Blood II certainly belongs to the 'old school of thought' when it comes its design and resultant gameplay. We wish that we could tell you that Blood II was somewhat sophisticated in terms of its gameplay. But instead of being closer to Half-Life, Blood II is way more related to the likes of Doom. This is of course fine if you want more of the same (and we don't deny that it's fun) but don't expect Blood II to bring anything new to the genre as Half-Life did. It's your very basic shoot everything on sight, then find any keys, and search for the exit to the next level. Occasionally you'll come across some puzzles, but only very occasionally and when we say puzzles we don't mean that they're in any shape or form hard to solve. They require little or no thought at all.

Yes, there's a story to follow and instructions to be read but we get the feeling that they've been thrown in for good measure than anything else. You could really play through the game without bothering to read your instructions- it's usually very obvious what your objectives are. For example, when you're 30 000 feet in the sky and flying on some Cabal Corporation craft it becomes fairly obvious what your exit is, when you come across a parachute. After you've picked it up, it's a case of getting to the cargo hold and bailing out. Having said all of that, this is one of the more 'intriguing' secondary objective's because on most other levels it really is a case of kill everything and find the exit. Wouldn't it have been all that hard to include a few more sub plots? Especially when too many of the 40 levels have the tendency to over rely on simply finding a key.

And speaking of the 40 levels, Monolith can certainly lay claim to 'a job well done' by the art department and the level design team. Most (not all) of them are balanced well between corridors and out door areas and some of them borrow from the likes of Hexen II (the Cathedral level for example). They're pretty and have a plethora of different textures and rarely do the levels show evidence of the 'too much of one color syndrome', which critics faulted Quake for (in its case due to the over use of brown). Of course there were a few 'cop outs' such as the rehash of the Subway level again in Chapter to, which was an exact replica of the level found in Chapter One. Only there were a few more enemies the second time around. But as far as level design goes, Blood II's are way up there. As stated earlier though, Monolith could have done so much more with them by fine-tuning the gameplay.

As with any 3D first person shooter, secret areas are plentiful. Some are downright obvious and some are a little harder to find. Firing at an unusual looking painting may well result in you finding a safe. Or shooting at a fire extinguisher may well cause an explosion that results in a hole appearing in a wall. Finding secret areas in Blood II isn't essential but being able to replenish your stocks with health, ammo and weapons is a huge help.