World of Darkness Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood - action-RPG adaptation from Cyanide

[lycanwarrior]

Still on the fence about pre-ordering it.

Any game about werewolves is going to be a must-buy from me haha.

You are a retard if you pre-order anything. There are absolutely no exceptions to this.

But...but as I said on the Waylanders thread...

Werewolf PCs bitchez!

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Jenkem]

Wait this is EGS only?

 

[Semiurge]

Still on the fence about pre-ordering it.

Any game about werewolves is going to be a must-buy from me haha.

Hey guys, we caught a furry by the tail.

 

[lycanwarrior]

Still on the fence about pre-ordering it.

Any game about werewolves is going to be a must-buy from me haha.

Hey guys, we caught a furry by the tail.

 

[Abu Antar]

Uninterrupted, leaked gameplay. Ca: 10 minutes.

I'll get it once it gets added to a bundle. I chuckled at the end.

Just click the video and watch it derctly on YT.

 

[Technomancer]

Meh, I was pretty hyped but this looks mediocre. Disappearing corpses and environment clutter, still too much to handle in 21?

 

[Zombra]

One of those game where you feel bad for someone. You don't know who it is, but there's someone somewhere on the dev team who actually wants to make something good that will stand the test of time. And to either side of them (and certainly higher up in the company) are tired burnouts showing up for a paycheck who just want to get this shit over with.

 

[lycanwarrior]

Meh, I was pretty hyped but this looks mediocre. Disappearing corpses and environment clutter, still too much to handle in 21?

Considered a AA game and looks it for the most part. So expectations will be much lower.

 

[Xelocix]

Nah I gotta agree with the brain on this. Spending time on the Codex is sad enough as is. Registering an account on the Codex on Christmas day...

Just leave while you still can.

I didn't register on Christmas Day, I registered on the 24th.

Codex is the only forum I've cared enough to shitpost in since the ancient Bioware Social Network forums were shut down. This place isn't quite as cancerous, but it's entertaining. I'm here to stay baby.

You are a retard if you pre-order anything. There are absolutely no exceptions to this.

But...but as I said on the Waylanders thread...

Werewolf PCs bitchez!

 

[Abu Antar]

Have a look at the first 30 minutes.

 

[toro]

Have a look at the first 30 minutes.

I got my Lupus right here! *grabs crotch*

 

[Delterius]

Have a look at the first 30 minutes.

is that a child at 7:00 or a really tiny woman

 

[Zombra]

Have a look at the first 30 minutes.

lol @ the streamer in the corner, checking his phone, eating some lunch, reaching behind him to pick up random objects scattered around his house rather than watch this cutscene fest

 

[Xelocix]

Have a look at the first 30 minutes.

Same energy.



This game is going to be so fucking bad lol.

 

[Technomancer]

is that a child at 7:00 or a really tiny woman

"Young lady." That supposed to be a kid model.

 

[Belegarsson]

Since NDA has ended, I can finally share how much of a masterpiece this game is.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Dishonoredbr]

World of Darkness never lucky huh.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-02-04-werewolf-the-apocalypse-earthblood-review

Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood review - breezy but scrappy RPG action
Worse fur were(wolf).

Fun at times but also scruffy and repetitive, Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood lacks a bit of bite.

Every mission always seems to end in the same way.

I creep in, stealth-style, and take cover behind the outrageously convenient waist-high panelled fence. A quick burst of Penumbra Vision - just another name for that oh-so-common video game mechanic that lets you see through walls and solid objects - shows me there's five - no, wait, eight! - enemies between the exit and I.

To be fair, fighting in Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood - quite a title, eh? - rarely feels unsatisfying. It's bombastic and bloody and brutal, but while the stealth sequences see you creep about the place as an interminably forgettable old white dude, the fight sequences, as perhaps intimated by the name of the game, are a little different. The moment things get hairy - no pun intended - he'll transform into a gigantic, bloodthirsty werewolf and the ensuing battle - which is always accompanied by a scream of rock music and a throbbing drumbeat - is frantic, and usually fun. Kick the final corpse to the ground and Cahal will transform back into his humanoid form, helpfully denoting the fight, for now at least, is over.

Stylistically - even mechanically - it feels like something of a love letter to the older action games us old-timers grew up with. It takes its cues and inspiration from old-school Metal Gear Solid and the first couple of Resident Evil games, from the set-pieces and creature design to the score. Towards the end, though, the homage teeters dangerously close to pure rip-off, with the final act taking place on an oil rig that's strikingly similar to Metal Gear's Big Shell, complete with a handy vent system for Snak- I mean Cahal - to wiggle through.

But while Snake was pretty adept at getting past enemies unspotted, Cahal's ventures aren't quite as successful, inevitably because the odds seem ever stacked against him. There are always so many enemies rammed into each area that even with their dreadful AI and a handful of crossbow bolts (you'll learn not to rely on them; you'll never have enough), you're probably going to end up getting your claws out before you reach the other side.

I'm not complaining about that exactly, but though perfectly perfunctory, the combat will begin to feel very samey, very quickly. Every room is configured in a vague approximation of the one that came before it, with fencing and stacked boxes and oil drums, and the same thugs and soldiers stomping around the place. Occasionally, you'll breach an office with a conveniently unlocked PC with which you can toggle electronic doors, turrets, and cameras on or off. It's a neat mechanic, particularly paired with the ability to sabotage the entryways through which reinforcements enter. But this is essentially it for the full duration of the game, ad infinitum, with a handful of fairly unremarkable boss battles thrown in for good measure.

A bloody good time.

Because so much of the game is dedicated to combat, it stands to reason that there are several tricks and special moves to change things up. There are two metered combat devices; Rage, which enables you to pull off various special attacks that can be unlocked by collecting spirit points and advancing your skill tree, and Frenzy, which essentially boosts Cahal's strength and stamina for a limited period. The former is generated by light/heavy attacks, takedowns, combos, or via whiskey bottles secreted around the place, while the latter builds up during a scrap. Frenzy is pretty useful, particularly if you're taking on a boss, but beyond Rage's helpful self-heal ability, all the other offensive tricks seem to do essentially the same thing.

It's not even as if the story carries it, either. Just another reimagining of the David versus Goliath tale - or Werewolf versus Big Corpo, in this case - the story is stuffed with plenty of explosions and untimely deaths and agonisingly shallow character archetypes (and one dreadful stereotype of a native woman that potentially falls just on the wrong side of racist), as well as quite a bit about the fragility of each Garou/werewolf and their ability to balance their humanity without giving in to The Rage. And while there's a little space given to the lore of the tabletop RPG on which the game is based, it's not nearly enough; too many of Werewolf: The Apocalypse's more supernatural elements go unexplained entirely.

Howl you doing?

Furthermore, the in-game world is absolutely tiny, which means there's zero opportunity for organic exploration; a shame, really, as having a bigger world to explore would help balance the repetitive combat. Sadly, the hub world of your Caern - your pack and its human allies - is curiously empty and always suspiciously close to the enemy's numerous camps.

There's more, but none of it particularly impressive. A prison in which no-one ever moves about and man-sized air vents are left open all over the place. Atypical discussion prompts that ask you to select a direction of travel rather than actual words of dialogue. A lacklustre story and characters that are so superficial, it's hard to forge any emotional connections with any of them.

A furs to be reckoned with.

I completed a full 96 per cent of Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood before I encountered technical issues. Finishing off one particular enemy triggered a crash and sent me back to the dashboard, and every time you reboot, the game helpfully tells you how much you've completed. It was a maddening sequence, but I got through it in the end not by killing him, but by Roaring him off the narrow oil rig platform (and trying not to follow him over the side, which I did do... several times).

Though full of ideas, Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood leans too heavily on games that have come before it and doesn't quite have the courage to expand its own innovations. Yes, I played to completion without complaint, and yes it's a bloody, good romp at times, but that doesn't mean it's a particularly novel or memorable one.

 

[Roguey]

There's your skill screen, are you happy now Zombra?

and one dreadful stereotype of a native woman that potentially falls just on the wrong side of racist

Typical Cyanide eurojank. Forgettable and unpolished and yet will still likely be more competently executed than Bloodlines 2.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/werewolf-the-apocalypse-earthblood-review/

WEREWOLF: THE APOCALYPSE – EARTHBLOOD REVIEW
Don't go lupine to conclusions.

The Bloodlines 2 release date may keep running away from us like a startled deer, but here's another chance to enter the World of Darkness. Concerned with werewolves rather than vampires (clue's in the name), it's an action RPG where the 'RPG' bit is pushed to the sidelines until it's almost invisible. It's earnest, a little bit shonky, clearly wriggling through some budget constraints… and proof that one rough but fun game is worth a hundred glossy but dull ones.

It's not a game to wow somebody who happens to walk past while you're playing. The character models have arrived fashionably late from 2010. The graphics overall, while they do the job perfectly well and suffer from no framerate issues, won't threaten to melt your GPU. But that's a good thing, right?

Earthblood is refreshingly keen to throw you straight into the action. The game starts off with a chat between you and a few members of your pack regarding your plan to sabotage a nearby fracking site. A few minutes later however, Things Go Wrong, and you're sent into the fray to rescue your wife (no spoilers, but I think her nickname might be Character Motivation). By the time another 20 minutes or so have passed you've inhabited all three of hero Cahal's forms, most of the game mechanics have been introduced, and sufficient drama has taken place to kick off the next leg of the plot.

The story jogs along at this pace until the end, which works very well. The bulk of the game is made up of fairly small areas full of enemies and, fundamentally, it's all about making your way to the exit so you can enter the next area. This is where the ability to change forms comes into play.

Wolf's worth
In two-legged form, looking like a ne'er do well more likely to start a fight than stop one, Cahal can silently take down guards and shoot a (strangely cumbersome) crossbow. He can also sabotage reinforcement-spawning doors, if he remains undetected, dealing hefty damage to anybody who comes through. In wolf form meanwhile, he can move faster and slip through vents, great for a stealthy approach. There's also an unlockable skill to make the wolf even harder to detect.

If you're careful—more careful than me, certainly—you can make your way through a surprisingly large amount of the adventure without engaging in combat. While I give myself a pat on the back each time I successfully escape unseen, more often than not I get caught sneaking across the floor like a guilty child with their hand in the cookie jar, which I think is the best way to experience the game. As soon as I get hit, I automatically transform into the third, most powerful, full-on werewolf form used exclusively for combat.

You can if you wish initiate this transformation at the first sign of an enemy, and there's reason to do so. Combat is rather simple—AI isn't exactly Deep Blue level, and it's a bit button-bashy—but dammit it's fun. Tearing through squishy humans, occasionally grabbing one to rip apart, is a violent joy. When you're forced into combat after a bungled attempt to slip past unnoticed, though, you benefit from having thinned out the numbers a little and (hopefully) weakened at least some of the reinforcements. You may even have disabled turrets by accessing computers or shooting them with your crossbow. In this way, the time and effort you put into trying to be stealthy is still rewarded.

The story is largely self contained, and doesn't require an understanding of the cavernous depths of lore behind the TTRPGs. The gameplay's pleasing balance of shonk and unfiltered fun is reflected in the script, which has an intelligence that pokes its head out when you least expect it. It's a story that simultaneously recognises the fact that humans are a blight on the planet, and that there are still people who fight against that, and hope is not entirely lost.

Luna tunes
I do wonder if there's a first draft of the script somewhere at least twice the size of the one that ended up being used. None of the characters are given room to grow into fully developed people, and so much is thrown into the mix—the aforementioned environmental bent, a long list of characters, familial abandonment and reconciliation, balancing a thirst for vengeance against rational thought—that no one aspect is explored to the depth that it deserves. In this way, the runtime of 8-9 hours or so is a double edged sword. I love the fact that this is a game that doesn't demand dozens and dozens of hours of my life… but I would've liked to see these themes examined more.

Another sign that the original vision for the game may have been grander than the available budget is the implementation of choice; or, rather, the general lack thereof. Conversations rarely offer any meaningful decisions, and there are only really three occasions where you can approach a situation in two very different ways. But what occasions they are! One, in a prison, tasks you with running errands for a mafia boss in order to access a secret area. This is what I did… at first. In my second playthrough, I simply slaughtered him and everybody else in an epic fight, after which my friend—after expressing hilarious shock at my actions—gave me the keycard I needed, which had been recovered from the bloody corpse of the mafia guy.

Combat is arguably oversimple, and rarely a challenge on any difficulty. The inability to backtrack or create multiple saves means the rare instances of choice are one-shot deals. Yet I've played this game start to finish twice, and enjoyed it both times, which counts for a lot. It's a B-movie experience in the best possible way; not so bad it's good, but so determined it's good.

THE VERDICT
79

WEREWOLF: THE APOCALYPSE - EARTHBLOOD
A joyful mix of stealth and action, the fun doesn't snag on the rough edges.

 

[Infinitron]

Looks like it's out now: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/werewolf-the-apocalypse-earthblood/home

 

[Yosharian]

I'm sure the gaming world is quaking with excitement as we speak

 

[Harthwain]

Epic Exclusive? Must be really bad if they want money upfront.