Blood Breed (Switch) review "Someone in the abandoned slaughterhouse is just dying to meat you"

I can think of no better way to “elevator pitch” Blood Breed than like this: Super Meat Boy as a PlayStation survival-horror game with '80s VHS rental trappings...

No, seriously, it's a great combo. Think about it: gaming is rife with ridiculousness, including the aforementioned adventure of a sentient piece of meat who dodges saw blades and spikes to rescue his girlfriend. At the same time, the '80s brought us similarly ludicrous concepts: a deranged rock star who invades people's dreams and kills them with a drill bit-fitted guitar, man-eating slugs, a yogurt-like dessert that's actually made from a primordial ooze that takes over consumers' minds, and extraterrestrial clowns who dissolve people with cotton candy cocoons and slurp them up like spiders. Indie faux-retro gaming and '80s horror were always meant to be a couple.

Blood Breed shows us but one perspective of this pairing. You embark on your cinematic voyage, complete with video cassette-style screen imperfections and a grainy filter, as a nameless woman who wrecks her car after hitting a deer. Stranded, she has nowhere to go except an apparently abandoned slaughterhouse at the side of the road. However, you just know someone else is skulking around inside, looking to turn unsuspecting victims into steak. And that person is...

Okay, so the main antagonist may not look like much, but he's effective nonetheless. For one thing, the guy doesn't slowly amble toward you like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Instead, he charges right at you and swings his machete with precision and grace. It cuts through your waist like a hot knife through butter, and you hit the floor in blood-spurting halves. Somehow, watching your avatar get gruesomely divided by two both inspires you to play better and majorly screws with your head. You didn't just die, you got painfully mutilated, and you never want to witness that again...

The masked man isn't your only woe in these halls, though. You venture down a corridor and find massive saw blades—of course you do—whirring back and forth, slicing you into vertical slabs of meat if you touch them. Or you enter a room and a fan-like trap takes your head off. Or you fail to watch your step and spikes impale you. You see, this game really doesn't differ much from Meat Boy, except that it isn't a precision-based platformer. It's a 3D perspective survival-horror title that gives you infinite lives and respawns you at the beginning of a “level.” All you have to do is traverse the grounds and figure out the best way to survive, be it sneaking past the slasher, carefully stepping around saws, or crouching to avoid the “death fan.”

Oh, and bear traps abound. There's nothing worse than running away from the murderer and putting significant distance between you two, only to get your ankle snapped in a pair of steel jaws.



Early stages provide two goals per area: find a hidden key and unlock a door to advance. The trick is figuring out how to stay alive while finishing those two tasks, which you mostly accomplish through trial and error—just like Super Meat Boy. You learn to watch your foe when you see him and stay out of his line of sight, as well as memorize where all the hazards sit. Your best bet lies in understanding his patrolling routines and taking advantage of opportunities to give the brute the slip.

A single hit fells you, which brings both good and bad news. For one thing, you won't have to worry about inventory management or tediously searching for boxes of ammo or medkits. However, the bad news should be obvious: you're absolutely vulnerable and one slip-up is all it takes to send you to the afterlife.

Blood Breed's simplicity works a treat for a few campaign beats, but ultimately threatens to grow tiresome before too long. As a result, the game accomplishes something a lot of survival-horror fare doesn't: offers variety. Now and then, the camera shifts to a position in front of our heroine as she ventures down a tight hallway. The murderer appears behind her, sprinting at top speed. Your first inclination is to just run, but you can't see what's coming toward you, so you end up charging headlong into a bear trap and dying when he catches up to you. Pattern memorization is key here, because each portion of these hallway scenes throws a different killer screwball your way. Saw blades pop up eventually, appearing on either side or down the middle of the corridor. Plus, spikes shoot out of parts of the floor in a particular rhythm, forcing you to time your steps while the villain bears down on you.



Make no mistake: you will die a lot during these segments because there's no way you could possibly know what's coming unless you spoiled the surprise by watching a YouTube video, you damn surprise spoiler. Plus, you have stamina to mind. Yeah, your energy remains limited throughout this affair, causing you to stop and catch your breath if you sprint for too long.

Soon enough, the game changes tone and hits you with some gory, batshit plot devices that involve someone creating legit minotaurs by splicing humans with bulls. The rules shift, and now you're a killer armed with a sharp weapon looking to kill some bull-men. Just like you, these creatures only get a single hit point, croaking after a well-timed strike from your weapon. The only catch is you still give up the ghost after one shot as well, so you better actually land all of your attacks. Otherwise, you're going to be wide open... And then, wide open.

Each level here requires you to explore windy hallways and stuffy rooms to find the cow people and exterminate them. You can't advance beyond the locked door until all of them have expired. With those tasks complete, you have only to survive the final stage.



I won't go into that bit, but the campaign doesn't last long. If you're good enough, you can complete Blood Breed in under an hour, so the adventure never overstays its unpretentious welcome. The game knows exactly what it is: a fun-filled and creepy romp that's equal parts obstacle course and “bubblegum horror,” as Joe Bob Briggs calls it. It's exactly the kind of thing I would have rented from the horror section at Premier Video or Good Guys Rental Store back in the day, and ended up with pee-soaked underwear that I had to clandestinely change so my parents wouldn't ban scary movies in the house...

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (October 02, 2023) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.