Brain Junkfood: Blood II: The Chosen

Okay, so picture this: You're in a game developing studio in 1998. People are playing Quake and Unreal, and some are complaining about the resources the two engines use being too harsh on the systems they are supposed to be running on. Your studio has made a game using an engine that is fairly good, and doesn't use enough resources to slow systems down. You also have a successful FPS that used the Build engine known for Duke Nukem 3D. So, what do you do? You make a sequel to your old game, using your engine... then ramp the engine so people complain about it crashing their systems. If you think this is a brilliant strategy, then you must be Monolith, and you just made Blood II: The Chosen.

It's a shame to, that to this day, I still cannot get Blood II to work right on a computer. I got it as a birthday present and it crashed that computer so badly that my family had to replace it. It ran very slowly on our next PC. While it runs on the computer I'm using now, it still occasionally crashes when I do something the game doesn't like me doing... like burning a scientist alive with a flare gun. What makes it a shame is the fact that Blood II: The Chosen is my favorite PC game of all time. Part of it has to do with the fact that no one really knows it exists, but most of it has to do with fact that it is unrepentantly bloody, violent, and cheesy.

Blood was never meant to be serious, taking violence to an extreme, and pop culture references even further. Blood II does that, and adds some of the most bizarre enemies I've seen in a game ever. These include fire-breathing zombies with eyes in the mouths, spiders that make you dizzy, and flying human torso that spawns face grabbing worms. These are included with humans, zombies, and ninja-spiky-bug-monsters called Shikari, that spit acid at you.

The plot of the game is deceptively simple. You play Caleb, a Western outlaw who killed the dark god, Tchernobog, over 100 years ago for killing three of his friends, and fellow Chosen, and has been granted immortality. You're on a train when you hear on the loud speaker that a man named Gideon has taken control of the train, and is trying to kill you by crashing the train. Caleb goes on and chases him, which is actually Gideon wants.

He taunts with a Singularity Generator that would make the CERN Institute blush. Instead of sucking Caleb inside of it, it summons the Chosen one by one, starting with Gabriel... er, Gabriella. Yes, a character went through a sex change when being reincarnated. This confuses Caleb as much as it confused me when I first played the game.

One by one, the Chosen come back, the next being the Warlock, Ishmael. Ishmael explains that Caleb is now Tchernobog, and that if he continues to go after Gideon, he'll cause a tremendous interdimensional rift that will destroy all worlds. This makes crossing the streams seem like a minor annoyance, but Caleb doesn't listen. If Gabriel came back, though not whole, and Ishmael is back, what about the love of his Ophelia? Surely, she has to be alive, right?

Caleb chases Gideon through a Cabal (the cult in the game) security point, and finds Ophelia alive. Gideon takes her, though, and Caleb has to chase him to the roof of the Cabal Office building, where they fight until a portal opens up, and takes them all to the Other World. Gideon is transformed into a giant spider, and is killed. But, the portal needs to closed, which means Caleb needs to fight the Ancient One, aka Lava Cthulhu. After LC's defeat, the Chosen are trapped the Other World, forced to walk back to Earth.

The game doesn't end there, though. There's an expansion pack, and that's where things really get weird. The Chosen find marshmallows and hot dogs and have themselves a little scary story contest. Caleb starts with a flashback to the first game, talking about fighting in Antartica. The problem is that he vanishes and the Chosen don't know where.

Ophelia goes next, and that's when you find out that she used to be a sorority girl. That's the scary part. Ishmael, on the other hand, used to be JoJo the Idiot Circus Boy. Tired of having clumps of earth thrown at him, he kills every pistol wielding clown he sees...

Wait... pistol wielding clowns? What circus is this, the Heckler and Koch Three Ring Gun Circus? Why don't I know about this? It can't be worse than the Smith and Wesson du Soliel. Their sideshow was terrible. Ishmael manages to escape, only to be ambushed by three Behemoths. Behemoths are the hardest bosses in the game, taking every round of every weapon you have, and still living. Now, you have to fight three of them.

Gabriella tells a story about going to a spooky house. The worst things she fights are gremlins that flip her off. Caleb, in the meantime, goes back to his outlaw days, and kills monks and cultists. He then finds the creature that's causing this, the Nightmare, which feeds on terrifying memories. After defeating it, the Chosen continue their trek back home.

Blood II was one of the last games to put plot under game play. Story wasn't the game's main draw, it was the violence and the Army of Darkness jokes, and Caleb singing show tunes. Yes, a man that looks and sounds like a mix of Clint Eastwood and Zombie Billy the Kid is singing show tunes. Don't try to think about that, because your ears will bleed from it. I'm still regretting having to hear it.

You may be thinking, “Why do you like this game if it sounds like it's mindless violence, and is, by today's standards, terrible?” Let me put it this way: why do people still play Doom, a game with absolutely no story, then hate a game like Bodycount for the same reason they love Doom? Why do people want a realistic modern war shooter, then pan Medal of Honor, one of the only games to get anywhere near accurate with the military tactics, strategies, and equipment, and play Call of Duty, a game that scoffs at the thought of realism? Why do people call every brawler a God of War clone, despite the fact that God of War took the basic elements of Devil May Cry?

It all comes down to two things: taste and memory. I loved Blood II and Bodycount because they're mindless shooters that I can sit down and play. But, I also love my Bioshock and Crysis. I've served over six years in the Army, so I know how the military works and fights, while an average civilian may not. Believe me, the soldiers I've served with played CoD to escape reality. And God of War was a game that people were stunned by, because it came out of nowhere and was actually pretty damn good. In the sense that it came from behind, it surpassed the success of the game it based it's combat from.

Do yourself a favor, and find a game with no plot. It could be Angry Birds for all I care, but find one that is mindless fun, and see what mood you're in after you play it. You may find that getting bogged down in the story all the time isn't such a good idea when you want to have fun. I'd give you a list of games to check out, but that would ruin the fun of you searching for it. That, and I also have a House full of Dead that I have to Overkill.