Bloodhunt Could’ve Been a Great Battle Royal

Hey how’s it going everyone, I’m Caleb From Cubold Gaming and I’m going to be completely open and honest with you. I love Warzone, in fact, I enjoy the battle royale genre. I love the competitive nature and the adrenaline you get from playing them.

It’s such an infant game mode compared to other game modes that have been around for decades. So, seeing something fresh is great for BR’s because it pushes for more creativity for the game mode.

Some people are really cut out for that and they prefer more low key games, which I also enjoy, but I wanted to get that out there before I start talking about this game because I don’t want anyone saying how “Oh you made this video because you just hate BR’s”, so no, I actually really enjoy BR’s.

Seeing the footage from Blood Hunt a few months back had me a little in the middle about the game. I thought the concept was really interesting, I mean, A battle royale that changes up the genre, pretty drastically. I don’t think that it’s been done before, but pulled off successfully it would really evolve the BR scene.

I will say that I was a little unsure about the game just seeing the footage and kind of the general atmosphere that it had, plus, I noticed that the game was set in a pretty dry-looking city in the nighttime, which I’ll talk about a little later.

Just a fair little warning, I don’t like this game so much, so, let’s get into it.

The Good Parts of Bloodhunt

Before I start my little whining spree, I do want to give credit where credit is due, and I’ll say that hey I can definitely see that this game wasn’t just tossed together. You can actually see that they put work into it.

I mentioned this before but I like the concept of the game. Obviously, it takes someone to push the envelope in order for genres to evolve, and props to the studio for going for something non-conventional. Now did anyone ask for the game, well, I don’t know about that?

Something else I’ll give them props for is the movement, for the most part. I actually love this element of the game. I’m always on board for fluid movement that promotes rushing and a fast-paced game, that’s a lot of the reason why I like Warzone. I prefer stuff like that and the dynamic movement in the game I really enjoyed.

The movement isn’t perfect by a long shot but overall I liked it and especially with the variety of vampire types. Playing as Brute allowed me to get out of a lot of situations with his jumping ability.

Continuing on the good things about the game, I like the scalability of the game. Again, this game uses a lot of interesting ideas and being able to have gunfights not only on the ground and in buildings but on top of those buildings. It creates a lot more scenarios than other BR’s.

Let’s see I liked the different vampire types, which gives the game a good amount of variety, and I like the idea of drinking blood from random people around the map. I say Idea because execution is another thing. 

Overall the developers built a BR that surrounds an already interesting genre and the world, and I hope this pushes the boundaries of BR’s and we get some interesting games that take inspiration from thinking outside of the box. Other than that, oh man, this game has some serious issues.

The Bad Parts of Bloodhunt

Oh man, where do I start, the game for me was just not a good experience. I played with some of my friends and it just didn’t click for us. Now, I have reasons for this and there were some obvious flaws with the game that I think hindered me from enjoying the game in the way that I  think the devs intended.

Before I get into some of the gameplay flaws I experienced, I wanna go over the graphics and atmospheric elements. These aren’t nearly as bothersome as some of the gameplay issues I have but I definitely noticed them.

Now, the atmosphere, although it is really interesting, it just feels so, hmm, depressing. I just can’t see myself or frankly many other people playing this game for months and years. Just think of APEX, the colors are vibrant and the world is interesting and exciting. I know that Blood Hunt is about vampires and you know, it needs to be nighttime.

I just think that this is one of the reasons this genre may not be compatible when trying to compete with some of the massive BR titles. I think the nighttime is cool but after a few matches, I just wasn’t really into it anymore.

Not only was the map dark and depressing, but rainy too. In fact, it’s so rainy that the character models literally glissan, constantly. I couldn’t understand why all of the characters looked like they had glitter on them. Like, the graphics in the game aren’t terrible, they look pretty good, but this odd glittering on all of the characters. I mean it doesn’t really bother me a whole lot, it was just an odd addition that didn’t need to be there.

The effects and the character movement feel and look great. The game is extremely fluid and I really like that. I mentioned before that the movement wasn’t always working and I think this is something they can fix but for a game that feels so free-flowing and smooth, it just really sucks when you’re trying to climb up a building and get stuck on the top lip of the building. I mean, they have had to have run into that in their testing.

This happened to me so often and usually at the worst moments when I was trying to retreat to heal or something. I mean, as I said, I think it can be fixed and I am positive it will be, it was a little disappointing to experience that.

I guess I’ve already kind of bled into the gameplay aspects of the game so mine as well tackles that.

One of the biggest issues I have with the game is the time to kill in the game. So, I haven’t tried the game on a controller, only mouse and key, but the gameplay is so dynamic and explosive that I feel the time to kill is just way too long.

It’s already a challenge enough to track your player, which by the way I like, but you miss a lot of your shots and it just sucks to have to not load one clip but two or three into a guy. Not only that but this game does NOT need armor plates.

I don’t know if they wanted to do a Warzone thing but it just doesn’t need to be in the game. It slows down the fast pace feel of the game and it just adds more frustration when you are shooting a tanky player.

I think something like blood stims would be great instead. Just pop one in while you are running and your health regenerates. Rather than having an insane amount of shielding, you can die faster but you can also pop a stim faster while continuing to run around and move. Not this super slow animation of plating up in a game that’s meant to be fast-paced and dynamic.

I mentioned before that I like the blood-drinking feature in the game but oh man. It was just executed so terribly. The NPC’s in the game is just sitting around in the most random places. Like they are only there for the sake of, well, being there. 

What I would’ve liked to have seen is maybe traffic driving around or NPC’s walking around or buying food or you know, doing regular people things. Instead, they are in super random alleyways just standing still or on the phone.

I guess it isn’t a huge deal but I mean c’mon, you could’ve made the world a little more immersive.

Now, the game does map dynamics incredibly, but the problem is that yes you can go on top of buildings and all of that, but unfortunately, The game lacks depth. What I mean is that only some buildings can you go inside and the ones that you can are just a room or two.

On top of that most of the map looks the same and they really didn’t need to light up nearly every window in each building. It just all looks so similar.

I really dislike bashing on games but this game just fell so short for me.

Conclusion

Look, I say try the game out and if you dislike it then move on, but if you like it, just ignore everything I just said. Obviously, the look of the game, although cool, just seems so bland and the TTK issues I can’t really get past. It’s a really interesting concept but I just don’t see myself enjoying it long-term.

Okay, boil it down to this. Considering the competition, do you see this game competing? Do you see large twitch streamers playing this a year from now, or even 6 months? Or do you see yourself playing it 6 months from now?

So, whatever your answers are, for me, I just don’t see this game surviving. I see a future of long matchmaking times, but honestly, with some work and a lot of time, I can possibly see this game fitting in the BR genre. I just think it’s unlikely and I don’t see the existing community hopping ship from other BR’s to play this one.