Blood: Cryptic Passage

Snap1

A visit to the opera, dressed in black.

Want more blood on your hands?

Cryptic Passage, an expansion pack for Blood, includes only 10 singleplayer and 4 deathmatch levels. Don’t look for any new weapons, monsters or power-ups however, because they’re not here. The levels themselves range from dull to entertaining, with the outdoor levels (docks, caves, a monastery) coming off as least interesting. The better levels outnumber the bad ones, fortunately – spooky sights include a graveyard, old gothic library, opera house, decrepit paddle boat or boggy creek.

The campaign levels seem to have been tailored more for co-op, as rarely will you find yourself short on ammo or weapons – the gameplay consequently feels too easy, even on the higher difficulty. Key hunts present their own challenges but are overall tolerable and intuitively structured – you’ll likely never get yourself stuck. Secrets are pretty difficult to find, as they should be, and sometimes contain references to old horror movies (a shtick present in the original game).

It remains an attractively grotesque Build shooter, though you’re still better off playing the original before trying Passage. And if you do insist on playing it, try to keep those expectations low – with next to zero new content outside of the small number of levels, out of which most don’t surpass the quality of the original, Cryptic Passage won’t offer you much you haven’t already seen.


System Requirements: Pentium 66 Mhz, 16 MB RAM, DOS


Tags: Blood Cryptic Passage Full PC Game Review