For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Captain Blood from developer SeaWolf Studio and publisher SNEG.
The history behind this game is fascinating and well worth checking out. it started life as an Xbox game, before delays and studio changes meant it was going to come out on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. there would be further delays, lawsuits, but eventually the discs were pressed and Captain Blood was set to come out until it didn't due to legal issues and it was forgotten.
This version of Captain Blood is built upon the original version but enhanced and tweaked for release across the PS4, PS5, Series, Switch, PC, and Mac. looking at it, it felt like the HD versions of Final Fantasy X and XII, which would make sense considering when the game started development, whilst gameplay reminded me of God of War. so for me, as someone who played a lot of games during that era, the was something nostalgic about the game.
Nostalgic doesn't mean good and there were some elements of Captain Blood that felt old. the settings were bare bones, the tutorial was text on a screen, and the check points were all over the place. what i noticed really quickly was how hard it was, too. it certainly didn't feel like a normal difficulty. not only were the enemies sponges when it came to my attacks, they were ferocious in their attacks and the long range attackers especially seemed to never miss.
It was a mostly solid demo, the only reason why it took an hour was because i died a couple of times and tried exploring when i could. I enjoyed my time with it but honestly it's not a great game. there are a lot of things "fine" about it and if i were to continue playing i'd drop the difficulty to casual as at normal the enemies and boss fights were starting to not be too enjoyable. i didn't mind the story on show but the demo failed to capitalise on it as there were no screenshots, trailers, artwork, or descriptions about what was to come in the game's story.
