Mike Lacasse

Games centered around the werewolf mythology are lacking in the video game market so when Cyanide Studios announced that they would be making an Action-RPG based on the World of Darkness Werewolf: The Apocalypse IP, I was hyped. With the first trailer following a pack of wolves into a Wyrm-corrupted corporate stronghold to support the game's protagonist Cahal all to the riffs of Kai Tangata's "Alien Weaponry" in the background, I was ready. My hype started to wane a little when I saw the gameplay first look back in December 2020. It was still a few months from being released so they would clean some things up, maybe tweak the AI and make combat feel more weighty, right? Not so much in the finished product. What they made was a bad action game with unimaginative stealth sequences and vestigial RPG elements. The first thing that stands out are the dated graphics. Cyanide Studio's budget constraints are obvious with aesthetics that wouldn't be out of place in a late PS3/early PS4 game. But graphics aren't everything and I love plenty of older games that aren't AAA quality and if that were only one of a few minor issues, this wouldn't have been a problem. Unfortunately, bad graphics are not the only thing going against Earthblood. If you've played any good action games from the past decade, Earthblood will feel like several steps back. Floaty animations, lifeless characters, a cliché story, dull protagonist, underwhelming button mashing combat and forgettable music (besides the title track) all combine to make this a colossal disappointment. If you're looking for a game that has mediocre voice acting, terrible writing, stiff animations, no emotion, passable stealth sequences followed by very lackluster combat mechanics or just like the aesthetics of running around as a wolf and then Big Werewolf Go Smesh, this is the game for you.