Blood Cryptic Passage

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $29.98

Features:

• 10 level episode plus 4 Bloodbath levels
• DOS/PC CD-ROM
• Experiance the most gruesome carnage ever will imagine on your journey of revenge

Customer Reviews:

We need more Blood! [Posted on 2008-04-16]
CRYPTIC PASSAGE was the long-awaited, and apparently the final, add-on to what I consider the most enjoyable PC game of all time: BLOOD. Having played the living $%#! out of the original game and the superb PLASMA PAK add-ons, I was very excited to get my paws on this. Ten new levels of hemoglobin-drenched mayhem (plus a hidden level) were calling my name, and my name was Caleb!

Unfortunately, it seems that CRYPTIC PASSAGE was rushed prematurely to the marketplace. It is not a very well-designed game at all, which is to say that the game itself is fine, but the glitches and bugs in the system conspired to make it virtually unplayable.

The original BLOOD had an extremely smooth, flowing play and graphics which were remarkbly high-resolution for their day (the mid-90s). Ditto the PLASMA PAK. CRYPTIC PASSAGE, on the other hand, was incredibly choppy, with stuttering, glitch-ridden movement and cruddy graphics quality that made everything look dull and rather coarse-textured in appearance. The latter is only annoying, but the former made it very hard to actually play the game. After extensively tinkering with the Mo'Slo program speed in DOS, I was able, with the help of an IT friend, get the game to play half-decently, but I was never able to get it play RIGHT. Which was very frustrating, because as far as the screens went, CRYPTIC was very well done.

Vengeful antihero Caleb, still apparently on a rampage even after settling accounts with treacherous Tchernobog the God, starts in a boatyard and faces the usual assortment of dynamite-hurling monks and brain-hungry zombies, shooting his way through an old opera house, a gothic library, a monastery, a riverboat, and others, until he ends up in a huge castle at the end. The game's climax is lame, with Caleb merely discovering some hidden scrolls rather than tackling a Big Bad God or 200 monks and monsters, but the buildup is satisfying. There are no new weapons or beasties, but the change of venue and the ample supply of people and creatures to set ablaze with the flare gun or explode with the napalm cannon were enough to satisfy the homicidal maniac in me. (I did find the hidden level very disappointing as well, it was merely a swamp filled with fish-monsters who I promptly sent packing to Mrs. Paul.)

I would never dog BLOOD, I think it is just the best first-person shooter ever, but my experience with CRYPTIC was a downer. Like all BLOOD games, it won't run on anything more advanced than Windows 98, and it won't run by itself, either. Other gamers may have had a more positive experience, and if they know how to make the game run more smoothly, I'd appreciciate a flare in my direction.

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