BLOOD: Fresh Supply

Playtime: 16.1 Hours

Finished 23 August 2025.

Played on PC on the "Normal" difficulty, Lightly Broiled. Figured this was the best balance since this game is super hitscan-heavy and Build Engine games tend to be pretty gnarly on higher difficulties. Played the original episodes first, then Cryptic Passage (EP5), and finished with Post Mortem (EP6); went out of my way to find the secret levels but didn't obsessively hunt for secrets otherwise.

This is the last one of the "Big Three" classic Build Engine games that I played (the others being Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior), and the only one that was remastered by Nightdive using their KEX engine. I think it's generally considered the best of the bunch, but I'm not quite sure if I agree - I think it's great overall, but I personally like the flow of Shadow Warrior's gameplay and levels a bit more. The theming in BLOOD is spot on, mixing a vaguely gothic and medieval architecture with a gritty zombie/vampire vibe, though there are bits and pieces of more modern technology that are thrown in at points for some reason; like a modern shopping mall with escalators, a supermarket, etc. These are occasionally interspersed throughout all of the episodes, not just Post Mortem. It kind of feels like every episode ends up in some kind of ancient ruin or castle area, though, which got pretty stale by the end of the game; they never really committed to just having one set in more "normal" locations all the way through for better or worse.

Gameplay has some pretty annoying issues which made this a bit less fun than SW for me. The biggest (and most obvious) is the obscene use of hitscan to "artificially" inflate the difficulty of the game. All Build Engine games do this, but this one is by far the most egregious of the bunch; dumping hitscan cultists all over the place with near-instant reaction times is basically just a method of adding guaranteed health attrition through the level since there's no real counterplay available on a first playthrough. At least the explosive weapons are fun, since I really ended up spamming the crap out of them. The weapons in general are really interesting and quite varied in their purposes; the flare gun is a good DoT that can easily get rid of weak enemies, the life leech staff can be used as a turret, and the voodoo doll is a super cool "sniper" superweapon. Even the shitty weapons like the hairspray flamethrower and the tommygun have their uses, since this game has a few different kinds of "tiny" enemies with 1hp that swarm you at times. The napalm and plasma guns feel super out of place compared to all the other early-1900s weapons you can get, but at least they're really fun to use.

All of the episodes are pretty good, making this probably the most consistent game of the Build Engine classics. There's nothing like Duke's massive & empty Smithsonian level, nor anything as annoying as some of the wasp levels in SW. Some levels have pretty obscure button hunts or mechanics but that's about as bad as it gets; encounter pacing is good and a decent number of levels have memorable puzzles or architecture that make them particularly fun to play. That said, this consistency alongside stale theming make lots of the levels blend together after 50+ levels, but I think this happens with pretty much any old 2.5D game.