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Review - Bloodforge
13:55, 27th Apr 2012
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It might sound harsh to label Bloodforge as nothing more than a cheap, stylized, third person hack and slash title with very little substance but, truth be told, that’s exactly what it is.
You play as Crom, a war-weary generic barbarian who’s settled down with his wife away from a life of war and destruction. Unfortunately, on returning home one afternoon following a long day of butchering deer, Crom is attacked and his village set alight. Ordering his wife to run and hide - inside a burning house no less – Crom dispatches his foes, but accidently murders his own beloved spouse in the process following a cruel illusion created by the despicable god who wants Crom dead. Incensed, vengeful and filled with hate, the shouty Crom swears revenge on those that wronged him and sets out on a quest of blood-soaked revenge with nothing but his furry undergarments, skull mask and a blunt sword to hand.
If it’s at this stage that things might sound a little bit familiar, that’s because Bloodforge is more than happy pilfering huge pieces of storyline from the God Of War franchise with the only discernable difference being that this is a merry tale of Celtic mythology rather than ancient Greek. So, more barbarians and magic cauldrons as opposed to centurions and Zeus’s beard.
Still, lets ignore Bloodforge’s highly unoriginal storyline for the time being. After all, just because a game lacks imagination, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it can’t be hugely enjoyable, right? After all, just look at Modern Warfare 2 (or 3, or Black Ops, or… well). And if we're honest, Bloodforge does at least bring a couple of decent things to the table before everything starts to fall apart.
First and foremost, it has an absolutely gorgeous de-saturated visual effect which sits somewhere in between Zack Snyder’s comic book movie 300 and Sega’s Madworld title. Equally, it’s hugely satisfying watching your enemies actually bleed on impact, as opposed to the usual opponents who invariably take a sword to the face and then faint in front of you. And then there's… er… well…um… nope, actually, that's it. There's nothing else nice to say about Bloodforge because regrettably, everything else is a complete and total mess.
For starters, those same enemies that previously provided a small dose of amusement in the beginning quickly become monotonous waves of unnecessary adversaries from one location to the next. If their purpose was to slowly break your soul into pieces before the next obligatory boss, then sure, they work a treat, but somehow we suspect that wasn’t quite what the developer’s had in mind. Worst still, the control system in place makes the already arduous task of mowing down your opponents an even more cumbersome and frustrating task then it already is. There’s no elegance or finesse – it's just one lumbering swing after another and with absolutely zero effort made towards making the process even remotely gratifying. Granted, there’s the opportunity to perform a few (rubbish) combos, which quite frankly should be a prerequisite in any hack-and-slash game; however, the moment you realise that relentlessly mashing X and Y is sufficient to see you through to the end, it renders all of these weak tricks as completely meaningless.
Even better (or worse), simple maneuvers such as blocking apparently don’t exist in this realm and are replaced instead by some bizarre 'tuck and roll' technique which, nine times out of ten, causes more issues than it solves. And all the while, you’re constantly kept off-balance by an awfully jerky camera movement that haphazardly swings around at the most inopportune moment - it’s akin to having someone repeatedly shaking you whilst trying to remove the funny bone for six points in a game of Operation.
Add to that the hugely underwhelming boss fights, which largely consist of dodging giant fists or pathetic routine skirmishes and you’ll soon find yourself well and truly fed up, well before you’ve reached the half way mark. And yet barring a few power-ups and a faint whiff of magic, that's quite literally it. There are no puzzles to solve, no platforming sections, not even a hint of a side quest; it's just one relentless linear run of death from start to finish set against a storyline that you seldom actually care about.
After the huge success of Fez and Trials Evolution, maybe we should have dialed back our expectation levels a notch – after all, Bloodforge isn’t a full-blown retail game. But then again, given that it largely masquerades as a much grander title in so much that it has some qualities that could compete on a larger scale, it makes it all the more disappointing that the basics are botched so poorly. Take, Dante's Inferno as an example: there’s nothing particularly special about EA’s third person hack-and-slash game, but it gets the essentials right and as a result, it’s fairly enjoyable. Bloodforge, on the other hand, fails to get these necessary fundamentals working harmoniously with one another and goes from being a game with the potential to be mildly enjoyable to nothing more than a (very) bloody shambles.
You play as Crom, a war-weary generic barbarian who’s settled down with his wife away from a life of war and destruction. Unfortunately, on returning home one afternoon following a long day of butchering deer, Crom is attacked and his village set alight. Ordering his wife to run and hide - inside a burning house no less – Crom dispatches his foes, but accidently murders his own beloved spouse in the process following a cruel illusion created by the despicable god who wants Crom dead. Incensed, vengeful and filled with hate, the shouty Crom swears revenge on those that wronged him and sets out on a quest of blood-soaked revenge with nothing but his furry undergarments, skull mask and a blunt sword to hand.
If it’s at this stage that things might sound a little bit familiar, that’s because Bloodforge is more than happy pilfering huge pieces of storyline from the God Of War franchise with the only discernable difference being that this is a merry tale of Celtic mythology rather than ancient Greek. So, more barbarians and magic cauldrons as opposed to centurions and Zeus’s beard.
Still, lets ignore Bloodforge’s highly unoriginal storyline for the time being. After all, just because a game lacks imagination, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it can’t be hugely enjoyable, right? After all, just look at Modern Warfare 2 (or 3, or Black Ops, or… well). And if we're honest, Bloodforge does at least bring a couple of decent things to the table before everything starts to fall apart.
First and foremost, it has an absolutely gorgeous de-saturated visual effect which sits somewhere in between Zack Snyder’s comic book movie 300 and Sega’s Madworld title. Equally, it’s hugely satisfying watching your enemies actually bleed on impact, as opposed to the usual opponents who invariably take a sword to the face and then faint in front of you. And then there's… er… well…um… nope, actually, that's it. There's nothing else nice to say about Bloodforge because regrettably, everything else is a complete and total mess.
For starters, those same enemies that previously provided a small dose of amusement in the beginning quickly become monotonous waves of unnecessary adversaries from one location to the next. If their purpose was to slowly break your soul into pieces before the next obligatory boss, then sure, they work a treat, but somehow we suspect that wasn’t quite what the developer’s had in mind. Worst still, the control system in place makes the already arduous task of mowing down your opponents an even more cumbersome and frustrating task then it already is. There’s no elegance or finesse – it's just one lumbering swing after another and with absolutely zero effort made towards making the process even remotely gratifying. Granted, there’s the opportunity to perform a few (rubbish) combos, which quite frankly should be a prerequisite in any hack-and-slash game; however, the moment you realise that relentlessly mashing X and Y is sufficient to see you through to the end, it renders all of these weak tricks as completely meaningless.
Even better (or worse), simple maneuvers such as blocking apparently don’t exist in this realm and are replaced instead by some bizarre 'tuck and roll' technique which, nine times out of ten, causes more issues than it solves. And all the while, you’re constantly kept off-balance by an awfully jerky camera movement that haphazardly swings around at the most inopportune moment - it’s akin to having someone repeatedly shaking you whilst trying to remove the funny bone for six points in a game of Operation.
Add to that the hugely underwhelming boss fights, which largely consist of dodging giant fists or pathetic routine skirmishes and you’ll soon find yourself well and truly fed up, well before you’ve reached the half way mark. And yet barring a few power-ups and a faint whiff of magic, that's quite literally it. There are no puzzles to solve, no platforming sections, not even a hint of a side quest; it's just one relentless linear run of death from start to finish set against a storyline that you seldom actually care about.
After the huge success of Fez and Trials Evolution, maybe we should have dialed back our expectation levels a notch – after all, Bloodforge isn’t a full-blown retail game. But then again, given that it largely masquerades as a much grander title in so much that it has some qualities that could compete on a larger scale, it makes it all the more disappointing that the basics are botched so poorly. Take, Dante's Inferno as an example: there’s nothing particularly special about EA’s third person hack-and-slash game, but it gets the essentials right and as a result, it’s fairly enjoyable. Bloodforge, on the other hand, fails to get these necessary fundamentals working harmoniously with one another and goes from being a game with the potential to be mildly enjoyable to nothing more than a (very) bloody shambles.
VERDICT
It’s all well and good producing a game that looks as good as any retail offering, but when that same game fails to stand up and deliver on the fundamentals – controls, character growth, gameplay - you can’t help but feel anything other than disillusioned and dissatisfied. Bloodforge manages that on a grand scale and, in short, it’s a bloody nightmare.
3/10
