Blood PC restoration delivers another batch of throwback screenshots

Blood, the 22-year-old FPS from that genre’s bloody mid-1990s heyday, gets another 16 screenshots today showing what Nightdive Studios has in mind for the game’s forthcoming remaster.

The batch of screens from Nightdive shows the latest build of the game (1.6.10, for what it’s worth) and the effect developers are going for. The nature of the HUD and visuals show this is a restoration with enhancements, rather than a remaster. But fans of grisly action and pumping lead into occult beasts — and on PC, who the hell wasn’t in 1997 — should feel right at home.

Nightdive is the shop best known for the care and feedig of 1990s classics like Turok, another well remembered 1997 game that just launched on the Nintendo Switch’s eShop this week. Nightdive is also at work on a crowd-funded System Shock reboot. That project is eyeballing a launch in late 2019 or next year.

The first Blood (heh) was made by Monolith Productions, the gang behind the FEAR and Middle-earth: Shadow franchises for Warner Bros. It raises an interesting point about ownership — Monolith (and therefore Warner, since it owns Monolith) own the rights to any new Blood game. But because GT Interactive Published the original game, and that ended up in the hands of Atari (don’t ask how, exactly), that means outsourcing the restoration to Nightdive is totally legit. It’s also probably why this is a restoration and not a remake, as that may be considered new enough to be something Atari does not own.

No launch dates yet for Blood. It will be available on Windows PC through digital storefronts when it does. “Blood stood up extremely well over time and we are taking care to preserve all the qualities that made the game so special,” producer Daniel Grayshon said back in November when the restoration was announced. “It really only needs minor updates to provide a better user experience for contemporaray audiences.”