Whoever came up with the idea of Blood Wake deserves a medal, however the people who made Blood Wake (Stormfront Studios) don’t deserve as much credit. I’m not saying the games really bad this early on I the review, it’s just the idea of getting a boat and sticking a couple of chain guns on the end of it seems much more fun than what Blood Wake has offered to me after I’ve had an extensive play session on it.

Gameplay:
As I’ve said before the game is a mission-based game with you controlling a chain gun based boat. The game consists of two modes (Doesn’t seem like much but the quantity is there believe me) there is a Story mode and a Battle mode, the story mode being the most interesting to play through with it being divided up into acts and missions within the acts. The variety of the missions are good as at first the missions teach you how to play the game, but from then on it’s pure fun shooting the crap out of enemy boats, the challenge gets harder as you progress through the game, although at points it can get a little repetitive because you get the feeling that you’re gunning down other boats and that’s it. The Battle mode on the other hand isn’t much fun until you have got a decent distance through the story mode as new boats, maps and different types of battles open up to be used. The Battle mode is also available to play in a 4-player split screen mode, which can be quite fun to play if you’ve got that many people round and provided you’ve got a decent selection of boats, maps and different battle types available.
Controlling your boat isn’t that easy but becomes okay after a while, shooting weapons and changing them is easy along with the ability of a boost. Manoeuvring the boat is not too bad and attacking or even escaping battles can be achieved with ease. This is not to say that the game is easy, as the AI is quite intelligent with other computer ships ramming, shooting or running away just like a human opponent would.
The game seems at first hard to play and at times impossible, but if you spend 10 minutes learning the controls and learn your own ‘boating tactics’ then playing the game seems a worthy challenge, providing just the right sort of difficulty that is needed. One of the problems is that in parts the game can be quite frustrating as the difficulty level promises more than you think and unless you keep your health and ammo levels up through destroying other boats, you can consider yourself screwed. One feature that is missing in the story mode in particular is that you are assigned your boat; it would have been much better having an upgrading system based on how well you did in missions. Overall the gameplay is quite nice but could have done with one or two parts being added.

Graphics:
Whilst playing the game the graphics are noticeably looking quite nice, with the water effects looking quite superb and looking as close as you can get to the real thing at the moment. Boats look accurately modelled, with few moving parts visible except for the propeller and the reactions of the shipmen. But your ship never seems to have any damage inflicted on it despite hitting rocks, ships and not to mention the odd missile. Only thing I can point out is the in-game menus; they don’t look too nasty, but there could have been a much better effort done here to give the graphics an overall great look. But the graphics in Blood Wake are some of the best I’ve seen, not the best but very nice to say the least.

Sound:
The sounds not overly impressive, the only great point would be that the ships all sound as they should – nice but hardly beefy engines, the background music is good for battling but as you play through the game there seems as if there’s no variety with it really. It’s all ok and in ship-shape as far as Xbox goes.

Longevity:
Overall the game has only 2 modes of play and once the story mode is finished this will only be brought out of the closet to have the odd multiplayer game or two with your friends, if you can really be bothered with it that is. There’s not much really you do except unlock items as you go but as there is only 2 modes of play the story mode unlocks the battle mode pretty much. This won’t last too long after you learn how to master it, it might be worth renting Blood Wake first to see if you could be bothered to play the game all the way through only that way is it worth buying it.

Round Up:
Blood Wake is a good attempt at a boat shoot ‘em up, there’s little to play through the whole game but it is challenging and fun for the time that it will take you to complete it.

Pros:

• Lovely water effects
  
• Great fun for the length of the game
  
• Difficulty changes with different levels along with quite good AI
  

  Cons:
  

  • Once it’s finished that’s it really
    
  • Not exactly easy to get into