After a delay by bad game design, Christmas and New Years with family, and a network outage affecting apparently the entire goddamned country, we’re finally back!
“Trains used to be so much more gracious. These days it’s all one can do to avoid being killed on one. There are very few things that seem to relieve tension better than blowing the living, er… um, bits out of the opposition. These Cabal Safehouses look like the epitome of luxury… the stench, the appointments, the rats, the ambiance, and the winos. And speaking of appointments, Gideon should be around here somewhere. That is a rendezvous that ought to be more fun than target practice on winos. Wheeeeee!”
In theory, this should be a good level. Mostly close-quarters with little more than Fanatics to deal with until the end, rarely in groups of more than two, which works well with having two shotguns now and the ammo for them being more abundant than I remembered. By all rights it should be gun-toting zombie cowboy paradise. In practice… the game apparently heard me call it badly-designed and took offense, so now I’m taking ridiculous amounts of damage. I was prepared to do a ton of practice runs of the level like I did for inside airship, but after dying, retrying, and dying after two further minutes’ worth of progress twice, I said “fuck it” and just relied on quicksaves during the recorded run, because I figured it would be appropriate to let people see just what I’m up against here. There are no joke instances where I go from a hundred health to barely above fifty within a quarter of a fucking second of a Fanatic noticing me and opening fire, even when I only take one bullet before ducking behind something or hitting him back hard enough to stop him from shooting. And then to make the lack of health drops even worse, this level stretches on far, far longer than it needs to - I got pulled down to around 30 health by nine minutes in and then, even ignoring the portions I had to replay from saving and loading, had to go through a full seven more minutes of level with nothing more than a single health pickup. And one Necroward, but a full hundred armor at that low of health is only the difference between dying from two hits and dying from three, and that’s assuming the hit isn’t from a Drudge Lord throwing a fireball at you from around the corner or a Shikari magnetizing itself to your head and impersonating a blender.
Simply put, this game is pain, and I think that’s exactly what it wants to be. “We play it so you don’t have to” is a very apt motto.
The Characters
Ishmael
The second of the other Chosen Caleb is reunited with. Like Gabriella, little is known about his life before the Cabal, at least not much that isn’t the focus of something I’m going to handle much later; it is known, however, that he had apparently been in other cults before and even worked in a circus before he was called to join the Cabal. His devotion to the cult eventually lead to him becoming one of their dark god’s elite, only to fall victim to Tchernobog’s betrayal plot, being immolated by the hellhound Cerberus. And now, thanks to the unpredictability of the Singularity Generator, he’s back.
In gameplay terms Ishmael is by far the most intelligent of the Chosen, granting him the greatest amount of Focus for use with magical abilities. This, however, comes at the cost of low strength and resistance, giving him little endurance against enemy weapons and very little ammo for the more plentiful firearms, though he does benefit from a surprising speed allowing him to get to cover more reasonably. Generally, he’s in for a lot of pain with little recourse to return the favor until he can get his hands on a magical weapon. When idle… I don’t know, the wiki doesn’t say and he’s not actually saying anything when I leave him alone. It’s probably quotes in the old Cabal language though, considering some of the things he says with the taunt button.
Ishmael’s voice is Michael Shapiro, an actor and theater director from Massachusetts who’s been active from 1991 on. Like the other voices in the game, he’s particularly well-known for his voice acting roles in the mid to late '90s, his most famous role - rather ironically - being in Blood II’s biggest competitor, voicing for the security guards, the HECU marines, and the mysterious G-Man of Half-Life, the former turning into the named character Barney Calhoun for its 2004 sequel and the first episode of its continuation in 2006. He’s also, interestingly, been involved with several other games the other actors heard so far have had a hand in as well - his voice in Half-Life is used alongside Lani Minella’s in the PlayStation 2 port of the game; he’s had several roles in Humongous Entertainment’s games like Stephan Weyte (though never appearing together in any of them), as well as appearing alongside him as one of the four heroes in the Monolith-published Get Medieval from three months before this game; and he voiced one of the random squadmates in Starsiege same as Ted D’arms. Weyte, D’arms and Shapiro’s voices even appear together in the 1995 Torin’s Passage, Shapiro voicing the eponymous Torin. Outside of video games he’s also had roles such as the deaf son of the protagonist of the 1991 Listen Carefully, a bellman in the pilot of the short-lived Under One Roof from 1995, one of the focus characters from the 1999 The Engagement Party, the narrator for several episodes of the 2004-2005 Interpol Investigates, and a side character, Josh, from the 2015 3rd Street Blackout. As of this writing he’s also set to appear as a swimming coach in The Pulse, a short film set in the aftermath of the June 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which is currently in post-production.
The Weapons
50mm Pack Howitzer
An explosive weapon for people who are really bad at aiming explosive projectile weapons past the “don’t eat your own grenade, dumbass” distance. Unfortunately, the devs apparently thought this was such a potentially game-breaking ability that the instant-hit time is countered with both rarer, more limited ammo and less damage than things like the napalm cannon, rather than just one of the two like a more reasonable developer not holding out for a different game to release so its team can help them finish this one probably would have done. Primary fire launches a single shell, which impacts immediately at the target point and causes an explosion. Secondary launches five shells at once in a pattern. Uses howitzer shells as ammo, with Caleb’s max being 50.
Time Bombs
The last of the bomb varieties, probably closest in function to the old TNT bundles plus lighter combo. Physically differing from the proxy and remote bombs solely by the yellow highlights on its electronics, it is deployed in the same manner as the others, primary fire tossing a bomb and secondary dropping one. As the name suggests, it runs on a timer rather than detonating when a target gets close or at the press of a button; despite the manual’s claims (I really should have known better after the second lie it told), the timer is permanently set on five seconds, counting down as soon as the bar for throwing distance appears with primary and upon contact with the ground with secondary.
Ishmael’s version of the knife: a long, twisted and barbed sacrificial-type deal. I’m rather partial to Caleb’s because it resembles one from my own collection, but I’d be lying if I said this one wasn’t the most impressive-looking.
