Blood 2 : The Chosen

(Monolith/GT Interactive, 1998)

While it would be quite a while before the Lithtech engine was modified enough to make impressive games like Sanity: Aiken's Artifact and No One Lives Forever, Monolith's first Lithtech engine game, Blood 2, was at least an inspired sneak peek of games to come. Unfortunately, much like the original Doom-clone game that inspired it, beta testing was abysmal, and it wouldn't be until the eventual version 2.0 patch, before the game was decently playable. As for the game itself, it was admittedly not as humorous at the prior game, even though it had one perk; all of Caleb's friends that were defeated in the prior game, are brought back to life in the sequel. This includes Ophelia, Caleb's girlfriend (shown here), who can be played as an alternate character (including in multiplayer). Graphics were impressive, though admittedly this was very cliché, shoot-everything-moving type stuff, and with 1998 releases like Half Life and Thief, Blood 2 seemed rather dated, indeed. It didn't help matters when a majority of areas included leeches, spiders, or walking hands (a la Evil Dead 2) which would annoyingly "distort" the screen if you walked near them, which was often! The idea was that these creatures "poisoned" you into dizziness, though after seeing this effect slow down the action for the hundredth time, this gets old and annoying very fast. The rest of the game, however, is visually impressive, as well as intriguing for horror genre fans, warranting a marginal-thumbs-up rating...

Rating : Small Crater.

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