Normally I start all my reviews with some sort of backstory or other witty banter, but this time things are very different. Up until about a year or two ago, I wouldn’t touch Indies with a 12-foot barge pole, but I have discovered the error of my ways and I have learned to accept Indie games with open arms as I’ve discovered a lot of games I now class as GOTY material.
However, after playing through Blood Waves, I think my initial instincts from a few years back have started to return.
I’ve never heard of Blood Waves, by Light Road Games, so when my editor asked me to cover this game, I had no issues with it. But then I began to play it… If I wasn’t reviewing the game, I wouldn’t have played it for as long as I did, but I feel it’s my duty to give the game a fair shot and review the game honestly.
Here goes…
I will do my best to describe Blood Waves as thoroughly as I can, but honestly, there is not much to explain because Blood Waves is a very basic game which doesn’t really justify its price, in my opinion. At its core, Blood Waves stars a nameless protagonist that looks like one of those ‘Dollar Tree/Poundland’ ripoffs of Lara Croft. The game is essentially a Wave-based Shooter in which you are in a massive hall that looks like it could be a set from that Spartacus show. After each wave, there’s a door that opens up and you have the option to upgrade your character in various ways in hopes of surviving the next wave of zombies.
You receive money for each zombie you kill and at the end of each wave, you will also receive a skill point. You do not have to spend any money or skill points to advance to the next wave, but honestly, that is essentially suicide as you need ammo for your guns and the machete they provide you with is garbage. As you progress further into the game, money starts to funnel in quick enough, which is great as you will want to invest in traps and the Gatling gun as soon as possible! The skills are pretty generic, health bonus, stamina bonus, money bonus, etc…
I know they wanted this to be a ‘realistic’ gun shooting game, but I think I would have had more fun if the developers gave us abilities such as Infinite ammo, Laser Eyes, summoning armies of feral calicos, I don’t know!!
The gameplay, well it’s not great. This is a game that was originally released on Steam a year ago and upon looking at the reviews of the game over there, it seems like Light Road Games have done nothing to make the game any better. The zombies are bullet sponges in the worst kind of way, I feel like I am shooting them with rubber bands from finger guns! You may as well forget about that machete after the first few waves because after wave 3 if you stop and try to melee zombies, they WILL kill you ridiculously fast. As I mentioned before, there are only 2 rooms that you can walk around in. So forget about lush colours and levels with personality.
I find it shocking that this game was released with this amount of content and visually, playing it on my PlayStation 4 Pro on a 4k TV, it looks like a PlayStation 2 game, at best! It even has that generic Thrash Metal-style music to accompany the zombie killing spree you’ll be participating in.
Your generic Lara Croft will run around the map, slowly I might add, and you will fire at a horde of zombies which you can barely tell the difference between as they all look alike. Seriously though, I think there may be a maximum of 5 different zombie designs, which is not great when you are expected to kill thousands of them.
Official Trailer:
Final Conclusion:
Personally, I would strongly advise everyone against picking up Blood Waves, even if it’s featured within a sale. The game is not worth time and money you will put into it. If the game was updated with more locations, better combat, less-spongy enemies, a decent soundtrack, more original and define enemies and protagonists, and maybe allow for fantastical weaponry and abilities – then it MAY be worth trying out and re-visiting. However, until that happens, I don’t see myself returning to the game any time soon.
My advice, buy Borderlands 2 and just play the Torque DLC.
A copy of the game was kindly provided for review purposes
Blood Waves
£7.99
The Good:
- - Nothing
The Bad:
- - Everything (music, graphics, gameplay, experience, etc...)
