Bloodhound Xbox Review 4/10 "Bit of a dog’s dinner" 🐕 @knfproductions #IndieGame #IndieGameDev #GameDev

I fear the word ‘retro’ sometimes. It can mean a loving homage to a classic release, or a genre. It can mean taking a game back to basics and focusing on great gameplay over Triple A graphics and presentation.

Bloodhound is retro in that it harks back to a golden age (for old gits like me) of gaming. Graphically it reminded me of games like Doom II/Quake and Duke Nukem , and even more so to the similarly titled Blood, from 1997. The trailer certainly piqued my interest with it’s fast-paced gameplay and throbbing rock soundtrack. When I was sent the preview copy I was EXCITED.

And, initially, my hopes were kept high by a fun intro cutscene and being thrown into the action with a host of weapons at my disposal. Initially I thought that I wasn’t going to get past the first level as I didn’t have aim assist on and I could not manage to hit a single bloody thing. I’m curious to know if any players could get far without it.

However, that isn’t the reason most players won’t get far into the game. More pertinent is a litany of issues that the game suffers from. Firstly, despite aping an older style, this is a 15Gb game running on a more up to date and somehow manages to look worse than the games I loved from the late 90s/early 00s. The collision detection is poor and that in a FPS is an automatic fail.

The level layouts and characters are all ones we’ve seen before. The visuals are fine, albeit with 2D characters (a la Doom/Blood) and I liked the dark dungeon aesthetic for the first few minutes at least.

The maps are linear, and while this isn’t the worst thing, having artificial ‘zones’ that you’re trapped in until you bust X number of ghouls is very tedious. And so often the bad guys appear behind you or literally on you, making the fights often a confusing mess, and you spend your time running around like a headless chicken, spraying and praying. And this gets tiresome pretty quickly.

And this is how the game goes on. And it never really seems to vary. Battles are won by simply keeping moving and shooting at all times. There is a dodge button, but it’s not really needed. Nor are the specials, like extra damage or slowing time, as the standard approach works 99% of the time.

Other negatives include – enemies that are far away can be shot and their buddies around them won’t notice and attack you, attacks don’t have any ‘weight’ to them and so all the weapons (and there are plenty, including alternative fire modes) end up feeling a bit samey to use, and the hordes of attackers don’t have health bars so I found myself thinking I’d felled a beast only for it continuing trying to chew my brains or some such impolite behaviour. I could go on.

SUMMARY
This was a difficult review for me as it’s exactly the kind of game I normally love, but there are just too many elements getting in the way of it being fun. On the plus side, it is a quick, pick up and play game, and for a while it is diverting enough, but it’s only ‘nearly’ good in almost every aspect. This dog is no pedigree, sadly, and I can’t see myself returning to this game any time soon.

Sorry little Timmy, but Bloodhound has gone to live on a farm.