Blood: Refreshed Supply™ Reviews

I would wait for this game to go on sale, since the price point is a bit steep, but this is a solid remaster of a great game. Blood is quite a difficult game, so if you've never played it before I would recommend playing on a low-medium skill until you get the hang of it. This game is dripping with atmosphere, and includes all official campaigns plus two fan campaigns. I had a lot of fun with hit, and will likely come back to finish the achievements at some point in the future.

this is a good port of the game. the negative reviews are due to a weird rerelease that warner bros (i think) did. the older version of this game was delisted.

A GREAT remaster of a GREAT game at a not so great price, Buuuut I don't blame Nightdive entirely for it and I'm someone who GOT the deep discount for owning Fresh Supply. Blood: Refreshed Supply is the 2nd remaster of the hit Retro FPS cult classic, Blood! Worked on by Nightdive Studios, it is easily the most inclusive package of Blood all in one place. All 4 original episodes, plus Post Mortem, plus Cryptic Passage, plus a Vault with tons of developmental content and beta maps, PLUS the fan campaign Marrow, PLUSSSS the absolute pinnacle of Blood mods, Death Wish 2.0. There is a insane amount of content packed in, hassle free, with more or less no game breaking bugs outside of weird Build Engine jank. As I have already reviewed Fresh Supply and more or less kinda already covered the gist of the gameplay I'll just link to that to save space, though it is kinda old so in a nutshell, Blood is good. It's way more challenging than other Build games, demanding a lot more attention and knowledge on weapon and enemy mechanics. But when it comes together it's some of the best Retro FPS action you can get that no other game has 1:1 compared to. (CULTIC is pretty close though) [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/Kyezoar/recommended/1010750/ ] Fresh Supply Review [/url] As such, this review will kinda be around the new stuff included in Refreshed by default and my thoughts on the whole price and delisting debacle. Firstly are the two fan-made campaigns included with the remaster. Which ARE, as far as I know, available for free to play with your source port of your choice at the time of this review so no gatekeeping here. Marrow is a 2-episode, more horror focused campaign by Nickolas Palsmeier. It follows Caleb as, after going back to rest after defeating Tchernobog, the Cabal made the genius decision to try to resurrect Cerberus and have him burn Caleb to non-existance. Obviously, Caleb doesn't take too lightly to that idea so does what he does best. As mentioned, the mod features more of a horror vibe with more grounded levels in the sense that they're being used or are under Cabal control for their dark schemes without feeling cheesy. At least from a level design perspective, the gameplay is unchanged so Cultists and Zombies will still go flying when they get hit by dynamite, and, etc. etc. It's overall a really solid mod with fun, haunting levels and the new music does wonders helping to set the tone. Next up we have Death Wish 2.0, the updated version of the famous mod Death Wish by Dustin Twilley. A mod so distinct that Fresh Supply was tested with it back then to make sure it worked and now it's officially included in this remaster! Death Wish 2.0 specifically, a major overhaul of the existing 3 episodes as well as including a brand new episode so if you're familiar with Death Wish already there's something new to poke at! The story follows Caleb as wayyyy after the events of all the previously mentioned episodes, expansions, and campaigns where Tchernobog, yet again, regains his power and the threat of his impending revival is once again up to Caleb to stop him. One of Death Wish's biggest strengths is in it's variety and the quality of said variety which is saying something when the mod features 48 levels. While there are your standard affairs of Cabal controlled facilities and other horror-esque locations like the original game does. Death Wish either features more of that in new ways and/or completely blowing out any expectations of what is capable in the Build Engine. There are so many levels that are themed after a specific gimmick, like a amusement park, zoos, evil scientist manors, a museum, just to name a few as well as tons of levels that are references to other movies but still play well even if you don't get the source material. Even the secrets levels usually include a transition level where it's the level you just came from to play the secret level but altered as a "after Caleb has ran through" scenario JUST so getting back to the main level path is fluid. That such a fun attention of detail that's just here and Death Wish is just full of that, detailed levels with well thought out encounters that made getting to the next level so excited. Honestly my only nitpick with Death Wish is the Speedrun achievements added with the remaster, and specifically the one for E3M6 cause it's the only one in my opinion that's significantly more difficult and infuriating. I explain it more [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSLxd02WYx8/ ] in this video [/url] but basically: it's just more annoying than the rest just due to what you have to do in a very tight time frame while fighting against Build's jank. All the other Speedrun achievements felt more fair cause you had more control and consistency to make it under the time limit with enough practice and room for error. Now for the last and least fun thing about the Remaster, the controversy with the price and delisting Fresh Supply. Personally, with all this content, if you're not someone who already owns Blood somehow, I think there is a enough content here to justify the base price since it's about 30+ hours of Blood. However, it absolutely should have been a free overhaul or upgrade for people like me who owned Fresh Supply and not a very brief discount. I'm not 100% certain, so take this with a grain of salt, but this situation reeks of the publishers deciding that letting Nightdive simply just update Fresh Supply wouldn't nearly get them as much money if they just made a new remaster for way more dollars. I feel like if this was priced exactly the same or a tiny bit more than Fresh Supply the reaction to Refreshed existing as different game wouldn't be nearly as harsh and it's a unfortunate series of events that it played out this way. If anything, I'd recommend waiting for a sale cause Refreshed Supply is overall very solid and I have yet to play a Nightdive remaster I didn't appreciate from them so it can make the financial swallow from being extra crispy to lightly broiled. Not the easiest solution but way more reasonable given the circumstance. Maybe then we can get a Blood 2 remaster where it's actually works as a enjoyable experience.

You can read about the questionable pricing and release history in other reviews; I'll use my space here to beg you not to sleep on Marrow and Death Wish. Both are beyond incredible and elevate an already best Build engine game to the status of the absolute best retro shooter ever made, bar none. The level design is unbelievable. There is something mad awesome in nearly every single level here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MOoYaMNiN4 And the good news is that you don't need to play them here. Use Fresh Supply or any other source port you want - they're both available on ModDB.

I love the game and have done so for the past 30 years, but this is simply nothing more than a shameless cash grab.

300% price markup + delist prior less expensive port wombo combo. They want you to find ways to not pay for the game. I'd suggest you humor them.

(Opening Thoughts) This and Duke Nukem 3D both suffer from quite a conundrum, and to be honest, both games I feel both obligated and conflicted about reviewing, so here goes. But if you want the TLDR look below Get this if you don't own either of the previous re-releases, as this is a definitive way to play and currently the only way to play, however at the same time it isn't without it's flaws and it gets some bits right, and some wrong There's a reason I bring both games up, but essentially, this is the third time Blood has been re-released on steam, I know because I own all three versions I'll briefly list them off to give readers context here, and why I feel torn and also why my final verdict will be what it is. Keep all these things in mind The first was Blood-One Unit Whole Blood, which released in 1998, and that featured Cryptic Passage and the Plasma Pak expansions. This patched and definitive version of it came out originally in 1998, and it was brought to steam on July 14th, 2014 Next came Blood Fresh Supply, which was released on May 19th, 2019 Finally is this review, Refreshed Supply, which was released December 4th, 2025 I'll get the actual review of what Blood is, then go into tidbits about each version, and then my final thoughts I first heard about Blood and Shadow Warrior courtesy of LGR/Lazy Game Reviews (Shout out to one of Youtube's GOAT DOS reviewers) and I was amazed to discover both titles If Duke Nukem had a family of shooters, then in short, Duke is the action loving, bullet feeding, babe loving, and explosion craving action junkie, then Blood and Shadow Warrior are like the two distant cousins no one heard about until years later, and they're bummed out they never knew about them until now. Shadow Warrior essentially took Duke's formula and applied Kung Fu action akin to John Woo, Jackie Chan, and the like, whereas Blood took that same formula and applied to a giant homage to anything and everything horror and macabre whilst having very grim and supernatural undertones and themes. (As a small disclaimer, I bring up all 3 of these games as one because they were all within GT Interactive's umbrella, with 3D Realms obviously backing the latter two, and Blood eventually being bought by Monolith. Effectively, this was a trio of kindred 90s FPS games that were all familiar and had similar blood in their veins (pun intended) but all were executed differently and very well done, with varying degrees of following/fanbases, but each were positively received overall and showcase their own identities) You'll see a review of the base game below, along with what I enjoy about the title, then below I will be dissecting the version differences (Main Review) For those unaware, you may ask, what is Blood? Blood at it's heart is a gruesome and grim tale of revenge. You play as Caleb, a former high ranking officer in a dark cult. After Caleb gave almost everything to this group, you and other high ranking members and even some friends of his are betrayed by your leader It's up to you to gather all the bullets, explosives, and dark artifacts you can find as you go on a ravenous and violent rampage on your quest for revenge. On your morbid adventure, you'll take down everything from zombies to cultists to gargoyles, hellhounds, demons, you name it, but this game throws practically an entire evil grimoires worth of monsters at you. Top it off with in my opinion very unique weapons, from a vodoo doll to skull staff that fires dark magic to a flare gun pistol, which at first glance seems iffy, but believe it or not it's extremely versatile, because you can shoot an enemy three or four times with it, take cover, then hear your foes scream in agony as they're charred and toasted, it's also a nice bonus that every weapon has an alternate fire/secondary fire. Now, while that's commonplace now, back in 1997 that was a rare treat, even Duke 3D didn't have that, so to have that option makes the quote on quote "toybox" of weapons all the more fun and versatile My personal favorites being the Tesla Rifle, which fires electric shock balls as it's primary fire, whilst it's secondary fire's an explosive electric round Now, you may wonder, if blood is such a gruesome and fun romp of fighting against the dark, why do I feel mixed about this release? First, I'll get the positives out of the way Two New Episodes with Cutscenes-Alongside the previously released expansions I mentioned beforehand, Refreshed Supply adds the new episodes titled Death Wish and Marrow, Marrow being a new episode made by the development team, while Death Wish pulled a TBOI Repentance, by that I mean it's something that was fan made and added/made into something official The Vault-This contains unused/scrapped levels, concept art, 3D models, even developer photos are thrown in there Refined multiplayer and fixed/enhanced source code-This port has a lot of QOL improvements and allows for chaotic 8 player deathmatch if desired and even allows co-op, yes, the previous releases had multiplayer as well, but thankfully the developers really worked the kinks out at least on that front Console Porting-Yes, I am aware this is the steam version, but as an indie developer myself and a fan of cult classics. The fact that this game is FINALLY on consoles for the first time is a major step in the right direction. Hopefully this rekindles things and we may see a follow up akin to the Shadow Warrior reboot (For the record, Blood 2-The Chosen wasn't terrible, but it wasn't a proper Blood game or not exactly the game we should've waited years for, so a lot of people want a proper sequel) Now, here's the parts where I really feel torn and we get into the negatives/mixed bits (Critique/Problems) Optimization for Mods-Now DON'T GET ME WRONG, Both Refreshed Supply and Fresh Supply have mod support, but from what I've gathered, the mod support in THIS version is essentially "more rocky" for lack of a better term, and is harder to get them running, one mod that especially is missing is NotBlood, which is considered one of the best QOL improvements for the game to boot, the same goes for User Maps, the navigation and implementation of them is a bit iffy. To put it bluntly, Fresh Supply handled mod integration better than Refreshed Supply, accessing and installing user maps was a LOT easier on the last release I feel as though if this game eventually gets steam workshop support that would fix this problem, but only time will tell Lastly though, and biggest problem is price point Now I won't lie, there ARE good points to Refreshed Supply like I said, but at this point, this is literally the only way to play it, and when we have had previous releases that got some other things better, it feels really iffy and leaves me with mixed feelings that Monolith is asking for 30 dollars for this game. This version is good, but again, it suffers from the same thing Duke 3D World Tour suffers from, like that game, Megaton Edition is kind of the better version in some ways, and World Tour has some other things about it that make it better in other ways Blood Refreshed Supply essentially suffers the same exact problems, and it shows (Final Thoughts) Do I recommend this game? Yes and no One on end, i can absolutely recommend this to new players and those who never played the game before, or don't have the older versions, especially because it's finally on consoles, If you have the older versions, just play those and get this version dirt cheap for the best of both worlds But I ABSOLUTELY will warn you, PLEASE be weary of this re-release's shortcomings, and DO NOT PAY FULL PRICE. Get it on sale, I did so myself when it was 30% off "I re-release! AGAIN!!!" (For anyone curious/doesn't believe me, these are the community hubs to One Unit Whole Blood and Fresh Supply respectively) One Unit-https://steamcommunity.com/app/299030/ Fresh Supply-https://steamcommunity.com/app/1010750/

It's a source port of the GOAT. Unironic 10/10. That said: the double dipping on the rerelease was so inexcusable that I still almost didn't pick it up. Shout out Nightdive though, they did some really solid work (as usual). Real shame when publishers do ♥♥♥♥ like this, especially considering this one is parading around in the corpse of a beloved gaming institution, too.

This is basically the same thing as the OG fresh supply and that is a bad thing! FS was 10 bucks, this is demanding 21 at best with basically nothing FS didn't do. The multiplayer while a step up from the OG FS (♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hell) is still jank and doesn't have bug fixes the fan made "source" ports fixed a long time ago. If it was cheaper, then yeah, this is great. But that price tag and the fact this is very limited compared to say NotBlood is making me think this is not worth it.

After spending close to 80 hours on Fresh Supply, I was disappointed to see I have to pay again for yet another remaster. Is the remaster good? Sure. Are the 2 free expansions insanely good? Of course, Death Wish is honestly incredible. Were those 2 "expansions" free content made by passionate modders? Also yes. Because of the absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BIBLICAL levels of greed from Atari and their pricing methods, I cannot recommend this game to anyone no matter how good it is. This is really my only complaint honestly, the fact the game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insanely expensive and that owners of Fresh Supply had to pay AGAIN for the re-remaster. Atari can go fellate a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cactus honestly.