Pun intended.

Dark humor plays an important role in this extraordinarily entertaining horror-themed Doom-clone that aims at jugular and funny bone with equal verve. Our anti-hero is an eccentric Old West gunslinger--an assassin with wit. He cracks wise and mumbles corny one-liners. He sings Sinatra and impersonates Elvis. He quotes Evil Dead movies.

All in all, Caleb's a pretty cool dude, for a vicious serial killer. Though you'll eventually tire of his moderate repetoire of ad-libs, they're still an awful lot of fun. Most comments are random, though a few are event-specific. The voice actor's delivery ranges from dry drollery to simpering sarcasm.

Enemies are chatty, too. Though their store of patter isn't small, it feels that way and if trying to make out what they're saying doesn't drive you a little mad, the repetition will. You'll forgive them, however--they rave and rage in a weird, Lovecraftian language that sounds pretty damned creepy. There's a guide to this language at the website below.

All the sound in Blood is very nice, in fact. Music, echoes, chanting, screams--all very atmospheric. Oh, by the way, these are loud and protracted screams, folks. If you don't believe me, just wait till you're playing one night when everyone else in the house is asleep and Caleb catches on fire! You stand warned--adjust the volume accordingly.

As the title implies promises, Blood is neither sterile, nor tidy. Arterial sprays are common. Severed heads explode with a loud and messy squelch when kicked around and health powerups look like bleeding and still-beating hearts. Dead bodies, gouged-out eyes, torn limbs and sundry lumps of unidentifiable viscera mark ole Caleb's passage. They splash when you stomp on them. They get in your way. You can actually feel a difference in the quality of the ground in the messy areas. It gets squishy. Not for those tender souls who are sensitive to animated gore or violence.

Visually, Blood is something of a mixed bag. Like Doom, most of the monsters look pretty crummy. Graphics snobs will find the two dimensional sprites particularly pathetic. I suppose if you don't know what a 2D sprite is, then you're probably not a graphics snob--suffice it to say that most of the baddies look sorta lame. The backgrounds and textures are a different story, though--very impressive.

The variety of environments is also marvelous. You and Caleb will do battle in crypts and carnivals, tombs and trains. You'll trash department stores, destroy business districts and damage depots. Outside, inside and underwater, you'll have great fun navigating these nicely complicated settings, while killing everything in sight. At one point, you even get to go to Hell! The settings are loaded with enough Easter Eggs--pop culture homages, for those unfamiliar with the term--to please any horror fan. The Shining has an entire level devoted to it and Camp Crystal Lake makes a great place to explore. In fact, there really are no bad levels here. Each is unique, complex and creatively rendered.

The game environment offers more interaction than most shooters, at least in spots. Not everything in the background is mere set-dressing here. Cash registers, payphones and jukeboxes actually work in a limited fashion. Paintings and wall hangings can be torn down and often conceal goodies. Exposed wiring fizzles and spits, stoves can burn you and freezers make that cold fog when opened. Given its age and graphics engine, Blood is remarkable in the amount of detail.

Although the train--which is actually moving for an entire level--runs a spectacular second, the game's true showpiece is the carnival setting. Huge, clever and extensively detailed, this one is early enough in the game to be included in the free demo. It even boasts a secret sub-level--a sort of living funhouse--that is just indescribably great. Best of all, the Carny games are actually playable and give various powerups as the prizes! In a pinch, those zombie heads make darned good baseball substitutes! You'll have to kick instead of throw them, however, since Caleb's hands are always occupied with a weapon, and those pesky things are hard to aim. Trust me, save first; as I said before, they can take only a limited amount of punishment.

Okay, so we have a lot of cool places to explore, but what good is a shooting gallery without lots of moving (and bleeding) targets? Naturally, enemy forces abound. Don't waste much ammo, once you have some, on bats, which are impossible to hit anyway, even with the crosshairs turned on. Eventually you'll get the hang of skewering them with your pitchfork, but unless you're the must kill every single thing type, you can probably afford to ignore them too. Relatively inoffensive, they seldom hit and do little damage when they do.

Don't be lulled into a false sense of security, though--in minutes you'll be surrounded by flesh eating zombies, and they are only the beginning. Cultists, armed with machine-guns and lobbing dynamite, are just around the corner, and rats, unlike their flying cousins, are surprisingly fast and dangerous. Rats can really do a number on your hit points and should be dispatched rapidly. Spiders, also fast and deadly, actually have especially nasty venom!

Not all enemies are present in the free demo, which is a shame. MIA are smog breathing zombies and disembodied hands, which alone are worth the price of the boxed game. You'll see one in the demo, but it can't get at you, fortunately! I do not scare easily, but the first time I was attacked by one of these nasties, I actually jerked away from the computer screen and thought I felt the thing clasped around my throat--very realistic.

Expect a lot of hack and slash. Blood is a simple, unambiguous thing consisting of mostly combat. There's no AI to speak of, so you're much smarter than your foes, though some are amazingly fast and damned hard to avoid. Cultists, who know to hide and how to aim, are the most dangerous but like most video enemies, they are afflicted with suicidal insanity and never retreat or dodge.

One last word about baddies--Blood is actually rather easy to beat, once you discover the proper and safe way to kill every type of creature. I refer to a particular strategy here, not a weapon or a special place on their bodies to aim. I'm not going to tell the secret, but once you figure it you can pretty much beat everything while taking very little damage, even with the difficulty set to "Extra Crispy"! No, I'm not joking about the setting name. Play through the demo and if you still haven't figured it out you can email me and I'll tell you how to do it.

Weaponry, which is also somewhat limited in the demo, begins with a trusty pitchfork. You'll get cooler and more powerful goodies as you go, but don't abandon the farm implement completely--it can conserve a lot of ammo later in the game. You'll also find a flare gun, pistol rifle, flame thrower and dynamite, which, in a very nifty little touch, Caleb lights with a Zippo. He even uses aerosol cans as weaponry--after setting the spray on fire, that is. The full version features an actual voodoo doll and all sorts of other nifty toys. Oh, don't underestimate the flare-guns--they do little damage on impact, but after two or three hits, well, I'll just let you enjoy the fireworks.

Also nice are three visual side effects. Lack of oxygen, for example, darkens and grays out your field of view as you come closer to passing out. One type of venom makes your vision seriously blur and another makes you really dizzy. These are well-managed and add a nice touch of realism. There are also are bob and sway effects that toggle. Word of warning--at least one of my migraine-having friends is really bothered by these. Fellow sufferers and epileptics may want to turn them off, just to be on the safe side.

Speaking of settings, the controls are very simple, using the keyboard and mouse. A list of options allows you to change keys as well as alter visual and sound effects. Movement in the game is fairly straightforward, though certain actions require some manual dexterity and practice. Aiming a kick involves walking sharply into a small movable object, but this is tricky, as are distance jumps. Saving and loading are quick and non-intrusive. A massive set of cheat codes is out there for Blood and some of them are pretty damned funny in and of themselves. I won't give any away here, but they're at the website if you want them.

I've run Blood on everything from a 386 to my new 2001 model and several comps in between and it is remarkably free of bugs, though I understand that some of the fancy new soundcards aren't supported. I've also run it on machines running Windows 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98 and ME and all work fine.

While addictive and high quality, the game is not without faults. Aside from the uneven quality of the graphics, Blood has other Doom-evoking problems the same linear "go-through-level-get-powerups-click-on-everything-and-above-all-if-it-moves-kill-it" mission and the same anti-climactic ending. These negatives, however, shouldn't scare you off, so to speak, as this is a really first class game when judged by the right standards.

Okay, I'm rather fond of Blood - although my handle was not inspired by it, in case you were curious. If you like the sound of it, great! Grab the demo and I hope you'll enjoy! I bought Blood because I love horror stories and I appreciate it for the many reasons stated above, but before I wrap this long-winded review, I'd like to tell you what truly made me love it and why, even after all these years, it is still one of the best games I ever played.

Caleb has a backstory. You know who he is, what he's like and why he's fighting. Surprisingly enough for this sardonic and gory tour de force, his tale is romantic, tragic and rather sweet, with a compelling operatic feel. It won't make you like the game if tongue in cheek horror isn't your cup of lye, but it impressed me a great deal. Certainly better than simply finding yourself on Mars fighting aliens that looks suspiciously like demons--well, okay, aliens that look suspiciously like bad drawings of demons--for no apparent reason.

I'm going to go ahead and tell it to you, simply because the bulk of it comes from a CD insert and an AVI, neither of which comes with the free demo. I'll apologize in advance--I'm recreating this from memory, so forgive me if any of it is incorrect. As a life-long role-player and real life actor and director, I also have a tendency to embellish things, so I might give some detail I made up. If anyone catches anything like that, do drop me an email.

In life--yes, our anti-hero is undead--Caleb was an 1880s gunslinger, a cynical and psychotic loner with a long list of notches on the barrel of his Winchester. He killed just about everybody in the Old West--some things never change--and he'd grown bored and disenchanted with his purposeless life. Until one day, he happens upon a ruined farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and meets Ophelia, a beautiful young widow.

Ophelia and her husband belonged to an evil cult headed by a dark and massively powerful being called Tchernobog--I really, really loathe this name, by the way. Really. Anyway, the "good folks" from the nearby town did not approve of this cult and attacked the farm in a mob. Not content with mere tarring and feathering or running them out of town on a rail, the "good folks" murdered her husband as he tried to defend his homestead, and even killed their young son. I'm actually kinda surprised they didn't have a dog.

Driven to madness by grief and a lust for revenge, Ophelia has hung around, haunting this Ruby Ridge West like a ghost. Caleb is touched by her plight and stays with her. Eventually fall in love and Caleb is initiated into the cult.

A few years down the line Caleb and Ophelia are happily married and have risen to become two of the most powerful insiders in the organization. The real higher ups. So high up, in fact, that they are actually invited to meet the great Evil God, Tchernobog (grrr) whom the cultists worship, but have never seen. The rest of the story is shown in the little movie that comes with the boxed version. Caleb, Ophelia and the other two top cultists are ushered into the God's presence. Cleverly, the POV is his, not theirs, so we don't get to see what he looks like.

The God, however, turns out to be utterly disdainful of all things human and totally indifferent to his worshippers. In keeping with both the cruel humor and cynical mood of the game, he decides to eliminate them and gives them to his lieutenants to play with. Cerberus, the Head Hellhound, gets one man, the Spider Queen wraps up the other and the King of the Gargoyles takes Ophelia. Though it isn't actually said, I have a feeling that Ophelia and the others can't rest until these sub-bosses die. I won't tell you why I think so--that would spoil a nice moment later in the game--but it's a small touch, and very nice for those of us who care about plot and character.

Finally, as an ultimate slap in the face to Caleb (or maybe because he is all out of underlings to reward) the Great God Badass (couldn't stand to type it again) simply kills him without ceremony. Here the film ends and the game begins with Caleb waking up, six feet under. Rage and hatred have brought him back from the grave for revenge against the cult and its dark God.

Pretty cool, huh? The evil-fighting-evil concept is refreshing and the revenge motivation makes a nice change from the tired old plots full of all-purpose megalomaniacs or altruistic heroes out to save the world. This nifty, tragic history makes you actually care about Caleb and his mission and this made all the difference, for me, at least.

Blood is a terrifically fun time for the dedicated horror fan. Despite the game's few problems, I, myself, played it to death.

Pun intended. (Feb 8, 2001)