Blood Waves | PS5 Review
Blood Waves, developed by Light Road Games and published by Sometimes You, is a hardcore, fast-paced zombie shooter. It is currently available on Windows PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, and for this review I was playing the PlayStation 5 version.
Blood Waves is a horde-based, arena, zombie survival game. There are two game modes: survival, and horde. Each time you begin a wave, zombies will flood the arena, and you must kill them all and survive to win the round. In Survival mode, you get credits for killing enemies and a skill point for every wave that you complete. Horde mode is where you are given a set number of credits at the beginning of the round, and you must spend them wisely before the round. As well as having an arsenal of guns at your disposal, you’ll also have a variety of traps that you can set up around the arena to help you thwart the hordes. As you progress through the game and unlock skill points, you’ll be able to upgrade your character with new attacks and improve your weaponry too.
The game certainly looked promising, but unfortunately looks is where the promise ended for me, because as soon as I had control of my Lara Croft look-alike, I instantly felt like I was fighting against my controller at every juncture. My character's movement felt like I was trying to trek my way through quicksand, and alongside this the gun play was quite painful and not just for those on the receiving end. Aiming correctly was a nightmare in itself; it felt too sensitive and too slow and sluggish all at the same time, which I’m sure sounds like a huge contradiction, but it's the best way I can explain it. I lost track of how many times I would battle to line up a clean headshot and then as soon as I pull the trigger, it's as if my character loses all sense of consciousness and misses in grand fashion. It took great patience for me to simply spend the time getting to grips with the gun play, and that alone is a serious downside for me in a game like this. Equally, the guns just don't feel like they have any power to them, and it just felt like I was fighting off hordes of zombies with a Nerf gun. Alongside your gun, you also have some melee weapons, and you’ll start off each game with a pistol and a knife. Unfortunately, the melee wasn’t much better, and instead I just struggled along with my peashooter and gave up with the melee altogether.
The setting itself was also quite drab and boring and there's only one arena to contend with, so every wave is essentially just the same thing repeatedly, with an increasing number of enemies. This copy and paste of each enemy just began to feel old very quickly. Secondly, the entire game takes place in just one arena, which isn’t exactly interesting in and of itself. It would have been nice if there was perhaps some progression in location, so maybe moving onto some other tombs in the building that have different hazards throughout the environment would have been a good addition as you move further into the game.
Unfortunately, Blood Waves was a largely unimpressive game for me. I enjoyed the concept of arena zombie hordes, I enjoyed the idea of the traps you could build, but unfortunately it just felt like everything was half-baked at best, and with a little more work it could have been far better. The gameplay felt sluggish, the controls felt clunky, and there was very little to redeem it for me at present.
Lj’s Rating: 2 out of 5.
For more information on Blood Waves please use the following links...
Light Road Games - Developer | Twitter
Sometimes You - Publisher | Instagram | Twitter | Website
Many thanks to Sometimes You and Keymailer (Game.Press) for the Review Key.
Blood Waves | Windows PC | PlayStation | Xbox | Nintendo
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