So I Tried… Bloodhound

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never played before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time around, I went with the ‘90s-inspired boomer shooter, Bloodhound.

What I thought it was

Okay, I was pretty confident with this one! From a quick look at the games store page on PSN, Bloodhound immediately struck me as a DOOM or Quake-style first-person shooter. Fast-paced, gory, and perfect for anyone with an itchy trigger finger, this looked exactly like all those games I almost certainly shouldn’t have been playing at such a young age.

With all that said, I was pretty confident I was going to enjoy my quick 30-minute run with this one and could see myself continuing to play after this article had been written up. I mean, what’s not to love about a game with a big variety of weapons and hordes of enemies to take out?

What it actually is

Well… what Bloodhound actually is isn’t too far from what I initially thought it was. There’s never enough time to catch your breath, there are plenty of different weapons to find, and more than enough bad guys to shoot. But, unfortunately, I can’t say I enjoyed playing!

The beginning of the game was cool, with a comic book-inspired opening that sets the stage for the plot. Despite the story not being a main focal point of Bloodhound (at least from what I’ve played thus far), it was still nice to have something to give the game a bit of context. Then the gameplay begins and everything just looks… bland. Whilst many newer releases that harken back to the FPS genre's origins have a unique look or modern take on the classic feel, Bloodhound looks like a generic PlayStation 2 shooter. There is a menu option to enable “Juicy Retro Style!”, but this was little more than a pixelated filter across the screen.

It wasn’t terrible to play at least, with floaty controls, weapons that have alternate fire modes (a personal favourite game mechanic) and even a mode that grants you a temporary power boost; it certainly felt like an old-school shooter. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was that I didn’t enjoy, and I very quickly grew bored of playing. If a game such as Bloodhound bored me within half an hour, I’m not sure that there would be much more to uncover if I continued playing.

Will I keep playing

For whatever reason, the game just wasn’t clicking with me, and this was a “So I Tried…” that seemed to drag on long after I’d grown tired of playing. That is to say that, no, I won’t continue playing Bloodhound. There is definitely something here for shooter fans — our reviewer was a big fan! — but for me, it didn’t do enough to stand out from the crowd.