'd pass on this one.

Recently I've been trying to raise my overall completion percentage and have been trying to get the rest of the trophies in games I never got far in. For some reason I decided I wanted to play a shitty game, so I chose this one. I wanted to play something bad and be able to say hey look, I did it. And goddamnit did I do it, platinum and all.

This game is like, twilight for forty year old men. Does your dad have a lot of tattoos and wear shirts that say "Don't Tread on Me" or "Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings"? He'd probably like this game.

Originally I couldn't even beat the first level before abandoning it. I gave it a half star, did a quick rant and called it a day but now am I so glad I finished it because everything about this game was unintentionally hilarious. It tries to take itself so seriously, there is not a single hint of irony or self awareness. This game thinks its cool as fuck, as evident by the ridiculous title - and that is the only saving grace.

Make no mistake, this game doesnt get the honor of "so bad its good" Its just bad. But it is the laughable-ness that will keep you sane through the 8-12 hour runtime. So many parts of this game are silly that at one point I told my boyfriend I was worried that there was so much I'd forget some of it for this review, and honestly thats probably true.

Firstly the character models are all pretty ugly. Most of them look like stock assets. All the characters suck too. The main character, Cahal, looks like discount Captain Price and has about as much substance as an empty jar of peanut butter. None of the characters are really all that likeable or memorable, the only one i thought was cool is just because he has an eyepatch, and the only one I kind of liked is just killed randomly offscreen. The story itself is also pretty pisspoor, and I tuned out for nearly the entirety of it. Tries to throw in some weird dialogue choices like the game actually earns to share a similarity to Mass Effect. None of these choices matter until at the end where you can chose between two endings, but both are bad. The game tries to be emotional at a few parts but the acting makes it funny and its not like you care about whats happening to begin with.
The animations, particularly for takedowns are also very goofy. Outside locations have visual variety but nearly every single indoor combat/stealth section looks almost identical. You will see the exact same assets over and over again.

That leads me to the gameplay itself. There are a few hub world areas where your main groups camp is literally within a mornings stroll away from enemy bases and military strongholds. Its not like you're in hiding either, it is explicitly shown the enemies know that you're right next to them. Its just incredibly silly and the game would of worked better if it kept to being linear. Theres not much to do in these areas either, except for a few collectibles and sidequests. These collectibles come in two types: notes and "spirits". The notes Im being honest I didnt read a single one I couldnt be bothered to give a fuck about the game. Maybe they gave more about the lore but the game doesnt even bother to explain itself outside of it so I couldnt be bothered either. The spirits are things you can only see in your enhanced vision™ that every third person game has. Theyre basically like magical plants that Cahal just stands there and sniffs for experience. Yeah, its funny. The sidequests are all just busy work with objectives similar to what you do in the base game already. These are completely pointless, and all they serve to do is give you more experience. If you dont plan to platinum this (which frankly having a sub 1% platinum is the only reason you should play this) then you can skip them and nothing of value is lost. This experience is used to upgrade your skill tree. Mostly to give yourself more combat abilities, with some being tactical. These are all fine, I guess. Maybe about half the abilities are actually useful, and you can get to one of the ultimate ones incredibly quickly anyways.
Now there is the combat itself. Most sections allow you to do stealth. The stealth is bad. The areas are poorly designed, mechanics are only introduced in the first few missions and just continue through the rest of the game. Plus it creates a very big disconnect, if you cause a huge ruckus and get reinforcements called on you in one area, the next area wont have enemies on alert anyways. You have a crossbow that you can upgrade to allow you to shoot cameras and turrets to disable them, but the aiming on that is terrible. Also a lot of levels towards the end have big enemies guarding exits that can neither be taken down or killed in a timely manner with the crossbow, making stealth basically useless. Which is okay, because most of the time you're just gonna opt for the actual combat because its a lot more fun.
In all honesty its the only good thing about the game, but even then its not great. Its basic hack and slash stuff, you'll get some new moves from the skill tree but nothing will make you change up your gameplay. Theres a few different enemy types but you can fight them all basically the same. There is no incentive, not even cool combos, to do anything other than spam your moves until you win. Id say at least visually it looks nice but... not really. Outside of one boss the enemy designs are all pretty meh. There is a lot of blood but absolutely zero gore which is another thing that makes this game so hard to take seriously despite its desperate attempts. It especially makes the executions look terrible. and the enemies dont even get bloodied themselves. The game isnt particularly hard either, but it does get kinda bullshit as you go on, lots of battles just go on way too long with so many enemies and its really more annoying than anything.
The combat is passable for the most part, but by the end you're gonna wanna opt for the terrible stealth instead so you dont have to sit through another shitty battle. Except you cant. Because remember? Big enemy boy is camping the exit.

This has no effect on the quality of the game itself, but I feel like it has to be mentioned. The trophy list despite the low percentages is really easy. Just nobody wants to get far in this game. I however only gave this a second chance because of trophies, and am still a bit shocked at me actually going through with this. The game does have a lot of miscellanious trophies which I do like, but they are so incredibly easy that by the end of the second mission I had every single one of them besides one for an enemy that hadnt been introduced yet. Theres a silver trophy for killing 250 enemies that I got in the first level. Theres also a few times where you will get two story trophies at the exact same time, for just doing one thing. Theres also one for getting every single spirit. There is no way to track them or even chapter select so if you miss one you'll have to play the entire game a second time and I hope nobody puts themself through that. You also get one for each ending choice. You can continue from your completed save but it just puts you after you made the choice anyways, which is a bruh moment, Thankfully you can just restart the mission. Like I said it doesnt really matter, and going for trophies helped me get through it, its just a bit hilarious how poorly they were all thought out and is kind of an example of how the rest of the game is.

So thats Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood. If I did have one positive, its that I like the metal song on the title screen. Other than that I hope Ive demonstrated how much of a mess this game is, and I didnt even cover everything. This game is far from the worst I've played, but its definitely one of the worst I've beat. Thanks for reading <3

God I hope theres a sequel. And I hope its not much better.

Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #213)
Time Played: 12 hours 21 minutes
Nancymeter - 36/100
Game Completion #115 of 2022
September Completion #5

Difficulty: 3/10
My time: 12 hours
Platinum N°: 147

Looking for something to play, I came across Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood on PS Plus Extra, unfortunately, the game falls short in several aspects such as the visual theme.

The faces are awful, the scenarios are similar and monotonous, and the cinematics look strange, as if the compression didn't turn out well. The story has interesting touches but is overshadowed by the poor presentation. The gameplay, on the other hand, is acceptable, it's fun to destroy enemies as a Werewolf, but sadly it becomes very old very quickly.

The path to the platinum trophy consists of finding all the Spirits (collectibles), reading 30 documents (collectibles), getting both endings, completing 1 level without killing any civilians, winning a fight with 5% energy, among others.

Honestly, I don't recommend this title unless you want a relatively short platinum to earn

This game has a cool concept but it's just a dull button masher.

Stealth sections exist but literally you aren't punished for getting caught after the tutorial mission so I just would get caught and fight my way through most levels

I got bored and kept almost falling asleep while playing, not a fan.

If you were to have me write this review based on the first two hours of playing this game, I would have given it a 1 - 1.5. But something happened around the halfway point, call it enlightenment or call it Stockholm Syndrome, even I'm not quite sure.

You have to be ready to just handwave a whole bunch of janky nonsense in order to begin to appreciate the good elements of Werewolf. It has absolutely unnecessary RPG elements complete with Mass Effect-esque radial dialogue choices, a totally half-baked Stealth mechanic that frustrates way more than excites, and the samey environments get stale within the first hour. But, man, let me tell you? It's fun to hit that Enrage button and tear up a room full of soldiers, every time.

And that's where the Stockholm Syndrome starts to kick in, because by the end, once I stopped caring about quality and started focusing on fun, I actually found myself sorta invested the the D-Movie plotline, and Cahal's revenge mission. I found myself playing by the game's rules, attempting to overcome the shoddy stealth mechanic, knowing that if and when it inevitably came crashing down I could always just hit Enrage and go berserk. I have no idea how it happened, but when it was all said and done, I'm gonna be honest, I actually kinda liked this game.

Werewolf Yadda Yadda Earthblood is a giant mess of a game that would have been mediocre ten years ago and which today feels like someone forgot it in a drawer and decided to ship it well past its expiration date.

The Good:

Running around as a doggy is occasionally fun

The Bad:

Dated presentation - glitchy, boring stealth and combat - poor story and writing - a shallow power fantasy - plagiarizes things it should have left alone

----------------------

Playing the excessively titled "Werewolf: The Apocapypse - Earthblood" is like traveling back to 2009, and not in a good way: as a piece of software it cannot be defined in any way other than retrograde and even reactionary, with its willfull ignorance, or worse still its brazen disregard, for any and all conventions of modern gaming and the bare minimum of the improvements to gameplay systems, quality of life and storytelling achieved in the past decade and counting.

Earthblood tells the story of local biker cosplayer and professional blockhead Cahal, a werewolf gifted with the uncanny power to transform at will between man, wolf and lycanthrope without damaging his clothes in the process, and belonging to a tribe of similarly blockheaded kin. Cahal is a gruff, irritable brute (so irritable in fact that he had to take a five years sabbatical in order to cool down after his latest furry outburst, which cost a fellow wolfman his life, and during which sabbatical he neglected to even so much as text his daughter, because apparently phones do not exist in this world), who somehow still manages to be about as threatening as a puppy dog, more on that later. Cahal has a problem: an evil corporation is doing evil corporation things in his woods, and has got to stop them. That's about it when it comes to premise, and things never get much better later on, not even when the writers throw in multiple plot twists in order to make the fight more personal, without succeeding in the slightest, as it is basically impossible to care about any of these characters in any way.

As a pet peeve, I really dislike this modern werewolf fiction because it removes all of the curse aspects from the condition, there is absolutely no downside to it: these guys can instantaneously shift forms at will, as mentioned even retaining their clothes between shifts (I guess they turn into fur..?), with one of them even sporting a hilarious eyepatch when in lycan form, which makes him absolutely ridiculous. Just about the only issue is that when they get really really mad they might lose control and hurt those they weren't supposed to. Big whoop. At least a game like Vampyr, which you might look at as a significantly better equivalent to this, required the player to balance their bloodlust and sacrifice power to retain humanity. None of that here, it's just a dull, basic power fantasy with the depth of a puddle. There is also no effort made to give the villains any redeeming qualities in any way: they are just gleefully evil for the sake of it without even a hint of some grand machiavellian plan to save the world through evil means. They just like to kick puppies and baby seals for fun.

Visually we are looking at a real blast from the past: low polygon counts, blurry textures, basic animations and generally poor character models are everywhere. This detracts from the believability in more than one case: while Cahal's lycan form is suitably threatening (they put it on the main menu for a reason), his wolf form looks more like an adorable pupper than it does a ferocious wild animal, he's just so cuddly. Sound-wise there are some edgy-sounding metal songs which would feel at home in that bad Prince of Persia sequel, along with voice acting which, while mostly competent, won't send you writing home about it.

Gameplay-wise, Earthblood is presented as a stealth/action hybrid, which is a a difficult balancing act at the best of times, and here they failed entirely: essentially what this boils down to is entering enemy outposts and go from an encounter room to the next in incredibly linear fashion in order to go from point A to point B. Said rooms are entirely self-contained (an alert in one room won't affect enemy awareness in the following) and are structured as stealth puzzles where the trick is to do whatever the game expects from you without being spotted, usually reaching the exit on the other side. To do so, you can stealth kill enemies, turn into a wolf to attract attention by barking and crawl through vents, use computers to open doors, shut off and cameras and turrets, use a crossbow to silently dispatch enemies (ammunition for which is inexplicably lying around enemy bases despite no enemy using a crossbow), the works. All good on paper, except every single aspect of it is so poorly implemented, either by being badly designed, glitched or overpowered, that it invalidates whatever good ideas were in the design document.

For starters there is is a huge imbalance between the usefulness of wolf and human form: about the only advantage human Cahal has is to use his crossbow, but doing so is so slow and clunky (Cahal stands motionless after each shot until he's done reloading, which leaves him open to detection for several seconds) to render it less of an asset and more of a liability. He also is locked in sneaking mode at the game's discretion: Cahal can move at a slow walk or a brisk jog (no analog control, beyond these two speeds, which) when far from enemies, but whenever they are anywhere near he is forced into a crouched stance (again with only two speeds: slow and slower), whether the player desires it or not. This is especially aggravating when entering side rooms where enemies cannot possibly see or hear him, and the player is stuck slowly sneaking towards what he's trying to do. Apparently the developers didn't feel they could trust players with a crouch button.

By contrast, wolf form is lightning quick, nimble, harder to spot, can crawl through vents, dash silently forward, bark to attract attention and, if that weren't enough, has early upgrades to make it virtually invisible and highlight collectibles through walls from across the map using this game's version of Arkham's detective mode, all of which human form lacks. Most important, however, wolf form is not forced to sneak and can move freely. It becomes immediately apparent then how there is absolutely no reason to ever walk around as human Cahal.
Second, there are many occasional glitches getting in the way: sometimes you'll stealth kill an enemy by pulling him over a fence, hiding on the other side, only for the body to glitch through it and alert enemies that pass by. Other times a vent will glitch, preventing you from entering it, or the button press for a stealth kill will not register, causing an alert.

This would be a minor issue, since the game seems to intend for the player to quietly thin out enemy presence in a room before inevitably getting caught and transitioning to combat (you can even sabotage enemy spawn closets so they come out in a wounded state), a feeling compounded by the fact there are enemies that cannot be killed stealthily, making combat unavoidable in many scenarios. When the alert does start, one of two things will happen: 1) Cahal will sneak around like an idiot while everyone is yelling and shooting at him (remember the player cannot control his stance), eventually getting shot enough and going into a knocked out state with a quick button press prompt to transform into lycan, or 2) the player presses the transform button as soon as spotted and manually begins combat. Fighting is also very mediocre: this is a button masher combat system with short unfulfilling combos and very overpowered special moves to unlock and use by spending rage, a bar which can either be refilled by getting drunk on whiskey out of combat or beating enemies in combat.

You can also heal at any time, which is as unbalanced as it sounds: it's all too simple to dash away from danger and mash the corresponding button for a few seconds to get back to full health and fight on. Some enemies wield weapons loaded with silver bullets, which deal permanent damage which cannot be healed until the end of the combat encounter... unless you unlock the skill that negates the mechanic completely, making it a complete non-issue throughput the entirety of the game. Other skills consist in various roars and flurries of blows, which can tear the otherwise damage spongy enemies to shreds... even the bosses, which segues into the next issue of the game: it is too too easy.

Cahal is simply too powerful for his foes, who only present a challenge when many of the elite types are present and damage is pouring in from all sides in the barely decipherable chaos that happens on screen. Even so on the normal difficulty I only died one time the entire game, and that was during a particularly unfair boss fight, this game's version of Ornstein & Smough from Dark Souls. Barring that one, all of the bosses are pitifully easy, even the late game ones. Some of them take less time to dispatch than even some of the elite normal enemies you encounter in the levels. Combat is so tediously drawn-out and the same time easy that you'll sneak around just so you can avoid playing it, despite stealth being completely redundant.

To add a bit of meat on the bone there are a scant handful of sidequests you can undertake in the three hub areas the game is made of, usually consisting in "find five things" or "go back to the areas you already cleared and do them again". The latter needs no explanation as for why it's a chore, but the former also isn't done well: for instance in the first hub you need to find five spirits that can be seen using "detective mode", only these look identical to other, much more numerous spirits which serve no purpose at all, causing frustration. In the third hub you need to find five shrines, only the last one is inside the enemy base, and the game makes no effort to let you know you should move on, effectively wasting your time. To add insult to injury, the reward for these quests is hardly worth the effort: you'll usually get a single skill point (advanced skills quickly start to cost four of them), which can be much more quickly acquired by using the aforementioned skill to highlight collectibles through walls, rendering the sidequests redundant.

The best of the three areas is the second, in which for a moment the game becomes a lite version of Escape from Butcher Bay: Cahal infiltrates a prison complex and has to deal with the local fauna of mobsters and crooks in order to get what he needs. Sadly it's also the shortest part of the game.

There are conversations to be had with a few NPCs, featuring what passes for a dialogue tree (hilariously the player can cut these short by enraging mid sentence, starting combat) instead. Some areas will present you with a tutorial message explaining how you can blend in while in human form, which is ridiculous because a scientist on the bad guys' side sees this crossbow-wielding stinker of a man that Cahal is approach her in her secret lab and introduce himself as part of the corporate security team... and she buys it without question, letting his caveman brain swindle her into giving him hee all-access keycard. If, on the other hand, they see a lovable pup running around, they sound the alarm instantly. Go figure.

Sometimes an NPC will give you a task and immediately after you'll overhear enemy NPCs talking among themselves about the very thing you need. "Hey where did you leave that keycard? On that desk near the window?" How convenient!

The game also suffers from a generalized lack of polish and consideration: detective mode can only be activatedwhile standing perfectly still, which slows down the pace, text logs are too numerous and too long, probably in an attempt to stretch the playtime a little, but resulting in the player just wanting to skip them. One time I knocked the last enemy off a cliff, then Cahal started his transformation animation, which takes control away from you and evidently takes one step forward, as that send me careening off the same cliff to my death and the repeat of a fairly lengthy play session. In between enemy encounters the player will receive the obligatory radio calls from friendly NPCs, only these can be cancelled by interacting with something or reaching a point where a cutscene starts, cutting plot exposition short, which might be a blessing in disguise.

Lastly, the game sees fit to directly rip off one of the most memorable and beloved moments from the original Prey, and it fails miserably at it.

Werewolf Yadda Yadda Earthblood is a giant mess of a game that would have been mediocre ten years ago and which today feels like someone forgot it in a drawer and decided to ship it well past its expiration date. Considering its many flaws I can only recommend it to the most obsessive of furries and/or werewolf fans.

And I didn't make a single Young Frankenstein pun.
Oh all right: "Werewolf?" "There. There crappy game wolf".

Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood reminds me a lot of action games released in the Xbox 360/PS3 generation- destructable environments very basic stealth mechanics and a lot of button mashing.

In Earthblood, you play as Cahal, a werewolf whose pack opposes a corporation that is jeopardising the planet. For Cahal, it is also a pretty personal matter, as this company has also inflicted harm upon his family. As far as plots go, it isn't the most original but at least it is set in the World of Darkness universe and I have to give the developers' their due, they clearly spent time looking at how to recreate this universe in video game format.

It is unfortunate that everything else about the game feels pretty rushed. The game races towards it conclusion as if it is being chased by a pack of wolves. There are only six side quests, which really are only three but repeated twice in two different locations. Finally, the skill tree is rather small, so by the time you get halfway through the game you will have unlocked all the skills you would want to use.

That being said, it is clear that the game was made by a small team with a small budget. I feel that if given the chance, they could make a fantastic World of Darkness video game.
I would only recommend this game to World of Darkness fans or if you find it on sale.

O Manifesto Werewolf é um jogo escrito por "Wolf Karl" e "Werewolf Engels", publicado pela primeira vez em 1848. Neste manifesto, são apresentadas reflexões críticas sobre a sociedade capitalista e defende-se a luta de classes como motor da história e a necessidade de uma revolução werewolf para derrubar a "burguesia" e estabelecer uma sociedade werewolfista.

Wolf Karl e Werewolf Engels argumentam que a história da humanidade é marcada por uma série de lutas de classes, com a "burguesia" (classe capitalista proprietária dos meios de produção) sempre explorando o "proletariado" (classe trabalhadora desprovida de recursos). Eles afirmam que essa exploração gera contradições internas no sistema capitalista, levando inevitavelmente a uma revolução werewolfista.

No manifesto, há uma análise detalhada do modo de produção capitalista, descrevendo suas características e consequências. Eles argumentam que o capitalismo cria uma divisão entre a classe trabalhadora e a classe capitalista, com a acumulação de riqueza nas mãos de poucos em detrimento das massas. Essa exploração e desigualdade resultam em alienação dos trabalhadores, pois eles são privados do controle sobre seu próprio trabalho e dos frutos de seu trabalho.

Wolf Karl e Werewolf Engels enfatizam a necessidade de uma revolução werewolfista como meio de libertar o proletariado e transformar a sociedade. Eles defendem a abolição da propriedade privada dos meios de produção, argumentando que isso permitiria a socialização dos meios de produção e a distribuição equitativa dos recursos. A revolução werewolfista visaria criar uma sociedade sem classes, onde todos os indivíduos teriam acesso igualitário aos bens e serviços necessários para sua subsistência.

No entanto, é importante ressaltar que o Manifesto Werewolf foi escrito no século XIX e suas ideias foram aplicadas em diferentes contextos históricos posteriormente. Embora tenha influenciado movimentos políticos e sociais, é fundamental considerar a evolução das teorias e práticas werewolfistas ao longo do tempo e em diferentes países.

Em resumo, o Manifesto Werewolf é um texto que aborda a crítica ao sistema capitalista, defendendo a luta de classes e a necessidade de uma revolução werewolfista para alcançar uma sociedade sem classes. Suas ideias têm tido um impacto significativo no pensamento político e social, gerando discussões e debates até os dias atuais.

Story wasn't anything special. Visually it was like an very early PS4 game and the combat was very repetitive. For a trophy hunter though it was perfect. Very quick and easy Platinum. A lot of story related trophies that can't be missed (will need to do a back up save for a very quick alternate ending). Combat related trophies can almost all be done by the end of the second mission and I'd suggest guide for the collectables because if you miss one you'll have to play the whole game again. So over all, if you are a trophy/achievement it's great. If not, then I'd avoid it.