Bloodforge

Story

The game follows Crom, an extremely powerful barbarian who abandoned his life of war to settle in a peaceful life with his wife Alena. The story starts with Crom hunting an elk (a type of deer) with his crossbow. He then begins his journey home. He carries the elk until he gets to some sort of opening, where he puts it down and rests against a large boulder. Exhausted, Crom falls asleep and dreams a nightmare in which he sees a horrific encounter with Arawn, the king of the underworld in Celtic mythology, Annwn. Fearing his fate with the god he rushes back home, where he finds his village burnt and his wife Alena savagely attacked by demons. Crom then decimates the demons sent by Arawn. Then, he walks into his hut where he finds another demons. He kills the demon, but it then turns into his wife, Alena. He then goes on a quest of vengeance, in order to return his wife from the dead and to avenge against the gods who tricked him and made him kill his wife.

Gameplay

Bloodforge is a hack & slash action game in which the player combats his enemies with a small array of weapons. The player is supposed to use his/her equipped weapon to attack the opponents until they are either killed or disoriented (which is signaled by an icon above the enemy's head). When the enemy is disoriented, Crom can perform a gory finisher on the opponent. By defeating opponents, the player earns more Blood, which is the official currency in the game. The player can buy special abilities and weapons with Blood. There are only 4 weapons- a Sword, War Hammer, Claws and the Crossbow. All of them have 3 weapon upgrades.

Reception

Critical reception was mainly negative, rated 43% on Metacritic, although the Official XBOX Magazine gave it 75%

Title Update

As of August 2012, Climax Studios released an update to fix many of the issues and bugs. The camera has been stabilized and no longer has the swaying effect. Some of the achievements were bugged and not unlocking, this is now fixed.