Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is one of those few games where you’re getting really excited about the title based on what they’re showing you. You’re watching the trailer you’re seeing the gameplay and you’re just excited. 
But then you decide to play it and it just is nothing like what you were expecting much to many fans’ disappointment with a certain game title by the name of Cyberpunk 2077. But with all studios, we hope and pray that they listen to the criticism of the fans and hope they fix the issues of the games.
Being a reviewer I hope for them to listen to my feedback and adjust the game accordingly, does that normally happen? Hardly ever, if we’re being honest here.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood has a fairly decent story or at least a decent premise for their story. There are three powers at play in the world one who destroys, one who creates order, and the last a being of creation.
However, the one who destroys has grown overpowered because of humanity destroying things and expanding ever forward and that’s where we come in. Werewolves to help restore balance to everything and that honestly, does sound pretty amazing!
But when it comes to the gameplay it’s very lackluster, the character animations feel rigid and stiff and because of this, I can’t feel like I’m playing a big title game. I feel like I am playing a poorly funded indie title nothing about the characters feels natural from how their lips and eyes move to even their physical body language or as a friend put it. “Mass Effect Andromeda”
It doesn’t stop there either when you get into the core of the game the developers wanted to focus heavily on a stealth action aspect. So you sneak around enemy camps in your wolf form which albeit is one of your three forms human, and full-on Werewolf being your third.
During your stealth operations, however, if you are caught by any of the enemies or their camera it’s automatically a game over and it reloads you from the last save point. If you happen to be running this game on a slower hard drive-based console or PC. Good luck buddy, you’re going to need it because even on a Solid State drive the loading was really irritating.
This became a persistent issue to the point where I had to even take a break from playing the game as I would progress through the stage trying to take out as many enemies as I could much like many of us have done. Only to be hit in the face with their equivalent of a game over and loading screen again only to be forced to start all over.
But what adds insult to injury is the fact that the moment the narrative shifts from “you don’t need to be stealthy” to go crazy you can just transform into a giant Werewolf and go on a mad killing spree wrecking everyone and everything along the way. This was the part of the game I loved, as it felt more like a game instead of toy action figures giving me exposition and hiding behind a box praying I don’t get a game over again.
I haven’t even talked about the appearance of the game yet, the character animations I would say are to be desired but it feels like I said earlier like toy action figures moving. Their arms are set in a singular repetitive motion and no body language at all even when they walk or talk it’s the same motion just animated going back and forth with little deviation to make it feel organic.
When it comes to the textures the game doesn’t feel complete even playing with everything at max the textures feel as if they came from a game development asset store and they have a very low polygon appearance. So when I see its gameplay trailer and then I go to the actual game I feel like I’ve been lied to, or tricked into playing it because of how visually different the game is and what it’s saying it is to us.
The core aspect of Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is the transformation from human, into a wolf, Werewolf, is still the part that had me the most excited but the fact of the matter is that during some instances of the game where it’s a stealth game, you can’t just willingly transform, that is a bit of a bummer. But a lot of the game does let you transform willingly giving you a clear choice between how you want to approach gameplay.
You can go full-on rampage mode transforms into a Werewolf and leave everything in your surrounding area destroyed and literal pools of blood on the ground from all of your countless victims, or you can try to stealth it and hopefully not get caught. But even then you can shoot people with crossbow bolts and break their necks giving you the freedom to play as you see fit.
Truthfully I’m more saddened by the fact that the trailer writes a check that the game can’t cash from gameplay to trailer there is a clear difference in visuals just by itself and with the gameplay feeling ridged it just doesn’t feel like it a complete game, it feels incomplete and that they could have done better.
As a whole, the game has its positives with being able to tear apart people on a whim for a good portion of the game. The negatives far outweigh the positives with its lackluster animations; the story and its “stealth only” missions create some of the most irritation. But as a whole it’s not a bad game, it’s overselling itself much as Alien Colonial Marines did.
Final notes that they could fix to improve the game in my opinion would simply be to allow people to fight through stealth missions if they got caught, go back and fix the lighting, and primarily the character animations as they feel rushed. Put the same attention to detail you did for your game trailer into the game itself because it just looks awful, even the title screen is low-poly and I’m running a 2080ti and a Ryzen 3950x the game should look it’s absolute best while running on max and it looks horrible.
An autistic gamer with opinions on games who also enjoys making dumb videos on the internet!