What do you think of Blood II? And why so?

Discussion about Blood II and its addons.

What is your opinion of Blood 2?

Pretty good
Pretty bad
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Re: What do you think of Blood II? And why so?

Post by Krypto » May 12th, 2015, 18:57

What I've always wanted to know is the background story behind the development of Blood II as I haven't seen it discussed on any fan related or mainstream gaming site. It's a well known fact that the game was released in a unfinished state hence the complete mystery and anomalies behind the storyline as to why the other Chosen are alive and why they don't play any significant role in the game, the poor level design, broken mechanics, unfinished engine, mediocre gameplay, the game's development was rushed but was this under orders from GT Interactive who were the publishers and literally would have threatened to scrap the whole project and not ship the project if Monolith didn't submit to their will? Or was Monolith also largely responsible for the mediocrity of the final product?

The game engine is a buggy, incomplete mess. Apart from physic oddities such as body parts flying in mid air, enemies acting strangely and the high ratio of crashes, the environment i's completely dead and static like Quake with no level of interactivity with the world's environments or objects, take the pathetic way in which most objects crumble into a small heap without any visceral animation and a crappy placeholder sound with no differentiation between a bookshelf and an explosive barrel.

The stiff and disjointed feel of the player movement, jumping is too short and useless, bullets impact on corner walls too frequently and easily diminishing distance based weapons, you don't move anywhere near as fast or fluid compared to it's predecessor where you could rely on evasive movement and tactical jumping, in Blood 2 your rendered completely vulnerable to enemy fire due to the aimbot nature of hitscan enemies which fire constantly on site instead of turning to face your current position, so theirs no way you can evade fire in close quarter or distance combat with smart movement and quick reflexes but are hopeless without any viable wall cover, in addition because of this you can't develop any effective tactics but have to hope you kill enemies quickly before they diminish your health, so all semblance of difficulty balance is thrown out of the window.

The irony is the demo for Blood II used the best level in the entire game, The Cabal Biological Research Facility which in my opinion is a glimpse and vision into what Blood 2 could have been, that level has a realistic setting with interesting set pieces and objects as to opposed to the mediocre and generic sewer type filler levels which make up most of the game, with lots of gameplay and gun fights but supplemented with corridors and plenty of cover, also showing off the excellent ambient soundtrack to really gauge the intriguing Caleb in a futuristic setting scenario.

I don't think this game is horrible as many are quick to put down simply because in comparison to the original their is no comparison, and taking that out of the equation it's not such a bad shooter but the core component which really diminishes it despite the above flaws is the poor level design. It's boring, linear, tedious with far too many filler levels and backtracking, their is no incentive to replay most of the game as only a few key ones have any sense of non-linear exploration such as the Cabal Lab and the following Airship level. The fact you have multiple characters to choose from doesn't make up for this given the storyline is completely stripped out and they should have received their own unique background story to explain their origins and how they ended up in this present day situation, their is barely any interaction between each member of The Chosen and the few instances are often stupid, slapstick jokes.

A great shame it could have been a very interesting sequel but neither is it a complete abomination because it still retains a cool, distinct theme and is enjoyable but it's decisively average to mediocre 5/6 out of 10.

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Post by Snehk » May 16th, 2015, 20:53

Previous post made me want to play B2 after a long time again, and reply to this thread. There really is no comparison between the first Blood and it's sequel. In my rather short playthrough I've got over nine crashes in like twenty minutes. When I finally managed to play, I saw why the game is average at best.

First of all, the enemy A.I has many quirks. There were a few moments when I could stand for a long while in front of a zombie that still haven't detected me. When we meet human opponents it gets even worse. When you kill one of them, it draws attention of others and leads to the endless shouting. In the airplane levels I could hear their annoying shouts long before I reached them, only because I killed some of them before. It's not only annoying, but warns the player that there is danger ahead. There's also the almighty aimbot, which makes any tactics futile. The only challenge in B2 might be playing without using medkits, life essences and life seeds; running around with HP at level from 1 to 5 at "suicidal" difficulty.

The second thing is the movement mechanics. When running around i felt like flying around in no clipping mode in Half-Life. The jumping is weird, and swimming was even worse.

Also, I don't like some of the design decisions and plot. You start in a train, go through the alleys and run into a museum. All of this while fighting aimbot enemies on the way. Then you finally reach Gideon and his bodyguard. Guess what happens next? Suddenly out of a portal appears Gabriella! What the hell they did to Gabriel?! The character is weird, and voice acting in my opinion is horrible. Also, Calebs voice seems different, somehow strange. Next, I can't say why, but the appearance of zombies looks wrong to me; and the shrieking, spiky alien is just stupid. Running after Gideon all the time is annoying, and in the end you get a one eyed blob that takes a short moment to kill. Level design is linear and bland, with little to no interaction with the world.

Then there are also weapons and shared ammo. While I don't mind changing the pitchfork for knife, I can't stand all the bullet based weapons sharing the same ammo type. The die-bug-die weapon would be better if it was more useful and dealt more damage. Next thing I don't like is that the voodoo doll is not working when firing through a window. Also, all of the weapons can gib your enemies, which feels a little stupid when you shoot someone with beretta and gibs fly all around.

The game could've been better if it had less bugs and a good story. Monolith simply haven't used the potential that the title had at the time, that's why the game is average.

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