OverBlood (PS1) Review

 OverBlood (PS1), developed by Riverhillsoft, released 1996 in Japan, and 1997 in North America and Europe. Before getting started, I would like to point out the game's only programmer, Akihiro Hino, moved on a little later to form Level-5 games. Yes. THAT Level-5. Professor Layton, Rogue Galaxy, Ni no Kuni. They even helped with the development of Dragon Quest IX.

All must start somewhere, though, and sometimes those beginnings are more humble than others. Such is the case with OverBlood. In the mid-1990s, survival-horror was still a fresh concept that was brought to the table mostly in-part to Resident Evil. Now, there had been others before it that would serve to pave the way toward the survival-horror we know today, but during this era there was no base formula to follow except, perhaps, funky camera angles and tank controls.

Before Resident Evil, the world had seen earlier renditions of this genre in games like Alone in the Dark, Clock Tower (SFC), and Doctor Hauzer (3DO). In fact, some of the names behind Doctor Hauzer (and Riverhillsoft itself), were involved with Doctor Hauzer before OverBlood, and is the whole reason OverBlood came to fruition to begin with.

Much like Doctor Hauzer, Riverhillsoft managed to keep a mysterious and eerie, albeit primitive and archaic environment. But the game itself, unfortunately, does not live up to the prior buildup of tensions and curiosities and, actually, leads to some disappointing plot decisions. For example, the entire setting for the game is a perplexing underground cryogenics lab. Players assume control of a (somewhat dorky) man named Raz. Without spoiling TOO much here, Raz is a clone of one of the original scientists working in this lab. Original Raz and player Raz are absolutely not two peas of the same pod, as is shown with the game's love interest, Milly.

You see, Milly is a clone as well. Original Milly, Raz's wife, died, and original Raz had this utterly genius idea that if he could clone Milly, she'd never die and he'd always have his wife, under his control and of his making, too. That's not how things turn out, and clone Raz and Milly begin falling for eachother instead, much to evil Raz's dismay.

Wait, wait, wait. Is this survival-horror or a friggin' love triangle?! Yeah. That's exactly what it is. The player scours a decaying underground cryo lab for answers and a means of escape and, what we're met with, is an utterly cliche love story that falls flat on its face. "Oof" is perhaps not the best choice of terminology when writing a mini-review of something, but I have nothing else. Just oof.

The gameplay itself is absolutely fine, if not a little dated and clunky by 2025's standards (the game's almost 30 years old, these things happen). Raz wanders around the lab, solving puzzles, collecting keys to enter new rooms and hallways, and even meets a robot buddy, Pipo, that serves as a temporary companion until Milly shows up. But all of the "surviving" and the "horror" simply leads to an absolute uninspired, cliche mess of a plot.

The aforementioned gameplay and, surprisingly enough, the controls are probably the greatest strengths the game has to offer. It feels like playing an old Resident Evil or Alone in the Dark entry in almost every way, but it's missing quite a few elements that made the aforementioned titles feel like a complete sandwich, rather than a sandwich with only one slice of bread. Without that encasement, the pieces that make the sandwich just freefall off the bread. There is a little platforming in the game utilizing the rarely-seen-in-survival-horror jump button, but it's rather easy to accomplish (this is coming from someone who's utterly awful at 3D platformers).

Players can assume the roles of the two different companions that join Raz, first the robot buddy Pipo, and then Milly. Pipo is especially useful, considering he's shorter in height to Raz and can enter small spaces to find items and activate otherwise-inaccessible switches. Pipo's neck can also extend, allowing him to access hard-to-reach spots to get loot Raz can't reach himself, or use terminals Raz can't use, a-la R2D2. Actually, Pipo is a really cool feature of the game as a whole and I greatly enjoyed the logic puzzles involving him. I wish there had been more of this. Derailing slightly but still of relevancy, one of my favorite features of Swagman (SAT/PS1) is the ability to switch between the two main characters at will, which is an absolute requirement for solving puzzles and reaching places one couldn't get to alone. OverBlood brought a small taste of that with the companion system, but there simply isn't enough of it here.

Music is fine, it doesn't stand out and it's not an OST I'd go out of my way to get, however it does a decent enough job at setting the mood and is ambient enough to pass for a game of such themes, though the attempted jumpscare musical accompaniment is utterly cliche. Voice acting honestly had me laughing: it sounds like your average mid-90s voiceover work, but this one in particular was just silly, almost expressionless as the plot. It seemed at times, the voice actors portrayed a little emotion relevant to the scene, but it's a rarity, and the game really isn't that long.

So what sorts of horror can one expect in this place? It doesn't sound very scary. Well, that's because it's really not, even for back then. The only enemies players really ever fight are poorly-rendered uh.. zombies or something in blue jumpsuits, with silly faces and complete with a T-pose upon death. One can use the gun that's found later in the game, or save their bullets for the last encounter and punch & kick the crap out of the enemies. Hand-to-hand combat is rather silly, does not feel satisfying to partake in, but is the only way to conserve ammo for the only weapon in the game. Miss a punch, and the failed clone experiment zombie things will send Raz flying and twirling through the air like a racquetball. Fortunately, health is automatically restored after combat, so there's practically no need to use all those healing items unless in dire need, or at the final boss.

Ah.. The final boss, a mutated evil Raz, who just can't seem to let go of, well, anything really. He's encountered twice in succession, each time functioning as a slow-moving bullet sponge. The last encounter pits clone Raz against him in a jet hangar, where the player must lure him to the jet's afterburner where Milly, who's at the helm, engages the engine and sucks evil Raz into it, killing him at long last. Player Raz hops in with her following, the two leave the cryo lab, and it (rather expectantly) explodes. Woo.

Ultimately, while it's clunkier and more dated-feeling than OverBlood, Doctor Hauzer at least had more of a creep factor going for it. The locale actually felt ghastly much like Alone in the Dark before it, there was a sense of mystery and an underlying sense of urgency as well, given the environment. OverBlood is a step forward in almost every way imaginable, however it falls short where Hauzer showed strength: the plot.

Major props to Akihiro Hino for making leaps and bounds towards success since the game, though. I've personally enjoyed many titles that've been released by Level-5, and I never would have guessed, had I not done my research, that such humble beginnings were made right here and in Doctor Hauzer.

There does exist an OverBlood 2, and I have yet to play it, but I certainly hope there's a little more to it than what the first had to offer.

In all, I'm giving Overblood 2/5 carrots, as it starts out interesting and has some really neat mechanics that simply cease to exist during the latter portion of the game. The interesting parts quickly become dull as the plot takes an unfortunate turn toward weird romance territory. It simply does not fit here, and I cannot wrap my head around the fact all this private funding, all this psychosis between the scientists within the lab, the dilapidation, failed experiments-turned "zombies", was all in vain for the name of some weird love-interest-continuity garbage.