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Review of BloodWake

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 38 / 44
Date: December 18, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Gamers who have dreamed of being a pirate will be provided with another outlet for their fantasy besides dressing up at home and splashing around the bathtub when Microsoft releases Bloodwake for the Xbox. Developed by Stormfront Studios, the game is a story-driven combat game set at sea. We got a chance to test the waters in the game and have come away intrigued by Bloodwake's slick graphics, arcade-style gameplay, and multiplayer modes.

Kill them all!
The game's story finds you in the role of Lieutenant Shao Kai, an officer in the Northern League fleet. Cast adrift at sea after a brutal ambush by a group of pirates, he is rescued by Ped Zhang, Warlord of the Shadow Clan, another group of pirates. Thanks to the intervention of one of Zhang's group and his slightly surly attitude, Kai is adopted by the clan as a sea raider. Kai's acceptance of the offer is one part survival tactic and one part opportunism. Although he feigns ignorance when questioned by Zhang about his squadron's assailant, Kai is well aware of the identity of his attacker and hopes to you get an opportunity to exact revenge. The twist is that the object of Kai's hatred is his own brother, Admiral Shao Lung of the Northern League fleet, the commander of a fearsome warship called the Dragon.

A little multiplayer death.
You'll find two main modes to choose from: the single-player story mode and battle mode, a multiplayer mode for up to four players. The story mode follows Shao Kai as he balances being a quality pirate in Ped Zhang's crew with his quest for revenge. Levels are grouped together under different "chapters" and strung together by Shao Kai's narrative and sketches, which work together to tell Shao's story and inform you of the objectives for each level. You'll initially start out with a lightly armed and armored speedboat, but as you progress through the game, you'll be assigned better craft such as catamarans, torpedo boats, and sampans. Although, you may find that completing your objectives with even the best of ships is quite a challenge in later levels. The game's battle mode will eventually offer seven different types of matches for you and up to four friends to fight in. Unlike in the single-player game, you'll find power-ups that will give you new weapons or enhance your abilities for a limited period of time during a match. You'll unlock the various battle types and a variety of selectable ships to use in the battle mode by going through the story mode.

The gameplay is standard mission-based fare, which keeps Bloodwake accessible. Your missions will include attacking a ship or building, collecting crates, escorting ships, or performing recon. The game's control scheme is basic and works well with the Xbox controller. You'll control the rudder and throttle on your ship with the left analog stick or D-pad. Pushing left or right steers, while pressing forward accelerates. The left trigger fires your boat's primary weapon and the right trigger fires your secondary weapon. The clear face buttons allow you to toggle between several views, including a first-person view that is sure to nauseate anyone who isn't seaworthy thanks to the game's realistic waves.

Graphically, the game makes good use of its clearly generous polygon budget. There's quite a bit of eye candy on display--the boat models are so detailed you can see gears turning in the engines and weapons. As the game is set at sea, Stormfront has put quite a bit of effort into the "look" of the water and come up with a very stylized and beautiful environment to interact with. The game's environments are huge, though they're a bit sparse at times. Missions set at various times of the day showcase the game's impressive lighting, which is quite beautiful.

So pretty.
In our time with Bloodwake, we found the game's single-player game to be challenging fun. The stylized sketches and voice-overs that drive the story fit the game and are an interesting departure from the CG cinemas that are the norm these days. Being able to select the difficulty of each level before you play it is a nice touch, as it lets you ease yourself into a more challenging game if you feel ready for it. The control scheme is user-friendly and didn't take long to pick up. Although the water's physics, in combination with that of the various boats, made for a slightly floaty experience at times, they gave the game an arcadelike feel that was fine. The multiplayer mode was fun, offering a good variety of battle options and ships once they were unlocked, which wasn't that hard to do. Overall, Bloodwake is looking quite promising.

A poor copy of TWISTED METAL

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 17 / 28
Date: January 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

A big fan of action/arcade shooters, I found myself disappointed with BLOOD WAKE for a couple of key reasons:

1) Uninspired Missions/Levels - The mission objectives are the typical fare - collect objects (treasure chests), race against time, destory all enemies, etc. More work than fun.

2) Poor environments - The environments themselves aren't very interesting with little in the way of shortcuts or secrets. Much of this is due to the problem of boats & water (has to be flat) but you'd think they could build some cool waterfalls, crazy canyons & cliffs (think Thailand), or some other wild environments. Instead, its like battling around the San Francisco bay or the Puget Sound. Boring.

3) OK graphics - sure, the water graphics look great (reflections, bump maps, etc.) and the boat poly-counts are high, but the overall look of the game is rather poor. Textures are poor quality (example: drive your boat close to an island and look at the rock/plant textures... its pixelvision). The lighting effects are OK, but don't showoff the power of the XBOX hardware.

4) Gameplay & Action - racing around and blowing up boats seems like such rush (just watch a Bond film). However in playing BLOOD WAKE, it comes across as stale, flat action. Sure, the controls are easy to learn, but the problem is there is only so much you can do to master driving a boat. Tricks & finese moves are non-existant. Plus, the various boats you unlock aren't that different from another. Weapons are OK, but aren't creative and offer little excitement (unlike Twisted Metal).

SUMMARY - did you ever play Microsoft's game CRIMSON SKIES? If so, this game is the exact same thing (but on water). Don't be fooled by the marketing spin... a TWISTED METAL this is NOT!

Great Fun, extremely good game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: January 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I love this game. It has great action in a well designed and programmed environment. This game is technically solid and well developed. No slow downs, constant frame rate, great graphics, and the best water effects around make this one of the best games around.

I don't find this game at all monotonous like a few claim. It's a mission based combat game. It's a dog fighting game in water. If you like Star Wars Starfighter or Star Wars: Rogue Leader you will love this game. Plus, It has advantages over those game due to it's great multiplayer and battle mode features. Tons of stuff to do in this game!

I find it disappointing that people who haven't even touched this game come up with clearly false reviews. This game is not Twisted Metal or a Boat Racing game. This game is a mission based combat/ dog fighting game in water.

Blood Wake is one of the better games for X-Box...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: January 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is not the best X-Box game out there... coughHALOcough. However this game is fairly entertaining in its own respect. I won't go into the details about the graphics (boats and water are fantastic other graphics less impressive). The storyline is average with the cheesy voiceovers that you find in just about every game these days. The one player missions are challenging and you have to play them to unlock all the boats for multiplayer. The mutliplayer features various modes all of which are pretty good. There's nothing like blowing up my roomate's ship w/ a torpedo. The key to remember w/ Blood Wake is it's a vehicular combat game on water nothing more nothing less. This game isn't groundbreaking but it is fun. I would say that unless you know for sure you want this game to go out and rent it first to see how you like it. Just remember that you won't have access to all the multiplayer boats until you unlock them in the one player missions. Overall, this is a good game that belongs in the upper tier of X-Box titles.

Blood Wake, better than average

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: April 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Based in England, where games come out after the US sometimes, i get to see the feedback before a game hits the shelves here.

On this occasion I feel an injustice has been done by some to this game, giving less than avaerage marks in some areas.

What you see is what you get on the box, the water effects, which set this game apart in the graphical sense, are spectacular. It is worth getting a copy of this game to see what an X-box is capable of doing. The game plays like a dream, the water dynamics rock! See your boat pile up on rocks and two others pile onto your craft, has to be seen! The sound effects are a little weak, but the music a great soother with 'choons' from China!

Order sea sickness pills when playing as you will need them!

Track down a used copy and relish the bargain you have acquired. Could last a lifetime this game! Very, very underated, could have great potential as an xbox live game!!!

Twisted Metal Gets Wet

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: January 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

"Bloodwake" is a good looking, speedy boat combat game with that groovy Asian flavor. Story is typical revenge revenge revenge stuff, but it works well and features competent voice acting. The game itself features some very good visuals, particularly in terms of the water mechanics. Some of this goodness is slightly lessened in my opinion by goofy boat physics, particularly when your raft gets knocked into the air. The framerate is solid overall, there are a lot of nice details to see and plenty of things to blow up with a variety of guns, missles, and torpedoes. Control of the boats varies based on which craft you use but there is the real feeling of turning in water...somewhat slow, realistic, and requires you to modify the way you fight. Neat missions, a variety of cool weather conditions, and several game modes and difficulty levels give "Bloodwake" decent replay value. Overall, worth your dough if you like boats with guns, car combat styled games, and/or straight forward mission based shooters

It Could Have Been Better

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: May 31, 2002
Author: Amazon User

-Chad Steingraber-
-Paradigm/Infogrames-
-Level Designer/Game Designer/3D Artist on The Terminator: Dawn of Fate-

This game definately has the water thing down. The physics on the boat through the water is superb. It fun just driving the boat around. But, of course, that isn't enough to make a great game. For me, the game became boring REAL quick. The graphics aren't as good as they could be (come on, this is the XBox guys!!) and the level design is slightly on the poor/boring side. With a little bit of inspired innovation, this game could have been really good....even great. But alas, such a game didn't surface.

Maybe they will make a sequel with some much needed upgrades? Anyway, this is a rent first title before you buy it.

Not what I hoped for...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: January 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game was a good attempt at a good idea that came out with only decent results. I played through some of the stale feeling story mode with no CG-movies{only boring sketches show up with narration) and a horrible 1st mate in the boat who whines at every little thing that isn't going our way. The graphics are only decent as well, boats look cool and water looks okay, but what I am about to say is what destroys this game, the rocks. Oh the rocks! You run into a rock or cliff and you just stop, and there are just way too many of both rocks and cliff walls. Slamming a big boat into reverse in real life isnt a quick process I imagine, well it feels even slower in Blood Wake. When you play someone in deathmatch you just pass them up and turn around over and over, either that or you start chasing each other in circles. The auto lock on machine guns kinda kill any skill factor there and I just couldnt get into the alternate weapon choices. You could probably have lots of fun with the multiplayer because the one cool thing this game has is bots to play against or up to 4 player gaming. I returned this one and went for Oddworld instead, why didnt I go for Oddworld in the first place?

pretty good, but room for improvement

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: May 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If you like a fast-pace shooting game then this will do fine for you. The graphics on the boats and water are very good and detailed. The first few missions are really easy (if you have talent in the game) but all of the sudden it gets like really hard and I still haven't beaten it. But if your up for the challenge then you should definitely buy this game.

Pros:
-great graphics
-challenging and interesting missions
-pretty good AI
-nice variety of weapons
-fun and competitive

Cons:
-really funky controls
-takes to many shots to blow up a boat
-sudden change of difficulty

Great GAME

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is great! The things holding it back from being a five star game is you don't get to choose the boat that you use on each level. Also it doesn't have a co-op multi player mode. You should also be able to custamize your boats.Now the positve things: GREAT graphics,not a piece of cake to beat, 3 difficulty settings, and good story line.

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