Nightdive Studios and Monolith Productions re-release of Blood as Blood: Fresh Supply has been receiving a lot of positive feedback from most gaming outlets and casuals. However, hardcore enthusiasts are able to see behind the glitz and glamor of the hype veil, and outline some of the issues that plague a game after removing the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia.
YouTuber Civvie 11 actually put together a near seven minute video talking about Blood: Fresh Supply, noting how the game actually does get a lot of things right and how it plays very similar to the original game that came out back in 1997 on the Build engine, the same tech that powered the incomparably popular Duke Nukem 3D.
As pointed out in the video, some of the hit damage for the enemies has changed, some of the weapons don’t quite do the damage they’re supposed to, some of the enemy AI don’t use the weapons they’re supposed to on the higher difficulty settings, turning on the disable run glitch prevents the cultists from throwing dynamite, and the game regularly crashes when you attempt to tweak certain settings.
One of the more egregious examples depicted in the video is a glitch where when you attempt to change the field of vision settings it warps the vision and makes it look like you’ve entered into plaid speed.
Now based on the current crop of user reviews, many don’t seem to have much of a problem with the issues that were presented in Civvie 11’s video. However, there are some smatterings of reviews that managed to float their way to the top like a foam cup in an over-flooded septic tank that encourages gamers not to purchase the game right now due to some of the issues mentioned in the video.
Easternmcg, for instance, wrote in his review…
“It’s Blood, what else is there to say. Great game. Best of the build engine games. Sadly, this port is not where it needs to be right now. Crashes frequently, Steam overlay is broken with dx11 api. Sprites spontaneously start to flicker, and walls flicker back and forth betrween opaque and transparent. Switching to Vulkan can cause a CTD which locks up the game and forces you to open the task manager to kill the process. Little to no quality of life improvements. Barebones Multiplayer with no way to play privately with friends. No Linux port either as of writing. “
There were separate but similar complaints from the user Clockwerk as well, who focused more on the game’s sound issues than the other glitches, writing…
“[…] There are quite a few bugs and sound issues that hinder my satisfaction with the product, such as, Cultists making noises they never have before, Zombies making the wrong noise for dying and faking death, enemies not playing their respective alert noises when spotting the player, Enemies just sort of wander when they notice the player, Phantasms struggle to get close enough to strike the player, and interaction with switches is awkward and sometimes don’t work at all. However a good majority of these problems are unnoticeable to a new player to Blood.
“That said, this brings up another good point. The game really has nothing to offer someone who is a Blood veteran and owns the original game. The only thing it can offer is a functional multiplayer system and even then, the game lacks a private lobby option. Everything this port has going for it can be gotten through other ports like BloodGDX or NBlood. I imagine that all of these problems will be sorted out in due time. […]”
That’s one of the things to keep in mind; even with the negative reviews, they still tell most gamers to keep an eye on the game and when it gets patched to improve some of the core issues, make a go for purchasing it.
Thankfully, most of the issues aren’t major, and could be tweaked and fixed here and there. The only really big problem is the crashing, obviously. But some of the sounds not being right is a matter of swapping in the correct sounds, and some of the enemies not performing certain actions is a matter of checking the call functions to see what’s prohibiting them from carrying out that action, and the floating issue with the jumping is a matter of modifying the player’s gravity or jumping acceleration/deceleration.
I imagine Nightdive will address some of these problems in an upcoming patch. And since the game just released on May 9th, you may have to give it just a little bit of time.
Blood: Fresh Supply is currently available on the Steam store for $9.99.
Alternatively you can grab BloodGDX or NBlood from the Duke4 forums or the M210 Projects website.
(Thanks for the news tip Gameplay)
