Blood II: The Chosen (PC)

My final 'B' game for the year is going to be the infamous Blood II: The Chosen. It's not exactly the most highly regarded first person shooter ever made, but I figured I might as well give it a try, seeing as it came bundled with my copy of Blood 1.

(Click the pics to view them in a very slightly higher resolution. I'm playing it at 1024x768 in the hope that it'll stop it crashing every five steps I take.)

Blood (MS-DOS)

In 1996 a video game called Quake was released that changed first person shooters forever, inspiring the genre's evolution to true texture-mapped polygon 3D graphics.... though it didn't happen right away.

You see, there was another game released in 1996 called Duke Nukem 3D and it sold a whole lot of copies, so developers were keen on getting their own Build Engine powered games onto shelves before 2.5D sprite-based first person shooters disappeared forever. Blood actually began development at Q Studios, an independent developer funded by 3D Realms, but the studio and rights were bought by Monolith, who finished the game themselves after 3D Realms let it go to focus on Shadow Warrior and their big fully 3D super project... Duke Nukem Forever.

I've already played both Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior, but it didn't seem right somehow to leave out the other famous Build Engine game, so I'm giving this quick look as well.

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting to see me play Redneck Rampage though.