March « 2021 « bloodfestseriesdotcom

Another look at the influences on the Bloodfest series.

Blood

OK, it’s not possible to deny the influence this game had on the manic, black humour approach to Bloodfest’s fight scenes. Monolith Productions created a cowboy zombie shoot ’em up full of high adrenaline combat and visceral kills. It had a muted, visual pallet throughout excellent level designs, and an internal Build engine allowing players to create their own environments. I had a blast essentially building sets with the game’s own texture maps and PNG images. This was my first foray into 3D environmental construction.

Paul Verhoeven

I’m talking about Robocop (1987), Total Recall (1990), and Starship Troopers (1995) in particular here. Three movies I saw many years ago but never noticed the same director. It’s obvious now, with the same quality in all three films. I mainly remember how obscenely violent they were. I didn’t see Robocop until I was older, but remember you could buy kid’s toys. Jesus Christ that film is violent and not-for-kids. Starship Troopers covered it’s sets in mangled body parts, and Total Recall is a fever dream of gore. It’s the brutal impact of the gunshots; the agonising dismemberment. It’s all so horrible, but so over the top it becomes funny.