Blood
DOS - 1997
| Alt name | Horror 3D |
|---|---|
| Year | 1997 |
| Platform | DOS |
| Released in | France, Germany, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, United States |
| Genre | Action |
| Theme | Europe, FPS, Fantasy, Horror, North America, Shooter, Zombies |
| Publisher | GT Interactive Software Corp. |
| Developer | Monolith Productions, Inc. |
| Perspective | 1st-Person |
| Dosbox support | Fully supported on current version |
Description of Blood
Arguably the best game ever made with Ken Silverman's Build 3D engine (the engine behind Duke Nukem 3D games), Blood is an excellent, atmospheric, and highly replayable first-person shooter that distinguishes itself from other DOOM clones with a great (albeit campy) sense of humor, memorable monsters, weapons, and sound effects - and of course a ton of blood.
First, it must be said that if you are offended by excessive gore and violence, don't play this game. True to its name, there is a lot of gore in Blood: fountains of blood spurt from everything you kill, decaying bodies explode in gory chunks when you hit them, and you will often find recognizable body parts and still-breathing humans crucified on walls. This makes the game very "over the top" in the gore department, and intentionally so. The result is that Blood is more silly and funny than scary - a "B-movie" kind of game. But as far as campy games go, Blood is by far one of the best and most entertaining. It makes up for any potential offense with wit and charm - but only if you are willing to lower your sensitivity threshold.
Now that we get the caveat out of the way, let's talk about the game proper. Fortunately, the catchy theme of gory violence is not all that Blood has to offer. While the graphics in Blood is inferior to other DOOM clones (they look too blurry and the palette too dull to me), the environment is wonderfully alive. Thanks to the Build engine, the sheer amount of actions you can do in this game is amazing. You can blow huge parts of the environment up - even destroy an entire train if you want. In addition to plenty of undead monsters, you will meet a number of memorable and funny characters including JoJo the Idiot Boy, as well as original monsters such as mimes.
The monsters AI is very good, especially when compared to most other DOOM clones. Blood also has excellent sound effects that more than make up for pixellated graphics: from the zombies' mumbles, to disembodied voices from the past, to your character, Caleb, quoting cool one-liners from Evil Dead and Shakespeare (he beats Duke Nukem 3D quips hands-down in my opinion), sounds add a great atmosphere to the game.
As would be even more evident in Monolith's later games (No One Lives Forever for instance), the level design in Blood is very clever, and is clearly what the designers put a lot of thought on. There are many thin walls you can blow open, rotating rooms, and fun and memorable "theme" levels (an abandoned ship, the carnival, and a moving train are my favorites). The gameplay is the same "find key X to open door Y to find key Z that opens door A that contains key..." gameplay of most DOOM games, mixed with a fair amount of switch throwing. But the fun level design, the sense of humor in everything, and the number of secrets you can discover make Blood very entertaining and eminently replayable.
Equally innovative is the design of weapons and various power-ups. Most of your weapons are very unique, original, and just plain fun to use. While you start the game with a standard-looking pitchfork, you will soon collect an impressive array of cool weapons, including a voodoo doll, a tommy gun, the aerosol can, and the life leech. Although the game suffered from a lot of bugs in the original release, they are minor bugs that did not detract from the excellent gameplay. Excellent multiplayer support and map/level editor rounds off this excellent game.
If you love 3D shooters, can at least tolerate campy humor, and are not offended by 'cheesy' gore and violence, Blood is one of the best games you will ever play. If you like the game, check out its excellent (but slightly less fun) sequel called Blood 2 also on this site. Two thumbs up, way up!
Review By HOTUD
External links
Captures and Snapshots
Comments and reviews
Joe Mama 2022-02-08 1 point
I love this game. Very fun and gory FPS. Also lots of secret places in all the map levels.
Ass1 2021-08-20 -3 points
I will never buy this game , you can find for free
Also source ports sucks balls. Dosbox is ruuni g fine on my win10 , i changed the mouse settings it runs smoothlm. Opengl crap and otber fanci functios is bs. Just scale the image and graphics looks crap. I prefer lirry old shit pixeled
Dovahslayer 2021-06-14 0 point
Hi guys, As many of you know, This is built on Build engine. Build engine of course held many classics, Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior are the big known ones. I know what you are about to ask, what does this have to do with anything? Well, another thing some or most of you guys know is that it's version with the Plasma Pak (Known as Blood: One Unit Whole) is gone from GoG and Steam because of Atari. I recommend to try to find the original One Unit Whole Blood and using a software known as NBlood64. NBlood64 is a source port based off of EDuke32 (Another recommended but for Duke Nukem 3D players) and actually supports more modern resolutions and also has a new shader engine known as Polymer. I have played it on NBlood64 for quite some time now. I hope this helps people!
Atari sux 2019-10-22 -5 points
This game is abandonware again. Just check the link "BUY ON GOG" here, it redirects to gog.com/games because the game is not available anymore! Atari has removed it from GOG and from Steam too! It is abandonware again!
Killbilly 2019-08-08 1 point
Great game, in fact probably the best of this era "before full 3d".
But I have to admit m probably weak, but never finished it whole, becaouse after few days playing it I started to feel actually sick from all the gore, dead decaying bodies, horryfic scenes etc. I learned I have limits in this way, because althrough this game is in fact full of humour, it really can give you real nightmares at sleep.
S topped in some level, where carpet airplane bombing of a city in desperate try to stop the invasion of evil occured.
LJG 2018-05-21 -1 point
How do I get the sound working? I can't get the game to run any of the sound card options right because of errors like MPU-104 errors when I try to run the Sound Canvas and General Midi options and IRQ errors when I try to use AWE 32 or Sound Blaster. I have no choice but to play with no sound. Help?
Caleb 2018-01-06 1 point
Really cool game, best of it's kind. Duke Nunem, Shadow Warrior etc, none of them can compare in level design, gameplay diversity between levels, music and of course black humor!
Space Man 100789 2018-01-04 1 point
I love this game for it's graphics gameplay and music but I love the humor
Overmind 2017-11-30 0 point
Best FPS ever !
And I say that in 2017 after competing over 1000 games.
a goody goodie 2017-07-09 -1 point
i bought the steam version but you're all better off getting blood CM since it has the One Unit Whole and it's a source port plus it's free
GUY FAWKES 2017-04-22 1 point
Oops. Didn't realize it but this it the deluxe version, both packs are included. I found two additional unofficial expansions too:
Read Hot: http://bloodline.eu/downloads-show-112
And Level Pack 6: http://forums.transfusion-game.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1133
I also found a cd image of the cd audio tracks ripped here: http://www.moddb.com/games/blood/downloads/blood-cd-quailty-audio
mount it in DOSBox to use.
GUY FAWKES 2017-04-22 1 point
Anyone have the expansion packs "Cryptic Passage" & "Plasma Pak" (episodes 5 & 6)?
Wolfe 2017-03-01 0 point
Seem to have sound sorted but mine says it cant detect FM chip and wont load..... any ideas???
Mars 2017-02-26 3 points
No sound?
open setup.exe in DosBox.
Choose Sound FX Card
SoundBlaster
Change Sound Card Type
Sound Blaster or compatible
Change interrupt
IRQ7
Hit esc on keyboard
Test Sound FX Card
Hit esc on keyboard
Save and launch Blood
Mars 2017-02-26 0 point
To the question about allocating memory:
Go into the DosBox folder, double-click on the DosBox Options.bat
scroll down to memsize and set it to 63.
memsize=63
Bugsy 2016-11-25 0 point
Hey folks, I was wondering - is this the shareware version, which only contains the first episode, or is it complete? I've already got the shareware and have been trying to find a download with all the episodes (The Way of All Flesh, Even Death May Die, etc). Thanks in advance!
Skully 2016-07-16 0 point
If I told you there was an Evil Dead version of Duke Nukem 3D, would you believe me? No? Play Blood and I'll ask you again later. ;)
knex 2016-03-27 1 point
I use DOSBox on Win10, I get a low memory warning, it says it require 23mb memory, and the game performance is extremely laggy.. Anyone know how to allocate more memory?
APE 2016-03-23 4 points
to all that have problem launching this fine game - change IRQ to 7. Instruction for dummies : type Setmain.exe in blood directory and then in menu: Sound setup-Choose sound FX card-Sound Blaster- Change Interrupt - IRQ7 - Use these settings and continue - 32 voices - 16Bit mixing -stereo sound - 22KHz. Then Escape, then Save and launch Blood ... Happy massacre
Jord4wesome 2016-01-14 2 points
Game does not start. Setup launches but the game loads up to the sounds and then it crashes. Help plz
macho 2015-07-07 2 points DOS version
i wont work... it starts... but wont go into the game... :(
TrOpicAL Sn1Per 2015-06-22 0 point DOS version
Awesome game! this is one I'll keep for when I want to see lots o' blood xD
Gio_Man 2015-04-16 -1 point DOS version
Does Launchbox work on this and if not how would you make it work? ---- Great Site by the way, Love the collection of titles
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Buy Blood
Blood is available for a small price on the following websites, and is no longer abandonware. GOG.com provides the best release and does not include DRM, please buy from them! You can read our online store guide .
Game Extras and Resources
Some of these file may not be included in the game stores. For Blood, we have the following files:
2 MB (DOS)
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