We still have a while to wait for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, but now we can take a journey to a different corner of the World Of Darkness. Today comes the launch of Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood, an action game set on the edge of the RPG world. It’s made by Cyanide Studio, those seasoned vendors of janky-but-charmingly ambitious games, and it seems to fit their legacy.
While Vampire focuses on Machiavellian city slickers, Werewolf is largely about big, nebulous murder hippies fighting Gaia. In Earthblood, that’s the evil oil megacorp Endron (a classic piece of video game branding). So go ahead, play as some guy (from the Fianna tribe, if you must know), to cover up the bad guys in your wolf, human and fighting wolf forms. Your lupus shape is the sneaky shape, the homid has hands for tasks like hacking computers and crossbowmen, and the crinos shape is for ultra-violence. Including combat armor, apparently?
What I’ve seen in videos looks … very cyanide? I’m not saying it’s as devastating as it may sound. They make ambitious mid-budget games of a kind that are rare these days. I haven’t clicked with anyone, but they definitely find their fans. As a Deadly Premonition lover, I totally respect games that are a little knobby.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is available now from the Epic Games Store for £ 35. It is also on Xboxes and PlayStations.