#BLUD Review

I Was a Teenage Slayer

In a normal year, July is my time for all things JRPG. But as fate would have it, this year I got handed a decidedly non-JRPG game to review that I’d been looking forward to trying, and it’s been a bloody good time indeed. This phrasing is most appropriate because the game in question is #BLUD (yes, the hashtag is mandatory).

#BLUD weighs in heavily on the action side of the RPGestalt, with gameplay that is descended from top-down Zelda titles, but its charm is all its own. Imagine a world where Cartoon Network produced Buffy the Vampire Slayer for its Toonami lineup, having it animated by longtime lovers of the medium, and you begin to have an idea what this game is like. In the middle of it all is the story of Rebbecca “Becky” Brewster, average all-pink teenage girl starting the year at a new school after her dad moved them to the town of Carpentersville for his job. This community is an idyllic little shelter from the busy world, as long as one ignores the gruesome demise of the milkman in the opening animated sequence or pretty much everything that comes after. Becky soon finds herself taking up her late mother’s quest to rid the world once again of the sinister and recurring influence of the vampire lord Dragur in the only way she knows how: direct application of blunt force trauma, preferably with her trusty field hockey stick, Brenda. And when all else fails, she has access to cherry bombs and packs of vindictively over-sharpened pencils to rehume the undead masses.

 

 

That said, the player needs to be careful in their approach to whacking the ever-wackier hordes of vampiric minions. Many enemies can block, counter, or evade attacks, bringing the pain to a hasty heroine. One of the earlier advanced vamps, of a type serving as a frequent mini-boss encounter, will defend against direct attacks, then grab Becky by the throat, fling her into the air, catch her on the drop back down, and finally slam her face-first into the pavement in one beautifully fluid, acutely painful animation. Each new abomination is a mystery to figure out, with some being much more dangerous than others.

The bosses are take this even further, with Becky scrambling frantically to dodge attacks and slam weak points for massive damage. A few notable encounters riff off of other styles of games like Cuphead or Punch Out! for added insanity. Over the course of the game, Becky gets upgrades for Brenda, both functional tools and runes for special finishing moves, that are used to open up further opportunities to put down the things that go bump in the night.

While health items can be found randomly in boxes and trashcans, they’re used upon pickup and cannot be stocked for later. The randomness also means that Becky and the player can go for some time without seeing anything to refill the hearts on the health bar. First aid kits can be saved for when necessary, but the game’s cash flow is stingy early in the game, so every little hit hurts.

Aside from the lurking threat of the big bad vampire lord, the game provides a secondary antagonist in Geoff Freya, founder-president of the Perch Corporation and Becky’s dad’s boss. Aside from being an even more villainous parody of Steve Jobs in his design, he runs a company that’s a compilation of everything everyone hates about internet-based corporations. However, Perch also provides a framework for much of the supporting gameplay. Becky’s new Perch myPhone provides her with a menu function and social media presence, which the player can use to track the plot narrative and various side quests along the way. Her school friends comment on everything, giving fun moments of background detail and the occasional hint on how to proceed. It even comes with a dedicated selfie button for taking photos with classmates, people around town, special locales, hints for puzzles, and even monsters. The game’s bestiary, after it gets scanned into the phone’s memory, fills out with new information as photos get added–though some selfies require a certain lack of concern for Becky’s personal safety.

 

 

Everything about this game’s graphical and musical presentation is intent on recreating the feel of late-90s cartoon series, and for the most part it’s successful. There are cartoon references throughout the dialogue and the decor, from Looney Tunes and Tiny Toon Adventures to South Park and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the character dialogue and social media logs are filled with pop culture memes and references. The non-static nature of the menu animations means that there are non-zero load times to access things like the bestiary lists, however, and for a 2D animated game on the Switch, those can feel longer than necessary. Various other glitches were encountered in my two times through the game, none of them more than minor annoyances that at most required a soft boot. The auto-save made that far less damaging than it could have been. Both the Steam and Switch versions have since been patched to fix minor issues on those platforms as well.

#BLUD is not a long game, hustling its way through ten to fifteen hours of fun-filled narrative and crazy character interactions. Becky has to navigate the tropes of both high school life and comedic vampire horror, with a heavy dash of modern internet meme culture to add commentary and color. The writing is witty and tight, and the game does a good balance of presentation across its eleven chapters. So between the plot, the side quests, and the hunt for optional fun bits like selfies and collectibles, it never feels like time is wasted.

 

Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.

Scores
BATTLE SYSTEM
    
INTERACTION
    
ORIGINALITY
    
STORY
    
MUSIC & SOUND
    
VISUALS
    
'Great' -- 4.0/5
nsw
UNDER 20 HOURS
MODERATE

Bright, colorful, and bombastic

Creative boss battles

Definitely a mood

Needs more RPG elements

Menu load times

Occasional minor bugs

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