Smashy things

All of these devices of destruction break pretty readily now, though, so you’ve got no choice but to ditch golf clubs and the like and wade into a lot of fistfights. This up-close-and-personal feel gives combat an even more frenetic, gritty vibe that it had previously, as you’re constantly taking part in pier-six brawls with frenzied lunatics and other, um, creatures. Combos let you mix up scrapping styles, too, and you can now also take advantage of really cool scenery-dependent finishing moves. I just loved impaling enemies on concrete rebar and driving heads into TVs.

Enemies are still have a lot upstairs, too. Although most of your foes are either certifiable lunatics or supernatural creeps of one sort or another, they all know how to take cover, fake you into attacking at the wrong time with wild backward lunges that make you think they’re off-balance, and to run off in search of a weapon. Just when you think you’ve scared off some goon in a skull mask, back he comes with a wrench. This is an extremely tough game at the default difficulty setting, as these cunning adversaries present a real challenge, especially when they attacks in gangs of three or more. I sure couldn’t survive on button-mashing alone, and had a lot of trouble the first couple of levels until I learned how to make good use of the combos.

Complaints about difficulty have also been addressed here. Where Criminal Origins all but stripped away weapon options by its conclusion, leaving a lot of monotonous sneaking around in the dark, Bloodshot hands out more and more firearms as you progress through the game. Thomas even gets a superpower that lets him kill enemies with the power of his voice, which I found awfully goofy given the stark brutality of all that came before it. Still, even though the game may drift too far toward conventional shooter territory by the end, I found being able to gun down and shout down foes to be far more entertaining than tediously creeping through the shadows.

Investigations have also been beefed up. The original game treated crime scenes as faintly ridiculous CSI spoofs where you played with some gadgets on cue and were automatically rewarded with clues. In Bloodshot, though, you’re on your own. You now have the freedom to independently check out death scenes and have to play Sherlock in order to determine, say, what a blood splatter says about a cause of death, or the identity of a corpse. You’re generally not given any pointers, so you’re forced to carefully look around and make good use of high-tech tools like a UV light (great for tracking blood trails) and spectrometer. Successful sleuthing gets you bonuses like extra health and armor at the end of a mission, so it’s worthwhile to try and solve crimes whilst committing multiple homicides in your own right.