Review: Blood

Probably the best example of this phenomena is when Id Software released "Doom" a while back. Immediately following that came a variety of "Doom-clones," none of which were anywhere as good as the original.

Now that "Quake" is out, many companies are doing the same thing. Once again, none of these "Quake-clones" are any good, and the latest release from 3D Realms, "Blood" is no exception.

I could be wrong, but I've figured out why the big wigs at 3D Realms named this game "Blood." Mainly, it has a lot of blood in it. Large amounts of blood. When you kill someone, they literally blow up, showering buckets of blood like rain. Besides being quite unrealistic, it's a bit disgusting as well as slightly comical. However, it should be mentioned that the designers have included a "parental control" feature, which allows kids to play a "bloodless" version of "Blood."

I didn't actually spend time to read the plot of this game, but it starts out with you jumping out of your grave and using various implements of death and destruction to kill various creatures while trying to get to the end of each level. This is basic first-person 3-D action game stuff, which has been done many times.

The engine, said to be the same used in 3-D Realms' other action game, "Duke Nukem 3-D," is fast but lacks detail. The spacious, breath-taking architecture that's found in most Quake levels can not be done with this engine, nor anything close. The performance was adequate on my Pentium 90, although I suffered continuous pauses in the game when trying to play with the keyboard. The textures are also good, but once again, not as good as Quake. The only thing this game has going for it is pretty good sounds and music.

What you're stuck with is a basic first-person, 3-D, shoot-anything-that-moves action game which really isn't much better than Doom and no where near as fun as Quake.

However, if you enjoyed "Duke Nukem 3-D" or like blood, you might find this game interesting. For me, though, I was just happy that it installed into one directory so it was easy to erase.