Wales Interactive has firmly positioned itself as the most active studio for FMV-based video games (full motion video, footage shot like a movie with live actors). It has brought us several live-action interactive stories, including the recently released Night Book and I Saw Black Clouds, which came out in March. Although the company has already released two games this year, the company has plans for a third, a title that gives way to one of the latest global trends in the industry: battle royale video games.
It’s called Bloodshore and puts you in the shoes of the failed actor Nick Romeo, who chose to join the annual Kill / Stream program (the name of the program that organizes the Battle Royale) for the chance of eternal glory to attain, he waits for the winner. The story accompanies Romeo through his experience on the island, telling of his confrontations with other players as he reveals that he has hidden reasons for being on the kill / stream reality show we will soon find out could change the way the world works when they came to light.
In contrast to a traditional battle royale, the topic is treated a little more controversially in Bloodshore. In many of these games, the concept of the group of people fighting as gladiators as the sole survivor is more of a heroism. This is not the case in Bloodshore as it quickly turns out that the participants are in the program as a last resort and that the organization society of the brutal show is showing no sign of empathy for human life, which has caused countless deaths over the years of broadcast of the program.
With that in mind, the game not only focuses on the experience of Romeo and the other contestants in a dangerous battle royale, but also deals with the way viewers and the community react to the company that runs the show as well as what is revealed as the story progresses. From that perspective, it’s a different look at the battle royale genre.
Since this is an interactive movie, the game is essentially about making simple decisions at specific times that, in turn, determine the next scene of the movie that you can see. These choices are frequent enough to keep you looking for the story, and the number of alternate scenes available seems to suggest that there are several different stories to explore, but they all share the same plot. At the same time, however, the decisions are quite elementary and you have to decide whether to save one person or another, or to base yourself on one character rather than another, decisions that seemed like a task and quite irrelevant.
It doesn’t help that there is an indicator that shows you how your decisions are affecting history. It’s supposed to be a method of showcasing the impact of your decisions on the group, but honestly, if I wasn’t in the Bloodshore game I wouldn’t lose anything. At no point in the game did I notice that the indicator influenced me or made me think about a decision, just as I do not regret a statistical change in the indicator due to a decision I had made.
It’s also important to note that while Bloodshore is a published game, if you’re hoping to find the successor to Brad Pitt or Cate Blanchett (yes, this is a completely different topic, I recently got The Curious Case of Benjamin Button seen). accept a great disappointment. The actors aren’t very good to say, and some characters (especially the kill / stream host) are irritating to say the least.
Even so, the actors Bloodshore’s poor acting is actually more fun. Arguing that a battle royale will air nationwide until the death, that the story and the actors don’t take the idea very seriously, makes it more approachable and easier to digest and guess at.
If you’re wondering whether playing an interactive movie like Bloodshore is going to be difficult, the answer is both yes and no. As I said earlier, the choices you make lead you to different scenes and videos so you can repeat them and make different choices to see how the story changes.
In short, the truth is I think Bloodshore is a pretty fun game. The story can be passed in 90 minutes unless you want to go back and play again to see the alternate endings. While it’s obviously not quite as eager to collect prizes as the latest blockbuster titles or the biggest video games, it’s fine for a fun afternoon. It’s absurd, grotesque, and tries to challenge our perceptions of battle arenas, and I don’t regret the time I’ve spent playing it.
