Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood

Let’s face it – this game is not too awesome. Not like ‘terribly terribly bad‘, not also ‘so bad that’s just epic bad‘ – but certainly nothing extremely exciting, at least in my book.

They're coming to get you, Barbara.

Advertising blurbs present ‘Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood‘ , developed by Sakari Indie, as a cartoon third-person shooter. Personally, I’d toss it into the ‘tower defense’ basket as well, with a town hall in the role of a ‘tower’ in here. The plot surely doesn’t avert the player’s simple mind with any unnecessary and unpredicted complexity.

The Town Hall, where civilians gather. You can't enter it, which is kinda lame.

Local villagers have barricaded themselves in the said town hall and our lonely hero, a Lego figure-like marine soldier is supposed to protect them, by shooting out his little arsenal at the incoming waves of other Lego figure-like creatures. Namely, partisans that are constantly and blindly storming the town hall, trying to kill the civilians at all costs. At all costs, meaning – they frigging run right into the barricade and blow themselves up to just slightly damage it, which makes me questions their tactical sense. Although it isn’t directly stated in the game, it is rather obvious the plot takes place in some Iraqi village – we have desert environment, petrol excavators in the background and faceless Arab-like enemies with dynamite sticks wrapped around their waist in an ole’ time classic way. The character can jog to the nearest radio station during the intervals between the waves and order some supplies, like ammo or repairing tools for the hall. He can also shoot innocent chickens, there is even a special achievement to collect for that. All that slaughter lasts ten minutes, until the rescue chopper arrives to collect the civilians…

Rescue 69, I see what you did here.

… and the game is over. Mission accomplished. Done. Finito. There are no other missions you could try. Oh wait, you can finish the whole round again on a higher level. But that’s about it. 10 minutes of gameplay for about 10 dollars. … sure, for about ten minutes, there is total mayhem, with lots of KILLING and tons of BLOOD. Hence the exciting title, BUCKETS OF BLOOD! It is all just bloody awesome, right?

They really look like Lego figures

… right?!

He was shooting me, for like, 9 minutes straight, before the chopper arrived. Chest of steel. The chicken is pretty indifferent about all that.

..well…

The game is fun to play at some point, before it becomes slightly boring. Partisans attack in waves so the game starts to get pretty repetitive – even though it is extremely short, as I already mentioned With the A.I. intelligence rather low, enemies are set only on either shooting the character or rushing at the hall’s gates. Actually, it is extremely easy to finish the game on lower levels thanks to some kind of a glitch. You just have to kill all partisans but one shooter – and just let him shoot the character for almost 9 minutes straight, blocking his way to the town hall, till the chopper comes. Yeah, your marine is just that invulnerable.

3-D rendered graphics is so-so, with the Lego style being slightly ridiculous – although I have to admit, it looks pretty good in general, especially background, definitely nothing eye-sore to pick on. There are apparently 10 achievements to collect on Steam, which makes the game misleadingly sound like a longer one, but majority of them can be collected within one round only.

Note where the plane with supplies and the dropped supplies are situated in the air

Truth to be told, ‘Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood’ would work pretty decently as a free flash game, because it’s fun for a while. However, for a PC game costing 7-10 dollars, it performed much below my expectations – mostly due to its longevity. I heard producers work on extra free DLC, I presume that’s good news, since adding a few more missions would definitely help this game. But we will see how the situation unfolds in the future.

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