[Quacken]

The swimming hitscanners can't kill you if you never actually go into the water during E6M4, and you just do the jump from the bridge to the Guns Akimbo and Cloak secret every time. Obviously.

Aqueducts
Wilson, Newhard

EC Pitchfork

Spoiler

Ignore the Butchers at the start. You'll want to prioritise gunning down the Fanatics with the Tommy Gun. Crawl your way over to the Voodoo Doll. If you want, you can use the Zealots guarding it to distract the Butchers. Once you get the Voodoo Doll, you've got to use it to snipe all of the cultists. Start with the Browncoat guarding the Basic Armor. I think there's a Shotgun here also, but if it's a random drop, then keep restarting the map until you do get a Shotgun. Then use a combination of the Tommy Gun and the Voodoo Doll to kill the cultists near the generators. Try not to let them fall in the water! Shotgun the Gillbeasts and keep swimming until you power on the generators. Save the second Voodoo Doll for when you run out of the first one. The power's on, so go through the gates and step into hell. This circular pit of water is an infamous death trap. There's lots of cultists in here, and most if not all of them will fall into the water and become a huge problem. You'll need to inch forward and snipe as many cultists as you can with the Voodoo Doll. You might get a few that still land in the water, but as long as literally all of them don't fall in, you'll be alright. But now there's a problem. If some of the cultists do fall into the water, it's still a major headache to kill them all. Well... you see that platform off to the side with the Guns Akimbo? If you make the right jump from the bridge you came to this section on towards that platform, you can comfortably make it. There's a low ceiling here which can make the jump tricky, but it's easy with enough practice. I recommend making a save before trying this jump, because failing it will most certainly be death. You can also platform across the ledges on the lower level to make it to the lifts without touching the water, if your timing is good enough.

Avoid touching the Cloak on this platform if you can. If you do accidentally touch it, rush into the water and use your Cloak while you can, to clean the water of cultists. Then you can surface around the secret area where the Life Leech is to kill the Fanatics while you've still got invisibility. Make the jump back to the Guns Akimbo platform and go on your way. Those Fanatics on the bridge above the electric gate can be lured to come down, and then you can drop explosives on them from above. The next difficult section is the pirate ship. This pirate ship is another deathtrap. Thankfully, you've got the Napalm Launcher. You'll have to be really good with it though. You can get killed really easily here. Then blow up the ship and swim through. Mind the new monsters that respawn on the deck once you collect both keys, and rush for the exit. Shial's there, but she's easy to kill with the Tesla Cannon as long as she doesn't fall in the water.
tor
If you're less experienced or not good with the Voodoo Doll or Napalm Launcher, this map is an easy 5/5. The only health in the map is three Doctor's Bags, and there's lots of swimming cultists who will carve you up in seconds. With the proper routing though, it's not nearly as difficult. The jump from the bridge to the Guns Akimbo power-up helps a ton, and the two Voodoo Dolls make killing dry cultists easy. Just don't think you're home free after the Fire door though, because that pirate ship will really test you. 3/5 for me personally, but it averages to a 4/5.

Oh good, it's another level I always dread playing when I decide to play Blood again. I don't mind this map, but I also don't mind not playing it. Aqueducts is a lot of water, a lot of monks, a lot of fish and you only get 400 health to work with. This is a noticeable spike in difficulty especially for new players, and as you saw with FistMarine's review it's very easy to get extremely frustrated. It's a map that tests your platforming and your patience more than your skill. Knowing how to jump across the ledges on the lower level of the central water pit while not falling into the water is a good skill to have. I don't really know what to tell you if you don't want to do the jump towards the Guns Akimbo secret. My only real advice is to look at the automap and try to Dynamite the northernmost wall underwater from high up. That's where at least a few of the cultists should be swimming towards, as they're trying to find you. Personally, I'd say to swallow your pride just make that jump for the Guns Akimbo secret. It'll be a lot easier than trying to save scum your way through tossing Dynamite at undersea walls. The other tip I'd give you is to make the jump directly to the cubby where the secret Life Leech eventually is and surfacing as fast as you can. Dropping it into the water might help you out. This pirate ship section likes to cheat too. There's a metric shit-ton of Browncoats starting out, and the only way to really do this fight is you just have to be really good with the Napalm Launcher. Maybe blowing up the ship would help? The explosion that causes every barrel on the deck of the ship to also explode? Nope, that just scatters all of the Browncoats. And they're in the water now. Lol. Aqueducts is frustrating, unpolished and ugly, and I always try to forget I've played it after I've done so.

4/10.

[Quacken]

For the rest of these maps, it's double features all the way home. By the way, here's why cultists swim with proper sprites: The original player character before Caleb was a man named Michael. Michael used the sprites of a Fanatic. Michael got far enough into development where his swimming and crawling sprites were drawn, and their hitboxes were programmed in. Eventually when Caleb replaced Michael, his sprites were recycled to become the Fanatic, so it was easy to add the swimming sprites whenever the Fanatic was in water, and it was also easy to make a simple AI routine for the Fanatic to crawl around when he took damage. Then, the Fanatic had his palette changed to create the Browncoat. The only other monster that swims with proper sprites are the Gillbeasts, and that was because it's primarily a water creature and it would look weird if the Gillbeast was walking towards you. The other monsters that can swim (e.g. Zombies) don't have proper swimming sprites, most likely because Monolith probably didn't think it was worth the effort.

The Ruined Temple
Kilstrom, Wilson

EC Pitchfork

Spoiler

Run for the Napalm Launcher. Use it to prioritise killing the cultists. If they fall in the water, you'll need to hunt them down. Up ahead, there's Red Spiders which will need to be lured into the water to drown. Then, out of the doors, there's a field of Zombies. Wake them all up, then wake up a Hellhound or two to kill all of them. Then, lure the Hellhounds out to the water where they'll need to drown too. Careful they don't fall into the lava pit ahead. They'll survive the fall and be unable to get out, so that can be upwards of about three kills lost. After all that's done, now you've just got to... go around and kill everything. No kidding. You have a Napalm Launcher, a full Tesla Cannon and lots of explosives, so as long as you know where everything is there's not much that can hurt you. The one fight that might hurt you is the one after the huge lift following the floor you blow up. There's a lot of cultists behind the door past the lift, and they can kill you quite quickly. You can thin them out if you enter the room on the other side of the wall (where the exit door is) and by tossing Dynamite through the hole in the wall. Once you've done that, you're basically done with the map. There's a huge pit of fire in the middle of the map that you can also lead Zombies into.

Nice and simple break map! There's really nothing here that's threatening. Even if you're not good with the Shotgun, there's plenty of explosive barrels you can MOUSE1 Shotgun that will do most of your job for you. 1/5.

If Aqueducts was Halls of the Damned, this map is Command Center. It's big, flat, mostly relies on one texture and has way more explosive barrels than any other map in Post Mortem, or the rest of commercial Blood. The best thing about this map is this is the last time that CBLOOD7 will appear, so thank God for that. With a lot of these maps that were Alpha content, you can often tell by the fact they have low ceilings and they have a lack of architectural integrity. There's a lot of weird rooms in this map such as the strobing disco room with the two random red pyramids, as well as the door past the Shotgun. That grey texture on the wall with the blocked off passage to the left looks like it's gearing up to send you on a sprawling hunt through a temple, but instead it just drops you off at the exit switch. The actual action in the map comes when you open up the Eye door, with this... crypt? Mausoleum? Anything vaguely resembling what might be put in a temple? You can't even use your imagination on this section, because there's no detail anywhere. Past E6M3, there haven't really been any new textures. I guess this makes sense as most of these are recycled Alpha maps, but some new textures would have helped to mask the fact they are old levels. The Ruined Temple is a break map from Aqueducts, but I still don't like playing it.

5/10.

Forbidden Rituals
Kilstrom, Wilson

EC Pitchfork

Spoiler

Run. Run for the non-secret shortcut to the Moon Key and don't look back. Maybe tesla the Fanatic at the door before running though. Near the secret with the Beastvision and the shells, there's a tiny hole in the wall that is just tall enough for you to crawl through. Crawling through that hole and dropping down will result in you falling down into the Moon Key room. Before going up either one of the lifts to ground level, clear out this underground section first. For the Zealots and Ackolytes that drop in, use your one Dynamite to pre-damage them, then use the Tommy Gun to clear the rest. There's a Shotgun past the metal grate. Now, call down the brown lift and get the secret Cloak. Ride up the lift all the way up to the top and use what Dynamite and aerosol you have to bomb the cultists around the pool of blood. After this, go get the Invincibility in the blood, and use that to go back out one of the doors to carve your way to the Napalm Launcher. Once you've got that, you're home free. You have tesla for the Cheogh and there's two other sources of invulnerability for you to ride off of.

Besides the very hectic start, this is another easy map. The hardest part besides the opening is trying to remember where the Napalm Launcher is. When you've got that, you're unstoppable. 2/5.

We've got another Alpha map. Fortunately, this map actually had some extra detail put into it. Not too much, but now there's texture variety. There's bookshelves, electrical equipment, metal grates, tombstones and more. Not to mention, there's some semi-unique sound effects, like the chanting from E1M5. This map still suffers from most of the same problems as E6M5 though. There's a some awkward platforming, there's a low ceiling, the map generally speaking still goes pretty heavy on rock and stone textures and there's a lot of explosive barrels that really just shouldn't be here. That's one way to make Ackolytes not infight magnets though, I guess. This opening is exceptionally cruel and I don't really like it. You either do the slow and tedious way by killing Cheogh outside of the Dagger door or you just book it to the left. Both methods can get out of hand very quickly. I also don't really like the Zealot and Ackolyte ambush down in the waterway. They drop down from the ceiling which is pretty cool, almost like a Duke 3D fight, but there isn't a monster in Duke 3D that spams you with fast moving bolts of lightning, and you're stuck in a crowded tin can with no cover and no Shotgun. Once you're past the opening, then the rest of the map becomes a joke. There's two Cloaks, one Invincibility and one Reflective Shots in this map, and like three Life Seeds along with plenty of Life Essence. The other thing worth talking about in this map is the secret exit. The texture you shoot to open a door is not only a really bad secret exit, it also looks really weird. The eye turns into an altar texture and then flips back to the eye? It seems like there was a second half to the eye texture that was removed and replaced with the pedestal texture, like how the switch textures have two textures. Forbidden Rituals is an average map. Sometimes I have fun with it, and sometimes I don't.

5.5/10.

[TheDragonLiner]

I don't know if it was mentioned anywhere, but regarding the Beast boss fight, I eventually discovered a trick to slightly increase your survivability.

Simply put, the Stomp Attack doesn't do any damage to you if you are wearing the Jump Boots. Basically, the Jump Boots protect you from damaging floors in general, hence why you can survive in death pits while wearing the Boots until they wear off.
I don't know how the Stomp Attack works, but it seems the game considers it as making the nearby ground momentarily damaging, and thus the Jump Boots protect you.

However they drain so quickly that this is only helpful for 1, and potentially 2 Beasts, but it's never gonna last you the whole level >_>

[Quacken]

E6M9 is so forgotten, it's both full of hitscanners AND Hellhounds.

Forgotten Catacombs
Newhard, Wilson

EC Pitchfork

Spoiler

Get the Napalm Launcher and then go up the lift. You'll have to crawl so the Phantasms don't get you while you're fighting the other monsters. Try to lose them if you can, or at least until you go get the Skull Key. When you open the Skull door, close it behind you to lock out the Phantasms. By the way, you're done with the map. After the Skull door you're basically unstoppable. You have plenty of napalm, and there's so much cover everywhere that the cultists aren't a threat at all. Not to mention, you get a Voodoo Doll later to handle the Hellhounds. Make sure you keep a good amount of tesla for Cheogh. You can save the secret Cloak for him.

This is a really easy map after the Skull Key. You have like 20 napalm past the Skull door and everyone's either just around corners or packed together. You know how to use the Napalm Launcher efficiently by now, right? 1/5.

Oh boy, I love maps that only have one texture in them and also maps that re-use MIDIs. Forgotten Catacombs is a secret map for a reason, it's a wholly unremarkable map that is over before you know it. The definition of filler. I'm running out of things to say about it and I'm only on the first line. The only thing I actually like about this map is the Civvie reference in the achievement for finding this map in Fresh Supply. The combat of the map is nothing you haven't seen before. This is the second map in Post Mortem that starts you out with a Napalm Launcher, and I don't know why Monolith thought it would be a good idea to do this twice considering the Napalm Launcher is a broken weapon. This is one map I'm glad I get to be over with quickly.

5/10.

The Dungeon
Newhard, Wilson

EC Pitchfork

Spoiler

Go straight at the fork. This huge open area is rife for infighting, but you'll have to get rid of the Browncoats and Fanatics using the MOUSE2 Shotgun first. Now you can get to work. The Zealot probably won't kill many of the Butchers, but he'll put a dent into them. You can use the Ackolytes to help out too. Up the lift and around the first bend, use a MOUSE2 Flare Gun to kill the cultists at the far back. Around the next bend, you can crouch down to let the Zealot kill the Hellhounds. Usually he'll kill both of them and still be alive, but occasionally he'll trade with the Hellhounds, which will save you some health. Getting the Skull Key opens monster closets with Browncoats in them, so watch out for that. There's a Voodoo Doll in there you can use to thin out some of the Gargoyles. At the switch you press to unlock one third of the sequence, there's a Cloak. Take it, and run to the right hand door while inputting the sequence as fast as possible (when I say "right-hand", I mean the door that needs Moon, Fire and Dagger in that order. It's the right-hand door because it's the door that's on the right when you start the map). Kill the Browncoat behind the door, flip the switch, go to the brown lever and wait for your Cloak to run out. You don't want to push the lever just yet, you should clear out this room before opening up the door to the next area. There's a Fanatic on the other side of the hall that will snipe you. Use the Tesla Cannon in this area to kill both Cheoghs, and then Dynamite the Butchers. Or you can crawl under them and naturally lose them by running around. You'll want to go right and clean this area with the pillars out, because past the bridge you can get the Napalm Launcher which will trivialise the rest of the map. You'll have accrued a lot of gasoline as you're playing this map, so everything can be donked really easily. That's not to say you should start slacking off though, because this map is really long, and the final path plus the ending ambush can still scam you. You can use the 64 tesla you can get before the Moon door to damage Shial and then finish her off with the Napalm Launcher, and you can make a jump from the railing to the Moon Key to get it easily. The final path is no trouble at all with your Tesla Cannon and Napalm Launcher. You just have to brave the napalm trap at the start.

Hmm... this map's very long, and consequently easy to choke. If you play with a limited number of saves like I do, then it can be hard to decide where you want to put each of them. But also, there's a lot of health and ammo, and the Cloak in the Skull path really helps a lot. If you're not as experienced, this map can be harder than it actually is. 2/5.

So fun fact, of the nine maps in Post Mortem, Nick Newhard and James Wilson authored four of them as a pair. My only guess is that Nick Newhard was the original author of these maps and James Wilson was brought in when it was time to do Post Mortem just to clean them up and get them ready for shipping. Of the Alpha maps, The Dungeon is definitely the best. Forbidden Rituals is a little stronger in terms of visuals, but this map is stronger in terms of gameplay and atmosphere. Triumphantly (or you might even say subtly) reprising the MIDI of E2M1, E2M7 and E4M4, The Dungeon is a long journey with almost every kind of monster in the game coming back for one last stab at you. Pour one out for Gillbeasts, Bone Eels and Cerberus, the ones who didn't make it to the party. We could have had Cerberus in the fire pit with the Fire Pods if you expanded it out a little! This map technically has 199 kills, but with the Shial in it, it is guaranteed to exceed 200. Bizarrely, it doesn't seem like this map has any compatibility settings for difficulty, which seems odd if you were playing on Pink on the Inside and suddenly got slammed with such a large kill count. This is mostly the case for E6M6 too, where Skills 1 through 3 all have 113 kills. If you go straight, the mosh pit of a single Zealot, a handful of Ackolytes plus some Browncoats can get chaotic quick. If you get unlucky, you could get combo'd by Dynamite. If you pick the right door first up, you'll be chased to the edges of the map by two Cheoghs who will force you into crawling. And if you take the left door, you have to contend with a napalm trap and a dark area with Ackolytes and Fire Pods. You don't really want to take the left door first. It's best to get armed with a power weapon before the left door. Once you get the Napalm Launcher, the fights tend to blend together unfortunately. Shouldn't have made this gun so damn good! If only there was a two headed dog you could put in the map that was immune to fire and shoots the same broken projectiles you can... The Dungeon feels like a fitting sendoff to commercial Blood. 52 levels down, and now you get to cool off with number 53.

8/10.

[Quacken]

We've got three animals to put in the pound.

Beauty and the Beast
Newhard, Wilson

EC Pitchfork

Spoiler

Run straight ahead and collect the Tesla Cannon, along with the Shotgun off to the right. Then get all of the ammo in the loop, and locate the Napalm Launcher. Now you're capable of taking on the Beasts. The Beast is the only boss enemy in Blood that you have no choice but to fight fairly. His stomp is a unique hitscan attack that utilises weaponised fall damage to hurt you. Since fall damage cannot be blocked by armor, it will always do about 90 damage to you even if you have a full Super Armor. There are two quirks of the Beast we can exploit to help defeat all three of them. The first one is that the Beast's stomp needs a line of sight to damage you, so if you're peeking around a corner you can get out of the Beast's field of vision quickly to avoid taking damage. The other quirk is that the Beast has a dead zone. By staying (personal guess incoming) about 20 units away from the Beast, you'll stay far enough out of range for its melee attack, but you're also close enough so that it can't stomp you. There's a catch, though. Since most of your weapons produce knockback, the Shotgun and the Napalm Launcher are both no-goes. The MOUSE1 Shotgun is slow and gives you more opportunities to mess up and get hurt, and the MOUSE2 Shotgun will always launch the Beast far enough away from you so that it will immediately retaliate with a stomp. Additionally, due to how fast the Beast moves, the Napalm Launcher will launch the Beast forward if you ever try to use it against it, and the self damage will discourage you from using it up close. It's only really worth using the Napalm Launcher if the current Beast you're fighting is asleep and extremely far away, so you fire one or two shots to wake it up. The two best weapons to use are the Tesla Cannon and the Tommy Gun. The Tesla Cannon does high damage and doesn't push back the Beast, so you can remain in its dead zone. The Tommy Gun also doesn't push back the Beast. Good! Now you've gotta do that two more times and you're done.

This is an easy boss map like usual, if a little frustrating. The Beasts can occasionally be unpredictable, and without the Jump Boots, you don't have a way to cheese in this map. However, if you know about the dead zone the Beasts have, you should be okay with enough practice. 2/5.

EC Pitchfork Recap

Okay so, I don't usually do this, but I'm going to rank the difficulty of each episode from a scale of 1 to 5. Here we go!

Spoiler

Episode 1 - 5/5. This is by far the most difficult episode for a simple reason: You have the least amount of options available. You don't have the Aerosol Can, the Voodoo Doll, Remote or Proximity Detonators and no useful monsters you can use for infighting, and a few of these maps don't even give you Tommy Guns until way later.
Episode 2 - 1/5. The only hard map in here is E2M4 and also probably E2M3, if you don't know about the sequence break with Footstooling. Every other map is a cakewalk. You have a good amount of the weapons and can now use Butchers to infight with Gargoyles and Zombies. If you're interested in Extra Crispy, I'd recommend starting out by doing a single segment playthrough of Episode 2.
Episode 3 - 4/5. E3M2, E3M5 and E3M6 are all total headaches, and the other maps can also throw you through the dumpster if you don't what the best routes are.
Episode 4 - 3/5. There's half really difficult maps here and then half maps that aren't so bad. It's middle of the road for me, but for less experienced players it could very well be the hardest episode.
Cryptic Passage - 2/5. Most of these maps are mainly just long or filled with difficult platforming rather than being challenging. The Sunstorm guys give you a lot of ammo and don't like huge ambushes. After Episode 2, I'd recommend playing this one next.
Post Mortem - 2/5. A lot of these maps tend to have hard openers like E6M1, E6M5 or E6M6, but fizzle out very quickly and aren't very challenging overall.

Well, here we are. MAP53. I got tired of playing Blood around the 45th map mark, but I pressed on anyway. And just in the nick of time, too! Beauty and the Beast reprises E2M8's MIDI and tasks you with hunting down three of the very last monster to be introduced in Blood 1: The Beast. The Beast is a big grey boy with a big grey boot that will go up your ass if you're not careful. Out of the beast form, the Priest is just a clone of the Browncoat, but with a red hood and enough health to survive one napalm to the face. As the Beast, he has two attacks: The stomp, and a melee attack. The stomp is a hitscan attack that relies on a line of sight check to do damage. Contrary to what TheDragonLiner said, it does not turn the ground temporarily damaging (though that does seem like a very Build Engine-esque explanation, so good on you). The Beast can hurt you even if you're airborne, see. It's actually closer to how a Shambler from Quake does its lightning attack. Fight a Shambler and you'll see that it uses a similar hitscan attack (although the Shambler has a visual on their attack) and also relies on a line of sight check, which you can avoid by getting out of the way during its wind-up. The Beast's stomp attack uses weaponised fall damage, which cannot be blocked by armor. It can however be blocked by the Jump Boots, since they nullify fall damage. Very funnily, you can use the Jump Boots to essentially "parry" the stomp and conserve your Boots for all three Beasts, though timing it by pressing J repeatedly takes a lot of practice and good reaction time. If you own a mouse with multiple buttons, you could bind the Boots to one of those buttons if you want. Overall, it's a cool monster and a good recycle of Caleb's own Beast mechanic. It's the closest thing in the game to a werewolf, and considering it's a staple creature in horror I'm surprised it took them this long to add it. We don't even have a vampire-like creature in this game. You have to wait until Blood II for that. Beauty and the Beast features a cool fight, a good yet under-utilised MIDI, and is a suitable if a little anti-climactic conclusion to commercial Blood.

7/10.

Closing Thoughts (General)

Wow. This game's so good, they named the red stuff inside of you after it. Everything about this game is simply magnificent, it is genuinely one of the best games I've ever played. The art direction, the monster designs, the spritework, the guns, the voice acting, everything. I can't even play Shadow Warrior nowadays without wanting to go play Blood instead. Out of all of the commercial maps, there's like six or seven I genuinely dislike. The rest I can still enjoy and have fun with, mostly due to the fact that this game is so tight and cool to play that I can always find something new to experiment with or have fun. I don't really have a favourite episode honestly, all of them have their own unique qualities. I think I might like Episode 3 the best though. E3M1, E3M2 and E3M4 have room for tons of imaginative thinking, with E3M4 specifically probably being my favourite map in commercial Blood due to its unique MIDI and textures that only appear for this one map. E3M6 is a big sandbox with room to use lesser powered weapons like the MOUSE2 Flare Gun, and also the opportunity to practice Dynamite Jumps, both on the vertical side to get the Voodoo Doll early, and also horizontally, to go from the dam to the end of the map without needing to blow up the wall to raise the water. Episode 1 is also a classic too. E1M3 and E1M4 are really fun maps both visually and gameplay wise, and I like E1M6 as a test of your skill. I think Blood has tons of potential to expand itself as a series, but it's stuck in a lot of legal limbo between two awful companies, so unless Warner Bros. buys out Atari or something it's unlikely we'd really see anything else for a long time. Not unless we get that leaked Fresh Supply update, baby! C'mon Nightdive, give us an addon selector. Make Death Wish official. Do it for me, at least. My final rating for all 53 of Blood's maps is an 8/10.

[Quacken]

Vote for next month:

Maps by Aymeric Nocus (aka CK3D/MRCK)
Maps by Reginukem and Maps by Stephano Lessa +++

Since I'm not going to win a 2-0 deficit, let's make it a 3-0 deficit.

[FistMarine]

Posting this message before bed, to make it to the deadline and wrap everything up for this month. Warning: Long Post Ahead!

Quote

The swimming hitscanners can't kill you if you never actually go into the water during E6M4, and you just do the jump from the bridge to the Guns Akimbo and Cloak secret every time. Obviously.

True. But I found it difficult to not fall at least once in the water. Besides, someone has to go for full 100% completion anyway.

Quote

For the rest of these maps, it's double features all the way home. By the way, here's why cultists swim with proper sprites: The original player character before Caleb was a man named Michael. Michael used the sprites of a Fanatic. Michael got far enough into development where his swimming and crawling sprites were drawn, and their hitboxes were programmed in. Eventually when Caleb replaced Michael, his sprites were recycled to become the Fanatic, so it was easy to add the swimming sprites whenever the Fanatic was in water, and it was also easy to make a simple AI routine for the Fanatic to crawl around when he took damage.

That's interesting to know. I've read about this before and I was aware that the Player was using the Fanatic sprites in the Blood Alpha version. I personally think that the zombies should have also featured swimming sprites, as otherwise it looks pretty dumb and they should have drowned after a while. But as for cultists, I don't like how they become difficult to hit while they can easily hitscan you to death, despite Caleb also swimming. And the fact they never drown if staying too much in the water and the worst thing is when they extinguish themselves while they were burning to death. To me it seems there is too much jank in this game, more than Duke3D, which is why I get often frustrated when playing Blood.

Quote

I don't know if it was mentioned anywhere, but regarding the Beast boss fight, I eventually discovered a trick to slightly increase your survivability.

That's a really great tip. I must have read about this before in the comment section of an YouTube video but never tried it myself.

Quote

Not unless we get that leaked Fresh Supply update, baby! C'mon Nightdive, give us an addon selector. Make Death Wish official. Do it for me, at least.

I fully support this. While I am very sure that the work in progress patch will eventually go live in the following months or so, I'd especially like to see them starting to add community made content (IMO it was a missed opportunity and one of the downsides of Fresh Supply, offering no new content compared to the original retail version of One Unit: Whole Blood). And what better way to start than with adding the Death Wish mod, especially since I read that the mod will eventually get a fourth episode later this year. So yeah, if Nightdive reads this, besides fixing the remaining issues with the port and even going further to fix the game's annoying bugs/glitches (at least the kill counts and secrets), I'd really like to see the Official Addons thing become reality in Blood.

I also don't expect Fresh Supply to suddenly get a new official new episode in the new patch, to keep my expectations low, although a brand new official episode would be very nice and also remastering the cutscenes, like the recent remasters that Nightdive has done and many other QOL improvements. But if not, then having the Addons thing at least in the upcoming Fresh Supply patch. Please make it happen, Nightdive!

Anyway, before I begin the Cryptic Passage review, I want to make an announcement that after exactly one year, I have FINALLY managed to recover almost the whole data from the dead HDD! I have sent the HDD to a professional company (not located in my city, as none of the companies were able to help me in my city) and they were able to get my data back in about two weeks. Sure, it costed me over 300 euros but I'd say it was worth the price and have the old data backed-up on a nice external HDD, while I'm currently backing up the data from my current PC. I have learned my lesson from now on.

Also I forgot to mention earlier that a few maps in the Plasma Pak episode (and maybe also in Cryptic Passage?) don't seem to have difficulty settings implemented or barely have differences in them, according to the enemy count listed on the Blood Wiki, though Quacken already mentioned something similar in his reviews. This lack of difficulty settings in a few maps will bite the less experienced players who play on easier settings if they are playing the original DOS version, due to the difficulty bug, in which case the enemies will deal up to 3x more damage on easiest skill upon loading the save.

Without further ado, it's time for the Sunstorm's contribution to the Blood universe: Cryptic Passage (CP01-CP09, CPSL)

CRYPTIC PASSAGE

Boat Docks
by Michael Beaulieu

Kills: 129/129
Secrets: 5/5

The first map is pretty decent but I found it unbalanced because I struggled with the health a lot in the map. I also got killed plenty of times, even got killed at beginning by the first fucking cultist because he fell into water. See why I hate when this shit happens? Because they kill you faster than you can kill them and I barely had anything in the first couple of seconds. That cultist shouldn't have existed in first place.

On top of that, what Quacken said is true. None of the monsters drop any hearts in the episode (though there is a decent amount of them placed in most maps), the Tesla charges are placed in the map but the weapon itself isn't given until a few levels later, which made me wonder if I missed the weapon somewhere before realizing the early ammo pickups are to "set up" the weapon later. Also there are "Medicine Pouch" items in some of the levels, which refill 50 HP up to 100. Why didn't they use this health item more often in the game (this includes the Base Game + Post Mortem). Have they forgotten about the item entirely? It seems fully functional and the game would have flowed a lot better if this health pickup appeared in some secret places or whatever.

Anyway, I appreciate the fact that the level is possible to backtrack from the end at least. What I don't appreciate is that I didn't manage to have 200 health for the next level but instead I had 161 health because I exhausted every single health pickup in the level prior to picking up the Life Seed and yes I grabbed every health item with care (as in not picking up an essence unless 80 or lower health). But hey at least I have 200 armor of each type and a full Doctor's Bag in the inventory, so I'm not complaining.

Overall, this is a decent starting level but could have been better balanced in some parts.


Old Opera House
by Bill Buchalter

Kills: 140/140
Secrets: 3/4

Another level that frustrated me quite a bit. While there are some great battles, there are also some annoying ones with cultists hiding around corners and I just didn't like certain parts towards the end that had the underwater cultists, about five of them. Seriously, how the hell am I supposed to avoid them? They completely obliterated me in about 2-3 seconds. Though on my successful attempt I must have thrown a dynamite in the water that managed to take all of them out (oh yeah, you can't use dynamite underwater but you can still throw from the surface).

Also, this is the first map in the episode with the glitched secrets. From now on, you will have to get used to some maps with secrets that don't register at all or the other way around with maps where secrets don't count initially but then count afterwards after finding them.

Outside of some miserable parts, this is an interesting level.


Gothic Library
by Robert Travis & Shawn Swift

Kills: 50/51
Secrets: 4/3

Probably the shortest map of the episode and also one of the easiest. It shouldn't cause much trouble. The secrets are always much needed and will give you the advantage in order to succeed in the battles.

My issue with the level is that it's glitched in BOTH enemy and secret count. There is one non-existent enemy (or at least it never spawned for me on Well Done skill) but there is also one extra secret that is not counted at the level stats, which allows you to get more secrets that needed, like some levels in the base game. I suppose the extra secret is to compensate for that missing enemy or something.

Funnily enough, I checked some YouTube videos and I notice that Fresh Supply may have fixed the kill count in this map but the secret count was still showing 4/3. I still wonder why they didn't go ahead and fix these kill/secret glitches in their entirety? OK fine, I won't repeat myself again.

Overall, I thought this map was fine. Maybe should have been longer or placed earlier in the episode, seeing as it was quite easy.


Lost Monastery
by Robert Travis

Kills: 107/107
Secrets: 10/6

Interesting long level that is quite challenging at times. It also seems to have buggy secrets again, some of them aren't counted at map start or count twice and thanks to an YouTube comment, inside the Church, there is a secret where you jump through fire. Apparently the corners count as separate secrets too, thus you can get 10 secrets in this map.

There are two cool references in this level (also mentioned on Blood Wiki):
-You can find Duke Nukem's burned corpse in this level inside the church. Look carefully and you should spot it (near the secret place)
-The bell at the end of the level is very similar to the one you can find in first level of HeXeN!

Fun fact: This level is featured in the DEMO VERSION of Cryptic Passage! More on that below.
Overall, despite some annoying parts, I think this was an interesting level.


Steamboat
by Michael Beaulieu

Kills: 79/79
Secrets: 4/1

A fairly impressive level that takes place on a Steamboat, as the level name suggests. The combat may be cramped but it's not a very difficult level, especially the fact all four secrets are very rewarding, although once again not all of them are counted at map start. Just watch out for the monsters that will spawn later in the map, after completing various tasks.

If you want to finish the level with 200 health and armor, be careful when grabbing the goodies outside the boat. That water is very damaging. With that said, you should be grabbing the Life Seed secret inside the furnace first, because this one requires you to lose health. The Fire Armor reward is also not much useful when you already have 100 or more Fire Armor. Makes me wish that the regular armor pickups could go up to 200 anyway instead of being wasted on pickup if the limit is reached. I mean if the Basic Armor (50 each type) goes up to 100, then maybe the regular armor pickups should have also went to 200 maximum, although I understand that 200 armor should be limited to Super Armor pickup but still, it wouldn't have hurt to have the option to "repair" the armor by just grabbing existing pickups.

Back to the map. Honestly, I really liked this one. It was very impressive and it was challenging without being frustrating.


Graveyard
by Tyler Larsen

Kills: 156/156
Secrets: 7/6

Jesus. I didn't think a "simple" Graveyard level would give me so much trouble. Some encounters were pretty damn annoying and those cultists near the end that had the audacity to fall into water can go die in a fire (unless they get extinguished). Seriously, it was getting on my nerves.

Secret Exit (guide from Blood Wiki):

Quote

Just before you climb the stairs to push the switch that raises the staircase, turn around and jump into the fire. Reward: Access to Secret Level

NOTE: There is no way back if you fall down to the secret exit! Make sure to grab everything in advance before dropping down. The secret exit counts as the 7th secret of the map, despite being 6 initially.

Don't have much else to say. Although the map design is nice, I got pretty frustrated at the later parts in the map. Let's hope the secret level is worth suffering through.


Boggy Creek
by Robert Travis

Kills: 44/44
Secrets: 0/0

The secret level of the episode is relatively short and easy. There isn't much to fear at this level, you will just watch for enemies suddenly appearing behind you. Otherwise, the enemy count is low and won't give you much trouble. Also this map has no secrets at all.

I don't have much to say other than the level is alright and I appreciate it is possible to backtrack from the end. Also the map barely seems to have difficulty settings implemented, so it's nearly identical between each skill in terms of enemy placement, though again not that much of a problem.


Mountain Pass
by Robert Travis

Kills: 80/80
Secrets: 3/3

Well, this level wasn't as painful as I thought it will be. I think I only died a few times by accidentally falling into pits when backtracking. Also learned that one of those cultists that ambush you halfway through map, will drop TWO TESLAS when they die! However it's only one specific cultist and if he falls into pit, he dies but you don't get to grab his weapons.

At the end of the map, you need to complete the three teleporters puzzle. You take the teleporters in a particular order to unlock the next one. Once doing the last one, you unlock a passage (see what I did there?) that leads to a couple cultists and the final teleporter. It's important to note that after taking the final teleporter, there is NO WAY BACK to the rest of the map! So you know, just grab everything in advance. I recommend saving just in case.

It's okay, I didn't mind this one.


Abysmal Mine
by Shawn Swift

Kills: 67/67
Secrets: 0/2

The map isn't as hard as I expected and I even beat it without dying this time around. Well, almost. Because after I reached the end and backtracked for stuff and to get the secret containing Life Seed and Super Armor, I dropped down without having activated the pillar first, so I couldn't get back up and the only choice left was committing suicide. Well at least I saved before dropping down to get the secret, so I didn't lose any progress.

I'm not going to talk about the encounters or the progression but more about the secrets. Besides the two existing glitchy ones you find in the usual Blood guides (Wiki, YouTube, etc), there is one extra secret that I discovered by reading an YouTube comment! Yes, there is an apparent third secret that still does not affect the level stats but it's worth mentioning because of the rewards: Near the mine entrance at the beginning, blow up the crack on the right side to collect Tesla Cannon and Life Seed!

Overall, I think the level is alright in the end, even though a few parts seemed a bit confusing.


Castle
by Jeff Cleveland

The final level of the Cryptic Passage is very long and very difficult! You have been warned!

There are also five secrets to find and they will be listed below, since you have no way to check level stats in DOS Blood, so be sure to double check the secrets (Guide taken from Blood Wiki):

Quote

Before you enter the door leading to the walkway surrounded by water, look left. There is a different-colored section of wall. Reward: Life Seed
After the secret above, turn left and jump into the water. Follow the passage and surface. Reward: Beastvision, Napalm Launcher
Walk into the fireplace. Reward: Tommy Gun
In a large room with skinny pillars, turn around and face the doorway that you came from. To the left is a marked wall. Push it and a small area with a life seed will be revealed. Push the button here and you will be lowered to a hidden room. Reward: Tesla Charges
In the hallway with suits of armour on either side, there is a hidden switch on the right, between the first and second suits. If you hit it, the middle suit behind you will lower. Reward: Life Seed

Additionally, the map contains the first Jump Boots pickup (two in fact) in the entire episode and there is also a point of no return towards the end, or rather two points but the first one is more important to remember because until that point, you can go back at the very beginning to stock up on goodies before dropping down.

Angry note: Fuck that room with the Skull key. Took me like 15 attempts to get past it because the cultists would demolish me quickly, no matter what weapon I would use and most of my attempts ended with like one or two cultists remaining. I don't think a single other room in the entire BLOOD gave me that much trouble as this one.

Anyway, the other things to worry about include the FOUR Stone Gargoyles to defeat near the end of the map before the dropping point of no return! And that's without mentioning another Stone Gargoyle and a Spider Queen early in the level.

After making it through and reaching the last area (be sure to grab the supplies, as this is another point of no return), you will fight TWO CERBERI! Not one but TWO of them! I hope you are prepared for the ultimate battle of the One Unit Whole Blood!

Hint: there is a secret invulnerability if you press the buttons quickly and hide until you jump and grab it. Then spam the Tesla Cannon at the bosses until they are both dead.

Afterwards, collect the two dropped keys, press the two buttons and open your way to the exit. A new ending cutscene will play in the usual Sunstorm tradition, which also teases Duke It Out In D.C!

For those who don't know the order of events, Sunstorm has made the following expansions and were released by WizardWorks in this order: Duke It Out In D.C. (February/March 1997), Cryptic Passage (June/July 1997), Route 66 (November/December 1997), Duke Caribbean (January 1998) and the then-unreleased Wanton Destruction (meant to be released in January/February 1998 but was cancelled due to poor sales of SW and after it was found in some lost drives, it was eventually released for free in September 2005).

The reason why I didn't put the exact date is because the release date varies between sites that list the dates, so there is no clear release date for most of these addons. Personally, I just use the date/timestamp of the files as reference for the time the games/addons came out. That's the best way to estimate dates in my opinion.

Another interesting trivia is that some of the addons for Build games (DukeZoneII, DukeDC, NWinter, Cryptic and Wanton) were released as a free one level demo, before the expansions themselves were released in stores.

In Blood Cryptic Passage's case, the one level demo features an earlier version of CP04: Lost Monastery. I haven't played the demo version of the addon to note the differences but I am sure MetHy has documented the differences between the demo and final versions of the maps in the Sunstorm addons demos. I definitely remember reading a topic a few years ago about that.

But wait, we aren't done YET with Cryptic Passage!




CRYPTIC BLOODBATH

As you may have expected, there's FOUR more DM maps to explore, those being CPBB1-CPBB4. I really don't have much to say about these maps, so I will let the screenshots decide.

Crypt of Despair
by Bill Buchalter


Pits of Blood
by Jeff Cleveland


Unholy Cathedral
by Tyler Larsen


Deadly Inspirations
by Charlie Wiederhold


BTW, if someone knows some technical details about Blood, can they explain to me why Monolith's logo appears in the right upper corner of the screen? It only appears in CPBB2 in the entire One Unit: Whole Blood pack and usually appears when playing custom maps/episodes. I have no idea what triggers it but it doesn't affect the gameplay in any way. Some sources say it appears during the demo recording mode but I haven't noticed a single demo recorded (also in Cryptic Passage no new demos play in the background), so I just find it weird. But enough with the questions, let's get this review done with!

CRYPTIC PASSAGE OVERALL: Pretty good expansion with some impressive level designs, although visually it is very gray at times and does not contain the new Plasma Pak additions, since this was released shortly after the main game came out. But the OUWB package contains CP in updated form (at least judging by the files being dated 12/08/1998, which funnily enough, are newer than the main OUWB files dated 15/07/1998) and works properly in the latest 1.21 version of the game.

Shame about the glitched secrets, though. Not sure what's with the glitched secrets and kill counts but even the original Blood episodes suffered from that. Cryptic Passage just has more maps with glitched secrets compared to the base game but also seems to have less maps with glitchy kills. I'm baffled that Fresh Supply hasn't fixed these inconsistencies but I'm going to speculate it's because it would make purists whine. Heck, I am a purist and I wouldn't have minded these changes at all. If you are going to do a new modern port/remaster, then feel free to fix all the game's annoying ass bugs. If I wanted the original experience, I'd just check out the original DOS version of Blood, as I have said previously.

BTW interestingly, this is the episode where I managed to complete more levels without dying: CP03, CP05, CPSL and CP08 (this one before backtracking). CP07 also wasn't that painful, so the deaths were kept to minimum. Also not counting the DM maps for obvious reasons. On the other hand, the other half of the episode kicked my ass pretty badly, so I have a hard time to decide which is the hardest episode as it seems every episode has That One Level.

Also something interesting that I should have mentioned earlier:

Quote

Shadow Warrior wasn't out yet and Sunstorm weren't contacted to do an expansion for it until after that game came out. Maybe Monolith got impatient and wanted the expansion out as soon as possible? This expansion came out less than a month after Blood did in the US, so maybe they literally had like 25 days to do an expansion.

There is something I don't understand. The Blood wiki says that CP was released at the end of June but the addon was actually finished on the 3rd July 1997, according to the data files from the original Cryptic Passage CD (yes I downloaded a CD image from a site to check out and compare with the OUWB 1.21 data files), so it was apparently released 3 days earlier before it was finished?

The same weird situation is with The Ultimate Doom, which also confuses me. The game was finished on 25th May 1995 (according to the timestamp of the game files) but it was released in stores on 30th April 1995, almost a month before it was already finished? That just doesn't make sense to me at all. But I'm not going to comment further on that. It's just that some of the release dates don't make sense when comes to certain 90s games. I definitely understand that a game released in stores can take days, weeks or even months but if it somehow releases BEFORE it was finished, then that's just weird.

Anyway, unlike Blood, Cryptic Passage has a nice exit-to-DOS picture that you can see here:


BLOOD OVERALL

Blood is a great game that was released at an unfortunate time, just a couple weeks after Redneck Rampage was already out, which overshadowed the former. It also felt like the developers were racing around the clock to get their Build game out of the door before the Full 3D games took over the market, despite the fact Quake was already out by summer 1996. It's only a miracle the 1997 Build engine games (at least RR and BLOOD) stood a chance against Quake 1 and 2.

With that said, as great as Blood is, it is not without its faults. Nope, not even close and I don't want to anger the Blood fans, especially that I enjoy Blood myself.

Let's get this out of the way: Blood is simply an amazing game with lots of great things about it (they are listed at the end of the review, to not repeat myself) but the two most important flaws/things that hurt the game for me are the many bugs/glitches and the unfair difficulty (mostly due to various balance issues). I just think they went a bit overboard with the enemy placement and traps in a few maps, IMHO. Not fun to enter a room and get blasted by 5-10 cultists all shooting at once.

Now of course the Doom/Duke/Quake/etc games also had plenty of traps and a few moments of an enemy spawned directly behind you (Quake is actually notorious for this in a bunch of its official levels) but if we compare Blood to Duke3D, I barely remember a few instances of enemies teleporting directly behind the player. Whereas in Blood, it's quite frequent to have an enemy unexpectedly ambush you and lead into cheap deaths because you didn't see that one coming. Even when starting the levels with 200 health, armor and a Doctor's Bag in inventory, you can still run low on health at some points in the level after taking too much damage. To me there were a couple levels where damage was pretty much unavoidable.

As for the bugs, there's too many to list, so I won't go into details here. I think it's difficult to tell which Build game was buggier between Blood and Redneck Rampage but I think most Build games were already buggy anyway, with exception of Duke Nukem 3D that seemed much more stable (it was still buggy at times but more functional than Blood) and Shadow Warrior (that was the most polished and least buggy Build game). I'm not counting Ion Fury here because it runs in EDuke32 and from what I can tell, it's pretty polished overall. But the early Build games (not counting Capstone games or other obscure games), including Blood and RR, were buggy as hell at certain times. I'm giving Blood some credit here because according to some leaked source, Ken Silverman was difficult to work with and this is also why Blood didn't have a GRP system like most later Build games did. Here is hope Fresh Supply packages all the OUWB files into a nice BLOOD.GRP file.

At the end of the day, with all due respect, I think I'm giving Blood an 8/10, which I would put on par with Shadow Warrior and both of them just slightly below Duke Nukem 3D because well, I grew up with Duke3D (never played SW until mid 2010s, never played BLOOD until early 2020s) and I have lots of nostalgia for it, as well as being the most influential Build game that I wouldn't trade Duke with any other Build game, no matter the fact the later Build games are much more advanced compared to Duke. It's just Duke is a lot more iconic and far better balanced. Its gameplay is also closer to Doom and far more straightforward, so it's easier to "pick up and play".

Also, what's funny is that BLOOD actually shares lots of similarities with Doom rather than Duke, with the following examples: 5 difficulty settings, invulnerability powerup, monster infighting, the way most pickup messages are formatted, etc. Though obviously the game is also very much Duke3d inspired, I mean that's indisputable and Duke Nukem himself can even be found as an Easter Egg is E1M4.

In short, when Blood works properly and the level remains challenging without being unfair, the game truly shines and it's one of the best 90s FPS games ever made. But when some shitty glitch gets in the way or many cheap/unfair deaths all happening in a short amount of time, then the game becomes a chore and very annoying to play that you want to save-scum and be done with the current level before taking a break.

In the end, the rating of 8/10 is pretty justified to me and that's also the rating that the game received in the 90s from most video game magazines/reviews. But I also think a 8.5 or 9.0 would be a better rating suited for Blood, that's if it had less bugs and the balance was better, it would have been a guaranteed 9/10 at least.

Here's hope that the Nightdive remaster gets fixed one day and starts receiving official addons such as Death Wish, as Quacken has also pointed out (glad to see I am not the only one with this wish).

Regardless of how you feel about my opinion, at the end of the day, BLOOD is still a worthy Build Engine Game to check out (DOS, source port or Fresh Supply) and it's definitely in the Top 3 Build Games, rightfully belonging in the Build Engine Holy Trinity.

TLDR: Pros and Cons

+Great Gameplay
+Great Protagonist
+Great Weapons
+Good Graphics
+Good Setting
+Good Soundtrack
+Interesting Story
+Plenty of Content
+Satisfying Combat
+Solid Level Design

-Bosses are often reused as regular enemies
-Cultists can be really annoying
-Cutscenes look like crap
-Difficulty can be unfair at times
-Plenty of bugs and glitches


Blood Overall: A solid 8 out of 10. I would have appreciated Blood a lot more if I played it as a kid (I never owned the game back then, although I found years later I had the shitty alpha version of the game and it never even ran on the old PC back then) and it got a better remaster with actually new content, which is why I'm waiting for the supposed work-in-progress patch, despite not owning Fresh Supply at all, I may actually go and pick it up if it gets a super update in the future that makes the remaster worth buying. Knowing Nightdive, they have many ways to surprise us with the remasters as of lately, in a very good way. Who knows what will happen next? Only time will tell.

Anyway, it looks like the maps by Reginukem and Stephano Lessa have won, so the new topic will be hosted tomorrow. Thanks everyone for the comments and see you on the upcoming September 2023 edition! Have a nice day!

[VGames]

Death wish works on Fresh Supply already.