Bloodforge

Bloodforge isn't a game for anyone, starting from its gory, desaturated visuals to its highly difficult gameplay. Too bad that some flaws, like a bad saves management and imprecise controls, help to steer it more towards a frustrating experience rather than a challenging and rewarding one.

Do you like to hack, do you like to slash, do you like to chop heads, do you like sharp fantasy artwork? Then you might like to spend a few hours inside Crom's skull.

Although it is not one of the best in its genre and doesn't bring anything new, it is a good game to pump adrenaline. A solid adventure with a noteworthy visual design that although is quite limited in game modes will be liked by genre fans.

There are far better combat games on the system, and the only reason left to check this out is if you've gone through them all and are craving something new.

Still, if you can stick with it and become accustomed to the way you are forced to rely on instinct, there is a pretty fun and solid game here. The barrier to entry is just too high to recommend it to everyone.

Despite lasting only a couple of hours, Bloodforge still feels like it outstays its welcome thanks to its duotone environments and the feeling that everything on offer has been offered countless times in better packages. Still, if you love old school brawlers enough, you will have a solid, if fairly unremarkable, little button masher that will at least justify the asking price.

The Climax production is a virtual slaughterhouse filled with buckets of blood and even more gore effects. But behind the extreme violence there is hardly any substance.

Attempt to play this style-over-substance offering as thoughtfully as its creators intended, and you'll wind up disappointed. Accept it as a button-masher, rather than the deep brawler it wants to be, however, and working out Crom's anger issues might become your next go-to guilty pleasure.

Boring hack 'n slash with clunky combat system, frustrating camera and choppy framerate. Art style is very good and someone will like the massive gore.

Bloodforge is a game with great potential, unfortunately a very bad technical realization, states the failure of the product.

The feature in Bloodforge that lets you create and send online challenges to friends stands out as a great idea, but given all the other ways that the game falters, it's not enough.

Snore. [Aug 2012, p.77]

A mediocre, low budget attempt to give X360 users their own God of War. [July 2012, p.70]

Despite nice graphics Bloodforge suffers from control issues, bad camera work and a poorly told story.

Bloodforge can be described as the following: take God of War, and just hammer on it until it fits in an XBLA-game. What remains is an imitation with a Celtic taste. Unfortunately the game is way too hard, caused by dumb design choices.

This God of War-inspired adventure falls apart as soon as the camera begins swerving about in confusion.

Conan the Barbarian meets the Phantom of Sparta in this good-looking action game… unfortunately its technical problems blow-up everything else.

While it drips with cinematic style and unrelenting action, the game is held back by camera issues and a game-breaking exploit that can't be ignored.

Bloodforge is too hard and too frustrating to enjoy. It's impossible to change the difficulty of the game, there aren't enough places to heal and the gameplay keeps repeating itself. The graphics are great, but the camera is not. Another great part of the frustration is the boring music, that starts when there are enemies on screen and ends when they have been eliminated.

I cannot stress this enough, Bloodforge is a game that could have been absolutely amazing and could easily have been a contender for the top game on the Xbox Live Arcade, but sadly this title gets ripped limb from limb with everything that is wrong with it and then it gets impaled on the massive 1200 MS price point and has nothing to help it recover.

A good-looking but boring button masher that should be avoided. [Issue#86, p.100]

Bloodforge is gorgeous and has high production values, but in the end it lacks depth and the story is so lame it's outright impossible to care about anything that happens on screen.

Repetitive, boring and betting a lot on its violence and gore. Better stick with Kratos.

Bloodforge has an interesting world concept that is completely wasted. The game suffers from a chaotic fighting system, brainless AI and a flawed camera. Artism is buried under a pile of bugs and bad decisions. Perhaps the developers would try more if the game was to be something more than just a digital distribution product?

All in all, Bloodforge feels like a love letter to the God of War series written with an oversized Sharpie marker. Clunky and unpolished controls mixed with a nearly broken camera make a somewhat enjoyable hack and slash adventure frustrating and monotonous, and with its 1200 MSP price tag, it's hard to justify a purchase.

If you're into mindless bashing, you might somewhat enjoy Bloodforge, but I think most people will be fine with just skipping the title and saving their Microsoft Points for some of the other great stuff coming soon to the marketplace.

Your moves are clumsy, and unresponsive. Arenas wear you out, rather than challenge you. Boss battles are overwrought and underwhelming. The God at the climax of the Land of the Dead is defeated by a drawn-out process of ranged health-whittling and dodge-rolling.

It can't even craft a halfway competent action game out of the myriad things it stole from much better action games.

Bloodforge is an impressive technical demo; unfortunately games are all about gameplay and this is not very good as an adventure game, or even as an action title. The camera problems are usual and the mechanics are far away from being something special.

While it gets props for an interesting visual style and graphics, Bloodforge also brings with it an awful camera, weak story, and extremely derivative gameplay. Bloodforge's gameplay never strives to attain more than "me too" status, bringing nothing new or interesting to the table.

Bloodforge is nothing more than a disastrous banality.

Bloodforge is a God of War for Xbox, except that it's not very good at all. It's a promising idea turned to nothing by too many mistakes.

I suppose if you absolutely have to buy Bloodforge because you're dabbling in a unique form of economic S&M, you might find some guilty pleasure here.

The most frustrating thing of all, though, is that Bloodforge could so easily have been better. No one would begrudge the tepid level design and repetitive gameplay if it wasn't so arduous+. If Climax had halved the number of opponents, lowered the difficulty ever so slightly and let you respawn with a full health bar, Bloodforge could have been good throwaway fun.

A sad example of style over substance. Bloodforge looks cool with its over the top violence, but actually it's a boring, uninspired and repetitive game.

There's no excuse to the get the basics this wrong and there's no reason why slicing your way through a wall of enemies shouldn't be fun. Yet there's nothing that's fun here, only a monotonous bloody grind that copies everything from its peers except their polish.

Bloodforge's striking brutality doesn't stand a chance of overcoming its crushingly dull gameplay.

A Celtic take on God Of War sounds like a great idea, especially with these graphics, but Bloodforge's only triumph is making its inspiration look even better by comparison.

From the dysfunctional camera to the bland and uninspired combat, it's an absolute chore to play through this game. It doesn't matter how great it looks on the outside - Bloodforge is rotten at its core.

The style is problematic and the substance is all but absent. [Aug 2012, p.78]

I slogged onward in the hopes for some spark, but at no point does the game get better, more polished, or less uninteresting. Bloodforge is just one meaningless fight after another, listening to the lines of banal dialogue and post-mortem one-liners.

If I've come across as harsh or bitchy in this review, that's because the game genuinely angered me whilst playing it. Not only was it boring and a chore, badly written and animated, and full of glitches, but it just seems so lazy.