The first person shooter genre has always been one of the most popular video game genres, and in recent years its popularity has increased more than before, and every year a large number of games are released in this genre, some of which are very successful and some fail, but those that are successful attract the attention of the players, and developers get great opportunities to reach the peak of success, and this is due to the large number of fans of this genre.
FPS sub-genres are also very popular and each has its fans, Bloodhound falls under the boomer shooter sub-genre and one of the most famous examples for this sub-genre is the doom series.
When a game is released, everyone compares it to the biggest games of the same genre, and this is inevitable, but if all the small games made by independent, low-budget, small studios fail, then how are many of these games successful? And the answer is innovation and creativity, a game like Bloodhound doesn’t have to be bigger than doom, but it has to have interesting innovation to keep it from being compared to other big and popular games.
STORY
The story begins with comic-like pictures, a motorcycle rider whose face is not clear and hidden under his hood attacks several people who seem to be a satanic cult, the sound of a fight is played, and shows a fight in comic-like pictures, the motorcycle rider kills all of them, and puts the ring on the table in his finger, and then a force is released from it and a portal opens from which an evil creature comes out and he defeats the creature too, then He picks up the map on the table and heads to a marker on the map, and he starts his/her search for Astaroth.
Astaroth wants to open the gates of hell and your character as a member of the keepers of the gates must stop her.
The beginning of the story has no dialogue and only gives you this information, and nothing much is added to it until the end of the game, and the story is very general and there is no focus on the story, it is not attractive at all and has no surprises.
GAMEPLAY
At first, I only had a revolver and a machete, but it didn’t take long to find a shotgun and I used that most of the time. Giving every weapon in the game to the player so quickly at the early parts of the game, although it seems attractive at the beginning, but it makes the later parts of the game repetitive and makes it not have anything new to offer.
The variety of enemies and weapons is very large, the enemies have various weapons, various ways of fighting and various ways of moving, and you can deal with them by learning their movements. there are ten weapons in the game, none of which are not in the same category, for example, you don’t have two types of rifles.
all weapons except the machete have an ability that is activated by pressing L2, three of the weapons have akimbo ability, and by pressing L2 when you hold those weapons, they will turn into two weapons, this ability is timed and after its deactivated you have to wait until you can use it again, the rest of the weapons have different abilities, for example, pump action shotgun hits the enemy with the back of the gun and throw them back.
The lack of finishing move is very felt in the game, but the animations of the enemies’ body parts cutting off is very good.
The weapons don’t feel real and heavy, and every weapon, whether small or big, feels the same.
There are three abilities in the game that are activated by pressing the d-pads, one of them makes your ammo infinite for a few seconds, one of them slows down time, and another one temporarily increases health.
At least for me, the abilities were not that useful and the game didn’t put me in situations where I was forced to use them, and maybe I used the slow time ability three or four times through the whole game.
By filling a circle on the left side of the screen and pressing one of the d-pads, your power will increase temporarily and you will deal more damage to the enemies.
The fights are very fast and you have to keep moving and moving around the enemies, but most of the time you just have to move around the enemies and shoot until they are all dead and don’t even use dodge or jump and this makes the fights repetitive and boring, and all boss fights except for the last boss fight are the same as normal fights, with the difference that sometimes you may have to dodge.
There are approximately two and a half to three hours of gameplay from the beginning to the end of the game, and there is no innovation in the gameplay compared to other games of this genre.
VISUALS
Visually, the design of the enemies is good, the quality of most of the textures is good, but it could be better.
The resolution and FPS are stable, but there is very annoying screen tearing in many parts of the game.
The hellish atmosphere of the game is good, but the hellish atmosphere could also have variety, but unfortunately there is no variety in it.
In the setting, there is an option called juicy retro style, which makes the image a bit pixelated and retro-like, and this option is great for those who like retro, by activating this mode, you can change the resolution from 240p to 1080p and adjust it as you like.
SOUND DESIGN
The sound design is not good at all and neither the weapons nor the enemies have good sound design.
The soundtrack is very well during the fights, and gives a lot of excitement to the gameplay.
the developers have tried to cover the weakness of the sound design by increasing the volume of the soundtrack.
CONCLUSION
The story is very general and only vague information is shown at the beginning of the game with the help of pictures.
The gameplay is fast and enjoyable, the variety of weapons and enemies is very good, but the high speed of giving weapons to the player so early, the lack of balance in their power and other problems in the gameplay make it not very enjoyable.
