Friday, February 4, 2011

Blood will tell: Why this game needs a modern day remake

Alright, I have a little bit of free time since my class was canceled so I'll be updating early. Hurray!

Alright, today I bring you one of my favorite underrated hack and slash games, blood will tell. Blood will tell follows Hyakkimaru, a chosen-child sent to one day end the war between the fiends and mankind in feudal japan. Of course, the demon god isn't just going to sit by and let this happen so he decides to counter-attack by corrupting Hyakkimaru's father who makes a deal with the demon god "in exchange to bring back peace to the land." The demons of course don't keep up their end of the bargain and instead opt to slay the corrupted father, afterwards celebrating by having each demon take one of the child's 48 bodyparts, leaving him with no hope of ever growing up to defeat them let alone live a normal life. The hero is off to a great start huh? Fortunately for him, the black market hadn't been established yet in feudal japan.


Seriously, chances are they're being used to create a dancing frankenstein for halloween in some third world country by now.



After the horrible tragedy of losing his limbs, Hyakkimaru is found and raised by a physician, Jyukai, who built his prosthetic body parts. At the age of 18, Hyakkimaru hears a voice from the heavens, who tells him that the fiends created a human with the stolen body parts, and that Hyakkimaru could get back what was stolen from him if he killed the forty-eight fiends or their human creation. A pretty bad ass setup for a revenge tale if you ask me. But on to the things that make this game even more interesting.

Lets start with Hyakkimaru's abilities. Jyukai wasn't going to be so foolish as to send you off on your own to slay impossibly powerful creatures without any form of protection except wooden prosthetic limbs so he decided to build detachable parts into you, mainly the cannon he implanted into your leg and your fathers swords he replaced your arms with. He also lends you a samurai sword, just in case you don't feel like wasting your time transforming like voltron just to deal with a single zombie samurai. Here's a video to show you exactly what I mean in case you can't believe how awesome that is. If you decide to watch past the 4 minute mark providing your brain isn't plastered all over the wall from how amazing this game is, you'll also get a little bit of the story I explained above.



This isn't even the best part either. As you gain back your body parts you also get new abilities, but not in the way you'd assume. Let me give you an example. Say you manage to slay a demon that holds your eye as it's body part, well, once you gain it back you get the ability to see the world in color instead of through your "minds eye". Take a look.



That might not seem like much but I'm trying not to spoil the game here! You'll just have to trust me that it gets better as you go. That cutscene looked pretty good for a ps2 game huh? Now imagine that on PC or one of the modern platforms remade.

Looks like my time is up! gotta head to my next class but feel free to tell me what you think about this game. Do you have a favourite underrated game you'd like to see remade with modern technology? (the entire N64 era is a good start for me. Jet force gemini!) Drop a comment and tell me what you think.

8 comments: