After a pleasant afternoon murdering local wildlife, Crom returns home to find his homeland ablaze, and magical trickery dupes him into butchering his beloved. Naturally, he does what any dude with furry underpants and a helmet made out of a skull and antlers would do: blade in hand, he heads off to exact bloody revenge.
As you stomp through snowy wilderness and murky swampland, you’ll encounter an unpleasant mix of unnatural assailants, ranging from spell-casting witches to obese giants. You can chain light and heavy attacks into simple but deadly combinations, and finish off dazed foes with executions that reduce them to fountains of crimson muck. (Shoving your sword in an enemy’s gut and disemboweling him is especially brutal.) That blood serves purposes greater than mere spectacle. For one, it fills a meter that fuels Berserk Mode, which grants temporary speed and strength boosts. Plus, it provides currency you can spend on three upgradable Rune Attacks that let you zap the crap out of foes using the power of the gods.
You can choose between a sword, hammer, crossbow, and pair of claws at any time, and each melee weapon features its own assortment of flashy moves. But a couple of things prevent your gear from being as fun to wield as it could’ve been. Without the ability to block, Crom must roll away from any ruckus after every few swings to survive. On its own, that’s no big deal; factor in the lack of lock-on targeting, though, and you’ll spend almost as much time managing the obstinate camera as skewering creeps.
The recurring annoyances that result don’t bleed all the joy from clobbering, but they do keep this third-person action game from devel¬oping a more natural flow and better exploiting its gruesome graphic-novel aesthetics. Luckily, such issues are diminished when you try to chop down massive bosses inspired by Celtic mythology. Most prove less challenging than the more common mid-level lieutenants, but they’re certainly the most grotesque big baddies we’ve seen in an XBLA game.
PUBLISHER: Microsoft Studios • DEVELOPER: Climax Studios • ESRB: Mature • MULTIPLAYER: Challenge System only (see description below) • ACHIEVEMENTS: Kind (400G) • COST: 1,200 Microsoft Points ($15)
DEATH SPORT: You can’t engage with an online friend directly in Bloodforge, but you can issue challenges to determine the more formidable warrior. In challenge mode, you’ll bash through enemy waves and spend points to manipulate attributes, such as the damage your blows inflict and whether enemies enjoy magical shielding. You can even make corpses explode. If your buddy survives, he’ll tweak waves of his own and bounce the battle back to you. You’re even free to bring the upgrades you earned during story mode into the fray.+ Four weapons, graphic executions, and a variety of special attacks keep the hack-and-slash core from growing too repetitive.
+ Simple but memorable battles against hideous bosses.
– No blocking or lock-on targeting = slightly disjointed encounters.
? What behemoth forged the hilariously huge Abyss Hammer?
