Bloodshore | PS4 Review
Bloodshore is an FMV (Full Motion Video) interactive action movie set around a battle royale game show, where the contestants are streamers, entertainers, and inmates. It is developed by Good Gate Media and published by Wales Interactive, and it is available on Windows PC, PlayStation, XBox, and Nintendo Switch. For the purpose of this review I was playing the game on the PlayStaion 4 with a review key that was kindly supplied to us by Heaven Media.
If you are new to the FMV scene, imagine a movie that has interactive elements, where you watch the movie play out on screen, and every now and then, you are given choices via on screen prompts. Through those choices that you make, you decide the outcome of the movie as you go from scene to scene. This does provide replay value, should you want to explore how those other choices would affect the storyline, and with Bloodshore there is well over 8 hours of FMV footage to fully discover.
Bloodshore was not my first FMV game and it wasn't my first from either Good Gate Media or Wales Interactive, having previously played both Night Book and I Saw Black Clouds, among others. It is a genre of game that I do enjoy a lot, which allows me to combine my love of movies and of video games into one. Initally going into this one though, I was kind of put off slightly by the battle royale setting, not being a huge fan of that style of both game or movie. If you are familiar with the Battle Royale movies, or of Hunger Games, and more recently the TV show Squid Game, and games such as Fortnite, then you will get some sort of idea of the premise for Bloodshore. It's basically a fight to the death with the contestants all being stranded on an island, fighting each other until there is only one left standing.
There is a warning on screen as the game loads up, just to cover the content, which includes graphic depictions of violence, blood, and death, so viewer discretion is advised, and the game does come with an 18 PEGI certificate for both extreme violence and strong language. You start the game playing as and making decisions for one of the game contenstants, Nick Romeo, who is a failed actor, having starred in a series of teen horror movies that appear to be a combination of both Twilight and The Lost Boys. I won't go into details of the story, so as to avoid any spoilers, but the movie does move along at a fair pace, despite the amount of walking about the characters do. The acting is as you would expect from an FMV game, which would be on the lines of what you would expect from a TV movie, and the production value, as with the developer and publisher's previous titles, is very good.
Throughout the game the action cuts from the story playing out on the island to the public viewing the televised battle royale, so you get to see reactions to how the story is playing out. There is also a host for the show as well as a talk show, and both of these play out along with the viewer clips. Pressing the option button during the game will bring up your stats, which include Team Morale, Audience Opinion, Romance, Strength, and Insight, all of which will have a percentage rating out of 100. You can see which icons relate to which value and keep track when each of the icons pop up in the top right hand corner of the game screen. There are options in the menu to adjust volume and brightness. You can have subtitles on or off and select the size, background colour and text colour. And if you are a live streamer, you also have a streamer mode option, which you can turn on, allowing the choices in the game to pause for longer, so that your viewers in chat can help you with any decisions in the game.
Bloodshore is an enjoyable entry into the FMV genre, and provides replay value, especially if you want to discover all of the alternate scenes, of which there are just under 300. You can play through the game in a couple of hours, so it's just about the length of an actual movie, and if you are new to the world of FMV interactive games, Bloodshore would definitely be a very solid introduction to that genre for you.
g1a5w3g1an's Rating: 4 ammo drops out of 5.
For more information on Bloodshore please use the following links...
Good Gate Media - Developer | Facebook | Twitter | Website
Wales Interactive - Publisher | Facebook | Twitter | Website
Many thanks to Heaven Media for the Review Key.
Bloodshore | Windows PC | PlayStation | XBox | Nintendo
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