Blood Waves Review

"Repeat"

Campaign

March 17, 2019 at 4:18am
By Jason Stettner

Blood Waves is a very basic survival game with some tower defense elements. There's only a singular mode, within a single area of play. There are elements of progression, but with permadeath you're always set to restart from scratch. It's a wave based game where each new challenge adds extra zombies, and further variation within those monsters. Between rounds a special area opens up, and this is where you improve your survival chances.

You'll either be enhancing skills, upgrading weapons, or purchasing new tools. There's a selection of weapons to buy, and a few traps to purchase. You'll also need to buy ammo, basically you're constantly starved of ammunition so traps are important. There's a neat building mechanic present, but those are expensive as well so they get broken constantly. That's really all there is to this, it's simple and to the point. It would have been great to have some mode variations, or something extra to add additional value.

Gameplay

This is a third person experience where you shoot from a set perspective. There are some neat mechanics in regards to being able to swing and dodge to a degree. You do however get sent into some locked mechanics at times which can cause death. The trap building system is basic, but interesting and a neat element to see. The world has some quality textures to it, but is very drab. It's basically just this one circular room that lacks imagination. It would have been nice to see some different rooms, or something special to mix it up.

It just makes the game feel largely repetitive in nature. The zombies aren't anything special, they do spray a lot of blood though. The guns don't shoot well, and ammo doesn't last against the spongy horde that runs after you without any thought. There are some special zombies, the explosive ones are just annoying. It takes one and you'll lose rounds worth of traps which unbalances things. The character model is alright, definitely a Lara Croft type with the most dead soul sucking eyes I've ever seen. There's just life that's missing in those eyes that glare.

The Conclusion

Blood Waves is a very basic game that brings a single core concept, it gets boring quickly though. After a few rounds I just become somewhat tired. Even when I get a complex trap system, it takes just a round or one explosive guy to send it all toppling down. I can see some elements of destruction, but on any wave these traps are just weak.

There's a decent upgrade system present, but like everything else it just resets when you die. If you like the repetition then it's decent, I can see this getting old quickly for most. It would have been great to have wave variations, or another area. Just something else as it's very niche in the setup. The visuals were fine for the most part, just rather drab. There's not a whole lot going on in Blood Waves, it presents the core concept fine though. It just doesn't do anything with it. I had fun with it, it's just a basic premise though.

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Blood Waves Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by Sometimes You

Rating Overall: 3.3