Blood 2: The Chosen

by GT Interactive

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00001XDRA
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,092 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

GameSpot Review

The original Blood won numerous fans, despite the fact that it was a 2D shooter released nearly a year after Quake made 3D environments standard. The clever level design and wisecracking antihero, Caleb, made up for the fact that the game was a technical throwback. Now, just over a year after the original hit stores, Monolith Productions has released a sequel. Based on Monolith's own LithTech engine, Blood II: The Chosen features some strong technical elements. The engine provides solid graphics (better than Quake II, not as good as Unreal), decent control, and great animation. But Blood II lacks some of the innovation of the original; the horror-theme is less pronounced, and the level design doesn't stray far from the average.

Blood II is excellent in several respects. Most of the weapons look and sound great, with the most notable example being the shotgun, which looks menacing and sounds even more so. The howitzer is also noteworthy, while the submachine gun looks bland, though it sounds good. On the low end of the spectrum is the Die Bug Die, a powerful insect repellent that neither looks nor sounds like it should be one of the more powerful weapons. There is a wide variety of weapons, and because you can only hold ten at a time, you must occasionally discard some. It's a nice feature, and one that lets you tailor your arsenal to your liking.

The animations are another high point in Blood II. Enemies move smoothly and look great. They die in a variety of ways, and you'll undoubtedly be struck the first time you see a human writhing on the ground after a grievous gut wound. On the downside, Blood II's artificial intelligence leaves something to be desired. Enemies usually won't attack until you come right into their line of sight and occasionally won't respond when attacked. The AI is better than in the first release of Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, Monolith's other LithTech-based shooter, but it's still nowhere near the level of Half-Life's believable enemy behavior.

Blood II looks impressive. The levels feature diverse appearances and spectacular colored lighting. The textures are great, and areas such as a tenement building and a museum are amazingly detailed. The levels themselves are diverse as well. In the first chapter alone, you'll travel from an ornate museum to a huge science facility to the alleys of an ominious city street to a futuristic flying machine. The game sounds just as good, with funny wisecracks, great ambient sounds, and an appropriately dark, techno soundtrack.

The major problem with Blood II is its pacing. Despite how good the levels look, they are at times confusing, with a variety of similar-looking corridors. Blood II uses a very traditional level design philosophy, and the need to find keys and push buttons is abundant. The designers are self-consciously aware of this, including jokes such as a mission briefing that tells you to push some buttons and kill some things, and a huge glowing sign advertising "silver key industries." Still, making jokes about it doesn't really help. Worse, you'll often go back through levels you've already been through, arriving at any number of dead ends until you find the new path that has opened since your last visit. And while Blood II offers a variety of weapons and enemies, they are unevenly distributed, giving way to long stretches of the game in which you face the same group of monsters with the same group of weapons.

Blood II is by no means bad. In single-player, it is on par with Quake II, but lacking the innovation of Jedi Knight or Half-Life. Multiplayer with the LithTech engine still suffers from some of Shogo's latency problems, but the wide variety of weapons should make for some good deathmatching when Monolith gets those problems fixed. It's hard not to feel that Blood II is a step back in light of Half-Life; there's little sense of urgency, drama, or excitement. But it's hard to fault Blood II for not doing anything new; it sets out to be a traditional shooter and does a good, if not great, job. --Ron Dulin
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blood II - The Chosen, February 20, 2002

By 

Knewace (The other side) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood 2: The Chosen (CD-ROM)

Blood II: The Chosen is a horror based fps with a good single player gameplay and a fantastic multiplayer gameplay. It is the sequel to Blood, one of my favorites. You play caleb an undead anti hero. In the first game set in the 1930's, Caleb served for a dark god Technoborg and his evil organisation cabal, when he decided to leave cabal he and his lover were murdered, caleb returned from the dead and took revenge by destroying technoborg and became the chosen one. Now it is 2030 a century has passed with the caleb wandering the earth mostly minding his own buisness. Now cabal has become cabalco and its leader Giddion wants to take revenge on Caleb. You as caleb must escape from Giddion and destory him. The gameplay is very good with more than 30 levels in four episodes, The gameplay is very good though not quite as good as the orginal. You can play as four charecters, play as caleb only he gets cutsences. The level design is very good from moving trains, haunted cathedrals, hovercrafts, catacombs, science labs, high rise buildings ect. The levels are very large and a lot of fun. Some of the levels are dark and scary just like the orginal. The selection of weapons are excellent, there are more than 15 weapons from beretta, shotguns, assault gun, snipper rifles, howitizer and telsa cannon which is my favorite. some of the weapons are not as good as the orginal, voodoo doll and life leech are not very powerfull here. A big dissapoinment is you cannot carry more than 10 weapons in your inventory.

Blood II is built on the lithtech engine, I played it on the Direct3D video mode and the game runs very smooth and the level loading was very good. The graphics and charecter animations are outdated today, sound recording is just ok. The creature animation is fantastic, There are lots of scary and well animated creatures. It is a funny game, Caleb is my favorite game charecter, He says a lot of cool one liners like "When you get to hell, tell them I sent you. You can get a group discount". There are lot of black humor in the game. It is a very violant game, It has lots of red fluid flowing and many nasty sences. Blood2's multiplayer or Bloodbath as called here is excellent, there are lots of well desinged maps. you can control your charecter by arranging points for speed, strength ect. Each charecter begins the game with ten weapons of his choice with full ammo. Unfortunatly the network code is buggy, but it is a great game on Lan parties. It has one of the best multiplayer gameplay ever. Blood2 is not as good as the orginal but it is a good game.

Finally I had a small problem with the game and almost everyone with Geforce based video cards may have that problem in Shogo and Blood2. The main menu will not appear or keep flickering. Turn the vsync to always off in the more Direct3D option...

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great For Die Hard Old School Shooter Fans, February 25, 2002

By 

Roshan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood 2: The Chosen (CD-ROM)

It seems that when someone does a review for a shooter they can't help but compare it to games such as Half-Life. In this post Half-Life era the most common lines in reviews are "the AI is not good as Half-Life , the story is not good as Half-Life , the graphics is not good as Half-Life , the characters don't look handsome like in Half-Life, bla bla bla like Half-Life , goo goo goo Half-life". Well let me get this straight Blood1 came before this game and Monolith did a great job and decided to keep it to its original formula. These games are meant for original shooter fans who loved brain-dead enemines which come at you like flies. Oh by the way the hero actually speaks compared to a speech impaired joker going around in a hazard suit.You know what game I'm talking about.

4.0 out of 5 stars The Chosen is a great game, January 25, 2003

By 

"scatman_d" (Henderson, NV United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood 2: The Chosen (CD-ROM)

If you like first person shooter games, with lots of gore and a great arsenal of weapons from flae thrower to M16 and just about anything else you can think of, then this is a great game to consider. I will not make the mistake of comparing it to Half Life, since most people I talked to about this game do not even go there. These games are different, even if the are in the same category (FPS). I personally liked Chosen more than Half Life. Let it be said that I played Half Life maybe a dozen times, but Chosen was my favorite for a dosen of weeks or more.