Blood

All that talk of Tesla coils before got me thinking about the first place I heard Tesla’s name, playing the PC game, “Blood.”  “Blood” was developed by Monolith Productions in 1998 and is part of that great golden age of violent PC first-person shooters following in the footsteps of “Doom.” 

The game’s main character is Caleb, a darkly shadowed figure with a tench coat, wide-brimmed hat, and glowing read eyes.  Caleb is a resurrected gunfighter who belonged to a cult which had been dedicated to the god, Tchernobog.  He was destroyed by the ancient god for some unspecified slight, but following resurrection Calebbegins a quest for revenge.  Most of the settings in the game’s first episode look like something out of a Western, but the sequel would reveal the year of the first game’s setting to be 1928.  As a result, weapons range from the old reliables of pistols and shotguns to Tommy guns, voodoo dolls, and Tesla cannons.  “Blood” was one of the first games to employ the second fire mechanism and a guns akimbo feature which pops up a lot in modern first person shooters.

Maybe the most memorable element of “Blood” is its frequent references to horror and sci-fi culture from the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired gods to quotes from “Army of Darkness” to zombie canisters from “Return of the Living Dead.”  The game is full of great nerd-gasmic Easter eggs and humor on top of all the violence and gore.  It ranks right up there with “Duke Nukem 3D” for being frequently hilarious and fun.