Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood Review

The higher you fly, the further you’ll fall. It’s a good thing that Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood stays close to the ground, then. It may be a deeply flawed game, but the modest scope of this spinoff from the Werewolf: The Apocalypse tabletop RPG means that its flaws don’t stick around long enough to become genuinely loathsome. Dare I say? They’re almost kind of lovable. This is a title saved by its brevity, although that doesn’t mean we should overlook its flaws in their many varieties.

Just a few minutes with Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood is enough to conjure up a powerful thought, and it’s one that never relents: “I’m playing an Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 game.” From the wonky animations to the button-mashing melee combat, the blatantly pre-programmed enemy patrol routes, to the gruff and ‘oh-so angry’ protagonist, the whole thing feels overwhelmingly like something unearthed from a long-ago era of 2009. Far from condemning Earthblood for this dated design, I instead think that it actually keeps the game refreshing in today’s era of titles which desperately want to act like sponges for their players’ free time. Sure, there are ‘modern’ gaming staples here like basic skill trees and side-quests (well, a few), but Earthblood is short and simple in a way that you see so rarely nowadays.

The game’s story centres around Cahal, a modern-day Garou (AKA: werewolf) and environmental activist. He and his Garou companions are foot soldiers for an ancient spiritual force known as the Wyld (representing creation) in a war against the Wyrm (representing destruction). In today’s world, or rather, the game’s parallel to it, the Wyrm manifests in humankind’s greed and its quest for profit, no matter the environmental consequences. After letting his werewolf rage get the better of him, Cahal subjects himself to a five-year period of exile. Upon returning, he finds his former activist group and family in disarray at the hands of Endron, an oil company with some seriously shady schemes in the works behind the scenes. It’s up to Cahal, then, to put a stop to Endron and mend his fractured family relationships.

Quite why he’d want to mend those family relationships, however, is beyond me. The characters here only serve to keep the plot moving. Cahal seems to care about them, but I certainly didn’t. The voice performances were fine, if unremarkable, and that’s about the highest praise I can give to this game’s main cast. Their conversations were wholly uninteresting and didn’t even try to evoke emotion or create some semblance of intrigue not related to the central plot. Some of the text logs strewn around the world added a small amount of depth, but this was minimal and arguably still tied into the main narrative. This isn’t a brand new franchise, may I remind you. Werewolf: The Apocalypse was created in the early ‘90s; you’ve got to imagine there’s a decent pool of established lore to draw from in order to flesh this world and its characters out, right?

And I touched upon the game’s “wonky animations” earlier, but it really deserves highlighting quite how unfinished these look, particularly in cutscenes. Have you ever watched videos made in Source Filmmaker? These cutscenes evoke more or less the same feeling; it’s incredibly jarring. Limbs move like they’re pulled on puppet strings, and faces emote like they’re models on Garry’s Mod. It’s only a notch or two below laughable, and I’m glad the worst of it is reserved for the cutscenes. If the actual gameplay had been like that, it may have broken me. Thankfully, the in-game animations and movement aren’t too bad; they are about 10 or so years out-of-date, however, but that much I can abide.

Creating an adaptation of an existing property, especially one of a tabletop RPG like Werewolf: The Apocalypse, is a risky thing. Will you get the tone right and capture the spirit of the source material? Will you please existing fans? Will you alienate newcomers? Earthblood takes an approach which favours newcomers, much to the presumed disappointment of the tabletop RPG fans. While labelled as an action RPG, it’s clear that the focus was placed on the first half of that genre duo, with only brief nods to anything resembling an RPG. There are skill trees, but these would better be described as skill saplings; there are side-quests, but only about five, and you’ll miss nothing worthwhile by skipping them; and there’s a Mass Effect-style conversation wheel, but rather than shaping the story, it’s mainly used to give the player a choice in how much of it they want to engage in.

So, no, this won’t try to recreate a tabletop experience in the same way a Baldur’s Gate title might; it doesn’t even compare to the recent Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest in that respect. The game instead sees Cahal infiltrating a variety of Endron facilities around the USA. Each facility in-need of infiltrating and/or sabotaging makes up a chunk of the game and features its own small, semi-open hub area full of spiritual collectibles able to be ‘absorbed’ for XP. When the action kicks into gear, it comes in three distinct flavours, each one characterised by a different of Cahal’s werewolf forms.

First, there’s regular human Cahal, who can blend in, hack computer security and use his sharp tongue to navigate the surface levels of Endron’s security. It’s a Splinter Cell-esque thrill to slink into a security office, open a direct path to your objective and remotely deactivate any defences that would stop you along the way. Of course, our protagonist can’t always just stroll right into his objective; sometimes a more subtle approach is necessary. For this, his wolf form is the perfect stealth operative: small, quiet and able to squeeze through ventilation ducts (a valuable skill). When approaching an enemy, this form can transform back into a human at will, silencing them with a snapped neck or crossbow bolt to the head. In my experience, stealth was almost always a path destined to fail; I was inevitably spotted by some security guard or ethically bankrupt scientist before reaching my objective. That isn’t “Game Over”, though. If anything, it’s when the game really begins. Being discovered triggers a call for enemy reinforcements, who always flood in en masse and trigger a transformation into Cahal’s final—and most lethal—werewolf form. Once stomping around as a hulking werewolf, there’s little which can stand in Cahal’s way.

This style of combat is a fairly simple hack-and-slash affair with two stances, light and heavy. Each brings their own basic combo sets as well as a handful of resource-draining special attacks. It’s simple enough and yet feels too imprecise to be truly satisfying. Avoiding damage is theoretically possible thanks to a dodge move, but in practise, it’s easier just to soak up enemy blows and heal than actually try to avoid them. It’s the aforementioned resource, though, known as Rage, which the melee combat orbits around. Particularly in the latter half of the game when turrets, mech suits and supernatural enemies join the fray, you’ll rely on Rage to heal and access your most powerful (and crucial) attacks. Rage is built far quicker in the light stance, but a large portion of the game’s enemies are hardly affected by your light attacks. It’s therefore necessary to intelligently swap between light and heavy, building up Rage while dealing minimal damage before swapping to the heavy stance and ‘cashing out’ your stockpiled Rage, eviscerating your enemies in the process. This rhythm of building up and spending Rage is the key which keeps combat fun (almost) to the very end. The final stretch of the game, admittedly, does grow tiresome, but 20 minutes of tedium in comparison to multiple hours of decent—if not exactly innovative—gameplay is a good tradeoff in my eyes.

There’s no getting past how much Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood fails to live up to the standards of modern gaming. I’d argue that it doesn’t quite live up to the standards of 2010-era gaming. Still, it doesn’t try to bite off more than it can chew, and despite its flaws—of which there are many—it was a fun little stealthy, button-mashy diversion. Maybe this is the fault of rose-tinted specs, but the way this game hearkens back to titles of two generations ago has me more than ready to forgive its sins. I enjoyed it more than I probably should, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. Oh, and if you’re looking for a faithful re-creation of the tabletop experience? Steer clear of this; there’s nothing here for you.