Blood Wake

Author's Rating:

Pros: Water looks great and actually affects gameplay.

Cons: Poser voice acting

The Bottom Line: 
If your a fan of the vehicle combat genre then you'd be an idiot to pass this fine time-eater.

Author's Review
Blood Wake is a water-vehicular combat game that has gotten quite a lot of attention since it was first unveiled. The reason for most of this attention is mostly over the incredible water visuals and how realistic everything works together.

The story is based around a setting resembling ancient China. You and your fleet were suddenly wiped out one day, while you were floating among the wreckage the Shadow clan rescued you and took you into their home. You now do jobs for this clan that opposes two other empires while trying to figure out how to get back at who attacked you, your brother.

Gameplay is simplistic, addictive, kill anything that moves fun. You are given a boat, and after each mission the armament is upgraded, or your given a new boat. Actual missions vary from rescue, protect, find, and destroy. Pretty standard missions for a game of this type. During a mission, you will face pretty decent challenges. Each enemy has the ability to take you out so you won't get a genocide number of kills, And the explosions (with the wake they leave in the water) seem so cool that you will feel as though you earn each kill.

Control seems to be the only thing about this game that doesn't feel quite right. For one, the boats turns are jerky and its too easy to over correct while lining up for a ramp. The button layouts are good enough though.

The music is kind of a mixture of guitars and more pirate-like music. The music isn't very noticeable, but it doesn't take anything away from the game.

Sound FX are great thanks to the fact that the XBOX has a great sound processor. Gunshots, Explosions, Wave splashes all sound great.

The graphics in Blood Wake look incredible. Especially the water and how it moves. Never before has water ever been done so well. The ships all look sleek and beautiful, and the houses and docks on land look great too.

Enemy AI in Blood Wake is, actually, pretty smart. Take for example, this one situation that happened while i was playing. On the mission where you need to destroy the weapons cache and then take on the boats that come after you, I discovered that using turbo while rushing into an enemy with guns blazing made for a cool spectacle. However, some of the enemy ships would run at me, take thier shots, and then.......veer off at the last minute sending me shooting past them.

Voice acting is good enough. While the actual voices are ok, the scripting is not. Your character talks like he has a 2X4 up his butt through the game spouting poser crap like "For this I just need three things, A boat, (that thief co-pilot dude whose name escapes me), and you...outta my face!" If you don't think thats bad, wait, it gets worse.

In the end Blood Wake is a great ship combat game that really doesn't have any failings other than, for some, the gameplay can get repetitive. So go ahead, add yet another action game to your XBOX library, and if you feel guilty that all your games (or most of) are action games, don't worry, an RPG is not too far off.