Blood II: The Chosen

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Blood II: The Chosen "I don't have time to play with you!" (Caleb) Genre(s): First-Person Shooter Platform(s): Microsoft Windows Release: Main Game NA: October 31, 1998 EU: 1998 WW: April 29, 2010 (GOG.com) Nightmare Levels EU: 1999 NA: August 1, 1999 WW: April 29, 2010 (GOG.com) The Blood Group EU: May 14, 1999 WW: August, 2014 (GOG.com) Engine: LithTech 1.0 Developer(s): Monolith Productions Publisher(s): GT Interactive Country: United States Series: Blood Predecessor: Blood: Plasma Pack Successor: Blood II: Revelations (cancelled)

Blood II: The Chosen is the sequel to Blood. This game was the only official sequel for Blood so far.

Plot

In 2028, Caleb has spent the last century since Blood searching for a way to resurrect his comrades, The Chosen, who were killed in the previous game by the Cabal, a cult dedicated to the worship of the evil god, Tchernobog. The Cabal, in the meantime, has spent the century since Tchernobog's death by Caleb's hands turning the cult into a global mega-corporation called CabalCo, which uses its economic influence to control the world's populace. This is all thanks to Gideon, the Cabal's current leader who has been raised to restore Tchernobog and destroy Caleb, now called the "Great Betrayer".

Bad Qualities

1. Everything the first Blood did right, this game did wrong, due to Monolith being forced by GT Interactive to rush development in time for a 1998 Christmas launch.
   • The Shikari, one of the most common enemies, is extremely unforgiving and unsatisfying to battle. Consequently, the player may find it easier to run away instead of fighting, missing out on a few interesting segments.
     • The Cultist's enemies for some reason are now business persons instead of being dressed in brown robes.
     • Another enemy that becomes common early on is the Drudge Lord, and he is far more unforgiving than the Shikari.
     • Just like the previous game, the enemies that grab Caleb, the Life Leech, the severed Hands, and the Thief, will likely kill you because the manuals don't state clearly what to do when you are grabbed. So the player will likely just watch while Caleb's life meter reaches zero.
     • Two enemies featured near the end of the game, the Drudge Priest and the Death Shroud, are extremely difficult.
   • The first Blood had many pop culture references. This game has far fewer references, and most of them will pass unnoticed thanks to the fact that most players will be too busy running from overpowered enemies to take notice.
   • There is only one Death Ray, and it's very well-hidden. If you don't have a flashlight, you're not likely to find it without resorting to a guide, it can be found on C2L4 Cabalco Meat Packing Plant level.
2. Some of the enemies are bullet-sponge as they take too much ammo to kill, they also don't die from headshots.
3. At the time it was released, Blood II didn't work on some computers for technical reasons.
4. The game is filled with copy-and-pasted areas, particularly with levels set on subway trains, of which there are three across the first half of the game (two each starting the first two chapters, then another one halfway through the second chapter), and two of which even play out and end the exact same way (Caleb murders everyone, gets to the front, then the train crashes into another one), with the only difference being in enemy types (only Cultists the first time, adding Fanatics and Drudge Lords the second). Most examples, however, are the result of trying to emulate a Hub Level-style system without actually having hub levels, such as the part of the city with a laundromat from level 2 (which you come back to twice, once after visiting a museum and crossing through some tenements, then once after a sewer system, the Center for Disease Management, and through an airship - you can even skip almost the entire chapter, straight from C1L2 to C1L11, by simply no clipping through some vents in the back of the laundromat) and the CabalCo headquarters way near the end (where you play through the level, find a locked door and sidetrack to a power station to open it, go back and progress further, find another locked door and sidetrack to the R&D section to look for a keycard, then go back a third time to finally find the real exit to the roof).
5. The game's expansion titled: The Nightmare Levels, is riddled with plot holes and anachronisms in relation to the first Blood and its expansions.
   • This happened because the player is not supposed to take its plot literally, but this doesn't stop this expansion from screwing the once-perfect Blood timeline.
6. Speaking of the expansion pack, it is a huge departure from the rest of the series with colorful scenarios, a few new enemies, and far more unforgiving difficulty than the base game. Most of the few new elements of this expansion pack were just taken and reused from a scrapped level of Blood II.
7. There are lots of bugs & glitches to the point it might be unplayable.
   • Loading a save file can sometimes cause you to fall through the map.
   • Sometimes the saved files will be corrupted for no reason.
   • Other times the controls will be unmapped to certain keys for no reason resulting in having to remap all the keys the way they were.
8. The innocent NPCs are very annoying, screaming for the player to spare their lives, and they are everywhere on some levels.
   • The enemies aren't any better as they always repeat their lines such as "You are dead you hear me, DEAD!" and "You don't stand a chance!".
9. The final boss of the main game, the Ancient One, is just an "I'm gonna destroy the world because I'm so evil" antagonist, which is another huge (and bad) departure from the first game.

Good Qualities

1. Despite the game's terrible aging, it is still fun to play for people who really liked the first game.
2. Blood II itself, without Nightmare Levels, took advantage of many plot holes from the first game and answered them.
3. At least this game tried something new. There are more cutscenes, dialogue, and character development.
   • It is possible that the final boss of the main game was also going to have character development in sequels.
4. The voice acting is great, with Stephan M. Weyte reprising his role as Caleb.
5. The Nightmare Levels expansion added new firing modes for the weapons and some new features on the main game for replay value.
6. It has mod support, including the Extra Crispy, Redux Cruo, and FX Enhancer mod which fixes many frustrating difficulty spikes, touches up the graphics a bit, makes the playable characters stronger and gives them unique weapons at the start, and fixes other problems.
7. The soundtrack is nice to listen to.
8. Some of the Caleb voice lines are still memorable.
9. The graphics are pretty good for 1998 standards, the models are quite complex and the textures aren't too bad and still look good to this day.

Reception

Blood II: The Chosen received mostly positive reviews from critics, but mixed to negative reviews from fans of the first game and is widely considered to be the worst game from Monolith Productions.

Gmanlives, being a fan of the first game, placed this game at number 6 on his Top 7 Disappointing Sequels to FPS games list.

Civvie 11 considers it one of the worst games he's ever reviewed for the channel. In fact, his review for the game holds the world record for the most amount of Gordan Ramsey clips used in a single review for his channel.

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