Having trouble enjoying Blood (the game)

[oneselfSelf]

It's weird to think I give Hexen mercy for it's faults and managed to enjoy it but I can't seem to enjoy Blood very much. I don't know why though, I just get bored of it midway through the game. I always wanted to give it a better shot multiple times but I just can't bring myself to play it the whole way through. Does anyone else have this issue with the game? I feel like everyone else really enjoys it but me.

[Austrian Oak]

My body, my choice. 

[Kinsie]

Not every game is for everyone, and that’s fine… but let’s make this a discussion. Is there anything specific you’re getting hung up on, like weapons or level design? Or just kinda getting worn out?

[Sonikkumania]

I don't really dig Blood either. Strangely I seem to have less interest towards Build games in general despite having nostalgic memories with Duke 3D.

[Jayextee]

I've played through Blood, at the behest of basically everybody online who enjoys boomer shooters, it would appear. Having beaten it, my original opinion of the game; that it's a piece of shit; hasn't changed much. Clearly it's not for me, and I don't "get" it.

[Zerofuchs]

I normally get about 2 episodes in before boredom sets in.

It's got a great ambience and for people familiar with the movies and genres and tropes it references to that might make up for any awkwardness in the combat.

The interactivity and aesthetics are pretty solid. Good set design. As close to feeling like real places as Build could manage. 

 

I do love me the dynamite, and the flame weapons are one of the cases of it (fire) working out well for a 90s FPS. Shotgun's okay. Other weapons I'm kinda meh on.

But I do find it a bit obnoxious in terms of hitscanners, cheesy enemies, and outright mean encounter design. I appreciate some good tricks and traps and a solid ambush but that feels like Blood's main MO. 

 

Just my stream of consciousness thoughts on the game.

[MrFlibble]

I haven't really played Blood, but I have to confess I get bored of probably any FPS after a while, so maybe it's just normal? Personally, I never force myself to play if I got bored or distracted by something else, and if I feel like it, I prefer to revisit the game (sometimes starting completely anew) that I put aside like that after a while. And I certainly never feel bad about that -- it doesn't seem like a good idea for games to become a chore (unless playing them is actually part of your job that is!).

 

I generally enjoy exploration more than combat in FPSs, so I lean heavily towards Build engine games, although Blood seems a bit too dark in design and mood for my liking. However, I don't think that any of the 90s FPS titles were intended to be the "perfect" experience where you enjoy every last bit of it; even though Blood is by no means the first newcomer to the FPS scene, such games on the whole were still very young and growing rapidly as a genre in 1997. To me, nostalgia is the first and foremost selling factor, but of course some games are so badly designed, or simply not my cup of tea altogether that I'd not spend any meaningful amount of time with them.

 

By which I mean, if you don't enjoy the game, it's probably a good idea to put it aside and maybe reflect on your experiences at your leisure. Perhaps you will want to revisit it later and find something new about it that you'd not noticed or put emphasis on.

 

I can share a probably somewhat odd experience of my own. I had not heard about Rise of the Triad in the 90s, and only discovered it in the mid-2000s when steady access to the Internet supplied my curiosity and nostalgia for 90s PC gaming. I played the shareware version in DOSBox and greatly enjoyed it, becoming a dedicated fan of @leejacksonaudio in the process. Later on I purchased the full deal on GOG, and recently I decided to finally give it a spin.

 

The short story is, I kind of halfheartedly got through probably halfway into the first episode, after which my interest sorta petered out. I was really expecting to relive the nostalgic impression that the shareware had left on me back in the mid-2000s, but I guess you can't step into the same river twice. I hope to revisit the game sometime and try something different, like configuring it for the WASD + mouse instead of the arrow keys, and/or maybe pick a different character.

 

The trick with these things is that the enjoyment comes in part from your willingness to enjoy a game, as much as from the game itself. But this willingness is not something you can magically (or purely rationally, for that matter) force yourself to do, like say, I'm gonna play this right now and enjoy it real hard :) Sometimes you need the right mood to come, or maybe just have a few hours of free time with nothing better to do/try.

[oneselfSelf]

10 hours ago, Kinsie said:

Not every game is for everyone, and that’s fine… but let’s make this a discussion. Is there anything specific you’re getting hung up on, like weapons or level design? Or just kinda getting worn out?

 

Genuinely I might be getting worn out but I did have some irks with the game that might have added onto that.

 

The level design is actually great with my only one complaint is that having six keys just leads to really long hunts that drag a bit. The Haunting might be my least favorite level for that reason.

 

The weapons seem cool to me but I feel like they are way weaker than they look. Explosives for example sometimes feel like a gamble, I had way too many run ins with Cultists that managed to barely slip by my TNT and blast my body into swiss cheese. The shotgun only feels useful if you right click, the tommy gun is fine, the flare gun I barely used sadly besides on Zombies, and so on and so forth.

 

I don't think I had any issue with the enemies though. Yeah Cultists are bullshit sometimes but they are designed with that intention. They feel like an enemy that can actually go up against the player on their own.

 

Yeah it might have just been me being worn out.

[leejacksonaudio]

4 hours ago, MrFlibble said:

The short story is, I kind of halfheartedly got through probably halfway into the first episode, after which my interest sorta petered out. I was really expecting to relive the nostalgic impression that the shareware had left on me back in the mid-2000s, but I guess you can't step into the same river twice.

I hope you still enjoyed the music. ;)

[MrFlibble]

44 minutes ago, leejacksonaudio said:

I hope you still enjoyed the music. ;)

Oh yes, most definitely! How could I not?

 

I'm afraid my case was that I wasn't exactly in the back to the 90s nostalgia mood ;)

[Captain red pants]

What skill are you playing it on?

[Murdoch]

You're allowed to not like something. I think even it's fans would concede it has some dickish aspects to it's design at times. Games are supposed to be fun. Thinking you should like something just cause so many others do is just plain silly. Stop playing and move on. Simple :)

 

[Esperpento]

17 hours ago, Captain red pants said:

What skill are you playing it on?

This, Crispy is for cooperative I believe (or equivalent to Nightmare if you wish) and Well Done is really punishing.

 

You have to take in consideration that this isn't Doom, it's absolutely hitscan heavy so you must use a different approach, more similar to modern fps in the sense that you have to take cover and pick corners, If you just run into rooms you'll get gunned down really fast. TNT is crucial, if you see a window or opening throw one (that's a neat skill to master, the throwing system is good once you get it)  and enjoy the screams. Same before entering rooms, throw one inside as they bounce of walls and ambush the cultists. You can also drop them and shoot them to explode, baiting enemies is a must. Also crouching to make your hitbox smaller (I believe). And leave the autoaim on, some weapons don't work well without it (eg: the skull wand thing)

 

I played it a couple of years ago and learned to love it. There are also great community maps for it (I remember one even resembled Bioshock, all underwater).

[taufan99]

I remember spending more time playing it than Classic Doom during my vocational high school years. Ah, good old times. And yeah, the higher difficulties are indeed much more punishing than UV/NM, especially with the hitscan cultist variants.

8 hours ago, Esperpento said:

There are also great community maps for it (I remember one even resembled Bioshock, all underwater).

May I know what the underwater map(set?) is? I find underwater environment good for such horror settings.

[Esperpento]

@taufan99 The mapset is called Somewhere Under the Sea, you can get it here (hope it's okay to post the link)