Platform: Xbox LIVE® Arcade
Genre: Action/Beat em up
Developer: Climax Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Release Date: April 25, 2012(Out now!)
ESRB: M (17+)
MS Points: 1200
When a Barbarian Scottish man dreams, he dreams of this game. Bloodforge is a through and through a Beat em up with some Role play elements. Combine a decent storyline, with some brutal gore. Games such as this would be considered a God of War Clone. While I could not see any comparison other then a savage beat em up in this games cards. The style is very gritty and dark. Crom, or this berserker muscle bound hulk is your main character. As much, you are given a horde of enemies. All of which are pretty much same, varying between weapons and patterns of movement. As some do gain weapons such as sword and shields. The bosses in this game are mostly huge. Which all have some sort of weakness.
You are given 3 trees of weapons, Claws, a Hammer and some Claymore. Also some Runes(spells). These runes are there to give you various things, such as Healing, or healing. Along with that, the transition to swap from these said runes are decent and do the job. X and Y are your primary attacks, one being weak quick attacks and Y being your heavy slower attacks. Aside from this is a Crossbow, which does fair damage, but honestly is only good if you plan to kite a few enemies or fight the occasional big boss. Combat feels a bit off, along with the camera as this does pose as a slight dizzy experience. As yes, the camera shakes like its pretending its dancing to careless whisper.
Is the game graphically impressive? To a degree, it offers some impressive visuals. At the same time, some of the textures and even shadows are somewhat blurry, or unrestrained with the rest of the game. The elements of the characters are pretty outstanding. Costume design is fantastic. A few things I wanted to note. Is the Blood Duels. While it might get untoned, I love the idea. What blood Duels is how much blood you can spill. Between you and your friends on your buddies list. A charming idea to be that big time OCD(obsessive compulsive disorder) master. The trailer featured one of Croms buffs in his arsenal is called Berserk. The power up is pretty useful, it allows you to deal more damage, and gain more blood.
Closing thoughts:
For 15 dollars, it is a pretty fair price. The quality of the game is dependent on what you can consider mindless fun, and your modern day Beat-em-up. Mind you I take the elements of what made games such as Final Fight, streets of rage fun. Yes you have a little bit more out of this experience. The ability to upgrade your gear, yourself. In storyline, a fair size in that of development of the plot. The characters did come off slightly weak. As such I ignored that complaint and focus more on if this game works.
The camera at times, though thick and thin works decent to allow me to see these large landscapes. As the enemies are bold and quite challenging, so id the camera when facing them. At time while combating stronger enemies, the camera would weirdly aim upward and disable me from seeing any thing in front of me. Completing the game toke me 6 hours. Aside from some minor camera issues, and the characters feeling, thou likeable, felt a little weak. The game itself was quite fun, using the runes to unleash large scale moves was fantastic to look at. The blood system, applying to the games gimmick, kept you being a perfectionist to gain blood and upgrade powers to help you whip some serious black cloaked wearing (insert cool kid lingo here). My reflection of the graphics were they shined in some parts, while felt sub par.
I loved the game. The easy to use action menu systems were easy to use and allowed me to highlight what runes I wanted to perform and get the job done. Examples such as Nihlem (grants you mana for Rune Attacks.), Taranis (large hand destroys a single target), Ceronus (just cool to look at, not super useful).
In closing, if you love god of war, beat em ups such as Streets of rage, and Final fight. This game is for you.
(8.0)
