Blood: Refreshed Supply Review - A Brutal Throwback to FPS Glory Days!

Blood is back....Again!

Blood: Refreshed Supply™

PC/PS/XBOX/SWITCH

12/4/25

Nightdive Studios/Monolith Productions

1997 was a hell of a year in entertainment! James Cameron’s Titanic was setting records at the box office, Final Fantasy 7 took the world by storm, becoming the best‑selling game of that year, and The Spice Girls were dominating airwaves across the globe. Spice up your life indeed! Err… shifting back to gaming, the FPS genre was truly thriving with standout releases such as Quake II, which many outlets were flat‑out calling one of the greatest games ever released. GoldenEye 007 was also unleashed on the N64, supplying console players with memorable split‑screen deathmatches. I can still remember all the playground conversations about that game to this day. 

Perhaps just a bit overshadowed by its many competitors was Blood, a viciously violent first‑person shooter developed by Monolith Productions, powered by the Build Engine, and published by GT Interactive. A shareware version of Blood was released first, followed by the full game dropping just a few months later in May. It was well received by players and critics alike, putting gamers in the shoes of the gun‑toting Caleb on his quest to slay an evil demon. The story was pretty cool for its time, though like many games back then, it was better presented outside of the game than within it. In this case, most of the cool bits were on Monolith’s website or found in a text file—ah, ya gotta love the late ’90s! While the overall setting of Blood was bleak as you might expect, it balanced its horror with a dash of dark humor, as Caleb would often spout one‑liners full of pop culture references. Think Duke Nukem, but maybe a bit less crude.

The game’s level design was impressive for the time, offering layered areas rife with challenging foes and secrets aplenty. While mowing down enemies and collecting keys was familiar territory for the genre, Blood’s massive arsenal of weapons, tough bosses, and unique tone helped it stand out from other FPS releases. Sure, its relentless difficulty may have turned a few players away, but over time it still managed to gather a rather intense cult following. The franchise found enough success to continue with expansions like Plasma Pak and Cryptic Passage, and even a sequel, Blood II: The Chosen. The sequel sadly received some pretty rough reviews and sold poorly. I never did play that one, did you? Anyways, that’s all the past, so let’s fast forward to today, as Blood is back with Blood: Fresh Supply, from the talented folks at Nightdive Studios. Wait, doesn’t this mean kinda going back to the past after all? Ah, fuck it! So is this 1997 classic still a bloody good time all these years later—or did it bleed me dry? Let’s find out in our full review! 

Blood: Fresh Supply—a great title for a remaster, by the way—plays it relatively safe as far as touch‑ups go, carefully preserving the original experience while adding modern refinements that make this, in my opinion, the definitive way to enjoy the base game and its expansions in one complete package. It features both a single‑player mode following Caleb’s original story and a multiplayer mode with co‑op, Bloodbath, and team battles. Not only do you get the classic campaign with all four episodes included, but also the Cryptic Passage add‑ons and the Plasma Pak content, featuring the Post Mortem levels. If that weren’t enough, the popular fan‑made expansion Marrow is also included, which was apparently created by a former 3D Realms employee. Altogether, players can blast through over 40 levels, plus bonus beta maps and never‑before‑playable areas that add a bit of historical value to the entire package. We do love our gaming history here at I Dream of Indie Games, so it’s appreciated!

From a gameplay perspective, Blood feels like many retro FPS shooters of its era. Levels are large, packed with zombies, gargoyles, and other monstrosities that attack relentlessly. Enemy AI remains impressive even now, with creatures sometimes using cover or accidentally killing one another with friendly fire—which, can we all just agree, is always awesome in video games? Expect to stab foes with your trusty pitchfork, hurl TNT toward them, turning them into zombie soup, and burn these bastards to a crisp with your aerosol can. The weapon variety is excellent, with Flare Guns, Sawed-Off Shotguns, Machine Guns, Napalm Launchers—you name it, if it’s violent and causes insane levels of death and destruction, it’s probably in Blood. Many weapons even feature secondary fire modes, allowing for some creative ways to approach each battle. My personal favorite remains the voodoo doll, where I can stab it with a pin to kill someone—now that’s just awesome!

When you aren’t laying the smackdown on these demonic baddies, you’ll be flipping switches, gathering keys, teleporting, blowing up barrels to reveal hidden paths, and even tackling some not-so-great platforming sections. While platforming was never a strong suit for ’90s FPS games, Blood mostly felt mechanically solid then and still does now—perhaps better than ever thanks to blazing-fast framerates and gameplay improvements implemented by Nightdive. Heck, even the map isn’t half bad in this game, would you believe it? That’s not to say I didn’t do my fair share of bumbling around lost, mind you, because of course I did—but be warned, I do tend to be a bit directionally challenged, so some of that is a me problem. Difficulty options are also included, though the game remains punishing across the board, just a bit less so at lower settings.

Thankfully, all the classic cheats are still here, from walking through walls to God mode and level skipping. Multiplayer is also preserved, supporting up to 8 players. While I couldn’t find active matches during testing, it’s commendable that Nightdive kept online functionality intact rather than cutting it, as many remasters have done. All told, make no mistake, Blood: Fresh Supply is still ultimately a very old game that suffers from old game design philosophies in spots, but at least it’s a markedly better way of playing a very old game.

So what else is new, you ask? Well, there’s a vault containing previously cut levels, concept art, and character sprites, which is great! While video interviews would have been a nice addition, it’s clear that at least some care went into honoring the game’s history. Classic bugs featured in the original have also been squashed, and visually, despite my qualms with the cutscenes, the rest of the game has never looked better, with new effects that still retain the original style. Higher resolutions up to 4K can be used, improved framerates I already mentioned, and multiple sound options (MIDI or CD quality) are available, which you just love to see, or, should I say, hear. Blood: Fresh Supply sounds gritty and chonky, just like you remember. And yes, Caleb’s one-liners still hit every damn time. Performance was smooth throughout my review, with no major technical hiccups. I didn’t play the console versions myself, but you gotta believe this thing would run on any potato.

All told, Blood: Fresh Supply is a faithful remaster of a cult classic that fans won’t want to miss. While its refinements may not convert modern players into retro FPS fanatics as it is still ultimately an old-ass game, Blood remains a brutal, funny, passion-filled experience with a cool gothic style and story. At least, if you can track down the original text files to get that full story, or just use a Wiki or something! Anyways, it has never looked, sounded, or played better, making it essential for fans of the original and worth exploring for anyone curious about FPS history, even if retro games aren’t always your thing. Another job well done by Nightdive Studios—I can’t wait to see what classic they resurrect next.

GREAT