BLOOD
by Lee Hamrick
Had enough of slobbery, jagged-toothed aliens? That's understandable--
practically the entire gaming world has spaced out (contrary to the
gaming community's usual rock-solid sanity), taking inspiration from
grainy print supermarket tabloids heralding alien abductions. From old
standbys like Doom and Duke Nukem, to as-yet-unreleased titles such as
Prey and Unreal, every 3D action game, it seems, is boldly going where
no man (but the whole first-person 3D genre) has gone before.
Get ready for a change.
Developer Monolith Productions (check out our exclusive Q&A), with the
help of 3D Realms, has gone back to the good old days of three-eyed
supernatural evil in its follow-up to Duke Nukem 3D--viciously and
viscously titled Blood.
the devil made me do it
Tentatively scheduled to make its debut at the end of this year, Blood
makes no bones about its horrific origins. Enter into this chilling,
haunted-house world and adopt the role of an embittered member of the
Cabal cult. Dedicated to the worship of a (thankfully) mostly
forgotten, thoroughly vile deity named Tchernobog (pronounced
"churn-o-bog"), you have sacrificed and tortured, murdered and maimed.
Time and time again, however, your reward for such faithful service
has been empty promises and requests for even more soul-damaging acts.
Enough is enough!
Initially armed with only with a trusty, devilishly inspired
pitchfork, it's time to take on former fellow cult members and their
despicable undead allies in a quest for revenge that will make a brave
man turn his heels and run like the wind.
give me more monsters!
Satan's spawn
The fiends in Blood, chomping at the bit to inflict their various
tortures, run the gamut from flora to fauna to fish to fowl. Wait
till you lay your eyes on creatures like the Gill Beast (imagine the
love child of a piranha and a Sleestak having a low-self-image day).
And Giant Spiders may not have venom powerful enough to kill, but
their bite can blind you. Hell Hands are also in the spider family,
but more along the lines of The Addams Family's five-fingered pet, It,
turned psycho.
Free-floating Phantasms are scythe-wielding vendors of death capable
of teaching a Salad Shooter a few things about slicing and dicing. If
this isn't enough, two different species of Gargoyles (regular and
stony) pretend to be the statues...until you get close enough, at
which point they descend in a talon-ripping, fang-flashing frenzy
capable of paralyzing on contact.
Continuing in the twofer mode, look for zombies of more than one
variety. Ax Zombies may be dumb as a post, but a post in the middle
of a highway can still do some serious damage--not that you'll be
driving anywhere anytime soon. And posts don't rise to kill again
after being blown to bits. The Fat Zombie is the hard-hitting heavy of
the tribe. These tubby toadies, perhaps butchers in their first
incarnation, carried their cleavers with them to the grave. And they
ain't afraid to use 'em.
If you thought Rottweilers were trouble, take on the Hell Hounds--
undead two-headed mastiff versions of Quake's little doggies. And
proving that hell's reach goes beyond the vertebrate, the Chrysalid
plant, which moves faster than Alabama kudzu, spits venom and draws in
prey with its trailing tentacles.
When the final confrontation comes with Tchernobog, be ready for a
surprise. The demon lord is being kept under tight wraps until the
game launches.
what about the weapons?!
hell's bells...and whistles
So besides your pitchfork, what tools are you going to use take your
Satan-spawn ex-buddies out? Well, when it comes to weaponry, 3D Realms
is preparing some very inventive twists for the Blood arsenal.
The most recently completed weapon is the napalm cannon. Lobbing out
fireballs of the sticky, flammable stuff, the cannon can set foes
aflame and do concussion damage in a wider area. For a pocket-powered,
more personal blast of heat, you can use a can of aerosol hair spray
and a lighter for a flamethrower straight from beauty school hell.
And since you are in the realm of the supernatural, why not conjure up
a little damage? Grab a voodoo doll and a needle and stick it to those
nasty creatures. But not all weapons work equally--while effective on
all the dread inhabitants, bad mojo works best on zombies and other
undead freaks.
Tolkien said that black magic always comes back to hurt the user, a
warning you might want to keep in mind when wielding the multipurpose
Hellstaff.
As a long-range weapon, the staff fires blasts of ectoplasm capable of
killing and/or paralyzing opponents. If used as a close-range weapon,
this bad boy can suck the soul out of an opponent faster than a Hello,
Larry rerun. Stolen souls replenish the staff's ectoplasm supply, and
that's important; if the staff is fired without any ectoplasm, your
own health will be used to supply the charge.
Other weapons include a cool-looking Tommy gun, the now de rigueur
shotgun, and flares, which can be used to signal friend or foe, and
can also melt the armor off your bothersome opponents.
tell me about multiplayer Blood!
heads are gonna roll...literally
After (or before, if you're like me) mastering solo play and sending
Tchernobog back to his rancid abyss, it's time for more advanced play
against real live people. Nick Newhard, senior game developer at
Monolith Productions, says that multiplayer options are still in a
state of flux. With all the new developments in multiplayer
technology, Blood is fighting to keep the pace.
Because this game is based on the Duke Nukem model and engine, we
expect the same type of Duke-style networking, hopefully with the
addition of Internet support and drop-in-style network play (ala
Quake). The company is currently considering both.
Despite this, Blood's multiplayer gaming is being designed to thrill.
For instance, after blowing the head off your opponent in Bloodbath
(deathmatch) mode, you can teach that separated head a lesson by
kicking it around awhile. The twisted developers have even designed an
in-house soccer field made to test this feature. And the gorefest
victim retains his vision for a ball's-eye view of the festivities.
The voodoo doll also takes on some cool new multiplayer properties.
Stab your own black magic doll in the eyes for a cumulative blinding
effect on the nearest target. Wanna play dirty? A quick stab in the
groin is as devastating as it sounds.
highway to hell
Your passport to this unholy land will be a Pentium-90 with at least
8MB of RAM, and probably 16MB for the best results. According to
Newhard, "the art work on disk for the registered version is
approaching 25MB without cinematics." Sometimes big things don't come
in small packages.
While Blood is built on the Duke Nukem Build engine, several
enhancements have been made. The renderer has been changed to allow
for more-realistic 3D effects, including the ability to place sectors
directly over other sectors. Also, a new sprite-drawing technique
makes for cleaner, clearer polygons without the building-block look
found in earlier games. 
Monolith Productions, surprisingly, is developing the title to be
native to DOS, with a possible Windows 95 version on the back burner.
When it comes to other platforms, expect Blood to follow Duke Nukem's
wake. If Duke is successfully transported to other platforms like the
Macintosh and Nintendo 64, Blood will probably do the same.
For more information, straight from the source's mouth, check out our
exclusive interview with Monolith Productions' Nick Newhard. And to
get a quick, creepy feel (of the game!) don't miss Blood's excellent
Web site. The music alone will curdle your...well...you know.
Copyright; 1996 CNET Inc. All rights reserved
The interview is posted as message subject "Blood Interview".
Mike.
... Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your taglines!
--- FMail/386 1.02
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