The Apocalypse – Earthblood. Smoker’s Masquerade – review Addiction

The guards noticed me when I was sneaking in the form of a wolf in the dead zone of video cameras. These guys don’t like to joke: the rifle is ready, there will be no warning shots. Well, so much the worse for them. The first bullet pierced the skin, but only caused a fit of rage and launched the transformation process. A couple of moments – and in place of a puny wolf with a thunderous roar, a huge Krinos, half-man-half-wolf, spreads his shoulders.

With a wave of a giant paw, the three soldiers fall dead. The shaggy carcass of a werewolf, despite its gigantic size, moves with lightning speed: the monster flies with one jerk to the other end of the room to the next victims, smashing the factory machines into the trash. Useless shots rumble desperately, here and there death screams are heard, and all this accompanied by the grinding sounds of aggressive, wild heavy metal.

Cool, tough, perky. But for the thirtieth time in a row, it only causes a yawn.

There is no smell of vampires here

Act Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood takes place in the setting of World of Darkness – the same universe that gave birth to vampires from Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines… But don’t let the general setting confuse you: board games about vampires and werewolves are very different, and it would be a mistake to expect a social roleplaying from Earthblood with a lot of communication and intrigue.

Werewolves-wolves – Garou are guardians who protect nature and the mother goddess Gaia from a maddened destroyer spirit, the serpent Wyrm. Battles are in their blood. But diplomacy and social interaction are definitely not their strong point. It is only worth mentioning that a long time ago there were a great many werewolves, and of the most different species: from bears to bats. However, the Garou wolves decided that they had the right to control the rest of the shape-shifters, and unleashed the War of Wrath, as a result of which other species were either completely exterminated or brought to the brink of extinction.

Finishing off the Black Spiral Dancer. That monster, whose mouth is torn in the screenshot – for the bad ones. So goodness wins, it’s okay

Garou’s combative nature and trailers, in which the developers focused on dynamic, bloody brawls, promised action in the spirit of the old school, supplemented by stealth elements. Uncomplicated, linear, never trendy, but entertaining and angry. At least, such an old school drew my playing imagination.

In the first minutes it may seem that this is exactly the game the developers have turned out. One glance at the protagonist is enough to understand that he is entirely woven according to outdated canons. The brutal werewolf Kahal is a brave warrior who went into voluntary exile after the death of a loved one. Here you can find a “retired hero”, a “maiden in trouble” and a “woman in the refrigerator.” Ten years ago, these clichés were an eyesore, but then they were so mercilessly etched out of most scripts that now you even miss them a little.

In the central conflict, one can also guess a protest against modernity. At least, against aggressive scientific and technological progress and industrialization, which are guilty of air and water pollution, deforestation and the disappearance of entire ecosystems. The nemesis of the little Kahal flock is the Endron Energy Company. In words, the corporation cares about the environment and allegedly develops a unique biofuel that is safe for the environment. But you and I know what all those bio prefixes mean on food, right? And the werewolves are sure that this is nothing more than a marketing ploy. In fact, the Endron leadership sold souls to the destroyer Wyrm and hatches sinister plans how to quickly gut the earth’s bowels and purposefully pollute nature. Nothing absurd, just business.

Open world

In the game, the storyline sounds no less grotesque than in the summary. The fact is that the tabletop Werewolf: The Apocalypse has a very complex lore rich in details. However, the developers of computer adaptation, Cyanide studio, paid very little attention to the player’s acquaintance with mythology.

Werewolf diplomacy in action

Earthblood has no library, bestiary, or inventory with history hidden in item descriptions. Some information about the lore can be fished out of the “Training” in the pause menu, but there is not everything there. Cyanide omitted some of the details important for understanding what was happening, and put some in notes and scattered them around the locations, but did not bother to give the player an incentive to search and read them.

The “open world” of the game is empty. It’s not fun to explore at all. And sticking an “open” label on the Washington state forest and the Nevada desert is only a stretch. In addition, the characters with whom you can spill over with more than a couple of phrases, for the whole game, there will be at most five or six pieces. There are not many more side quests, and they are all very boring, constructed according to the same template. For example, finding five fallen warriors and helping their souls find peace. You might think that to calm every soul you will need to complete some special tricky quest, but no: you just need to find the corpses. Having greeted Kahal, souls will instantly find peace without unnecessary persuasion.

Ifen is the patron spirit of the Kahala pack

Something curious about the environment (such as the squatting spirit of Caern Tarkers Mill) can only be found at key plot points. Running through deserted forests and deserts for a fraction of experience and meager notes is a dubious pleasure. As a result, players new to the world of Werewolf: The Apocalypse will likely never read the lion’s share of the explanatory information and feel lost. Or they will completely score on the lore and continue to play only for the sake of moments where you can transform into a monster and grind soldiers into mince.

The gray everyday life of an ecoterrorist

But with fighting, things are sad. Having spent time and energy on the “layout” of the open world, Cyanide has not brought to mind the main feature of the game. Finding ourselves in one of the countless rooms with a bunch of enemies, we can almost always choose what to do with the guards: sneak in without touching anyone; secretly roll all the necks (this trick will not work with elite enemies); weaken the enemy before the battle or immediately rush into the fight, taking the combat form of Krinos. You can weaken the security by damaging the “sources” of the enemies – that is, by breaking the electrical panels next to the doors through which reinforcements will arrive. Then new fighters in the room will appear with a cut health bar.

At first, the combat system seems cumbersome and incomprehensible, but in reality everything is simple. Hit, bounce, jump, dash. Plus super-strikes that spend energy (rage), and a berserk mode. The Crinos form also has two stances that need to be changed periodically: powerful and fast. It was possible to build excellent gameplay on such a foundation, but the developers for some reason decided to limit themselves to the minimum combo of three hits. Yes, you can open new super-moves, but they are activated by pressing two buttons and bring almost no variety. Moreover, more often than not, it is enough to simply swing your paws in all directions, trying to hurt as many people as possible, and dodge from time to time. And so fight after fight, room by room.

The same tactics work with bosses as with crowds of enemies. There is no need to look for a special approach to them: each is passed from the first, maximum from the second attempt

The AI ​​in Werewolf is extremely stubborn and does not seem to try to complicate the task at all. Only snipers demonstrate the rudiments of tactics: they always try to stay on a hill, away from the battlefield. And even if you get to the sniper’s nest, while you torment one shooter, the rest may well give the hole and move to another position. And all other units are cannon fodder, regardless of armor and weapons. They twist through so that it is very convenient to mow them in bundles. The idiots with grenades especially distinguished themselves – these heartless geeks throw explosives directly into the crowd, not sparing their colleagues. Of course, there is no friendly fire in the game, but looking at how another gallant soldier throws a grenade at his feet, you want to twirl a finger at his temple.

Four guards. All carelessly look at the backs of each other’s heads, not thinking to throw around and look. “There is no pity in my heart for them”

As soon as you get tired of exterminating the security service, you can try to diversify the routine by switching to a stealth mode of passage. Sneaking and hiding will be a very unusual way – by turning into a wolf. Moving so faster and more inconspicuously, you can crawl where the human form of Kahal will not squeeze through – into ventilation shafts or narrow crevices in the rocks. However, wolf paws are at odds with electronics, and fighting in the form of Lupus is not an option – the wolf is too weak, and Kahal instantly changes his appearance to a human when it is necessary to secretly strangle the enemy.

On paper, the prospect of trying on a wolf hide sounds tempting, but in reality, stealth in Earthblood is even worse than fighting. Shortsighted guards either stand in a pillar or move along an uncomplicated trajectory, most often back and forth or in a circle. The dead cannot be dragged, but Kahal can do well without it: corpses in the middle of the room rarely bother anyone. Almost always, bodies fall very successfully and hide from sight behind steel barriers, which, for some unthinkable reason, block off all rooms. And having pumped a certain skill, before the guard, you can at least arrange long jump competitions – only cameras will slow down the race by level. However, they are also easily disabled by electric shots from a crossbow, it is enough, again, to acquire the appropriate skill.

The last boss got stuck in textures all the time, and at the end of the battle it flew out of the arena altogether, seeping through the concrete wall. It looked funny and sad at the same time.

The only thing that does not cause any complaints and yawns is the dialogue mini-games “intimidate the little man”. In them, you need to use only words (often obscene) to force enemies to post the information we need. The task is simple, and it is more difficult to fail than to win, but watching how another pompous white collar loses its ambition under the pressure of a feisty Irish man is somehow funny every time.

The trouble with Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is not at all its old-fashionedness or even its antediluvian graphics. On the contrary, now that the market is flooded with games for 20+ hours with a mountain of unprocessed side content, a small, solid linear action would look very profitable. Well, the shortcomings of the picture can be tolerated, it would be for what.

But it seems that Cyanide Studios herself did not know what she wanted to get in the end. Instead of focusing on the hurricane battles and stealth that were so pushed in the trailers, the authors decided to add a little bit of everything, and as a result, they did nothing properly.

Pleased

• the first couple of battles cause an adrenaline rush;
• soundtrack by Alien Weaponry;
• old clichés that we have already missed.

Upset

• battles very quickly turn into a routine;
• even a bison can sneak past the guards unnoticed;
• the graphics are too outdated;
• faceless industrial surroundings;
• open world for show.

How we played

In what: the key is provided by the publisher.

On what: PC.

How many: 13 hours

Editorial achievement

“Exterminator”

Purge every room, knocking out the guards like cockroaches, but never get any XP bonus for overtime.

Verdict

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood could have turned out to be a great old-school chopper, but it didn’t work out. Cyanide Studios has clearly shown that, even creating a small game, you can take on too much and do everything through a stump deck.