Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood

General Information

Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood is a cartoon-style third-person shooter in which you take the role of a last-standing hard-boiled Legionnaire on a mission to protect a village against an entire rebel army. With your teammates dead and rotting in the sand, you and you alone must protect all of the civilians in the village with a small collection of powerful weapons and artillery.

The game runs on the Unity engine, a simple game engine that also powers many iPhone, PC and Mac games. The game can also be played in a browser.

During the initial release, there were very few weapons and only one map. On December 18th the developers, Sakari Indie, released a large content update for free. The update added 5 new maps, and 8 new weapons. On top of this, they also added a money and experience system to the game where every kill earned you money and experience points. This money can be spent on customizing your character (which also was a new feature) or buying new weapons, providing you have the required level to use them. 8 new achievements were added with this update to compensate for the new weapons and maps, bringing the total up to 18.

Currently the game only supports Single Player, but there are rumors of the developers working on co-operative multiplayer.

Gameplay

As stated, Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood is a PC-based 3rd person shooter that is essentially a single-player horde mode. Basically, a player is dropped in the middle of a map, chickens and the dead bodies of your fellow soldiers littering the area, and, as enemy soldiers come to attack, you stay as the last bastion for freedom and kill everyone who comes at you. On your base, next to the primary objective, is a radio that flies in help for the player, such as ammo and repairs for the base. The waves get progressively more difficult, starting with just simple gunners who seem to care more about shooting you than the objective, and ending with some guy who has a rocket launcher coming out, too. There's a finite amount of waves in each map, so it is possible to kill them all before the end of the level. In addition, there are two types other maps- a regular horde mode with no objective but saving your own hide, and a final one that deals with killing all the chickens. This game loves chickens.

Each kill pops up a display in your HUD showing what type of death- body shot, headshot or complete frag. This adds up to the total 'buckets of blood', which is also displayed in the top corner, a monetary amount that is tallied up at the end of the level, and also earns you XP.

Though the game is inherently offline, it has a decent leveling system in it, starting you out with a level one, desert-camo soldier who only has a pistol and an M4, with a rocket launcher standing by for purchase at $20,000. As you level up (the weapons menu displays what level things will be available at, but no mention of what the weapon will be- it just divides into 3 categories: primary, secondary and special). The beginner pistol has infinite ammo, but everything else, you either need to buy ammo or restock mid-match.

There's also the ability to customize the player's character, changing their outfits, helmets, or giving them accessories (a cigarette pack to band to their helmets, for example), and change skin tone. The developers avoided all racial controversy by including even pink and blue options, as well as camo skin, which are ethnicities rarely represented in games.

Key features

• Steamworks support for Steam Achievements.
• Rank up, earn money and unlock weapons by filling your buckets with your enemies blood.
• A music system that changes the music based around the actions that you have in game.
• 12 extremely varied weapons including assault rifles, pistols and rocket launchers.
• 4 different difficulties, each with their own leaderboards.
• Fighting Giant Chicken.
• Quirky sense of humor, apparent in the cutesy-yet-gory art direction and the achievement for killing chickens.

Sequel

On July 10th, 2012, Foreign Legion: Multi Massacre was released on Steam for PC and Mac platforms. The game is largely similar to Buckets of Blood, except for the fact that it is Multiplayer only up to 4 players.

PC System Requirements

Minimum:

• OS: Windows 2000, XP, Vista
• Processor: 1.2 GHz CPU or higher
• Memory: 512 MB
• Graphics: DirectX 9 video card and 64 MB VRAM
• DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c or higher
• Hard Drive: 150 MB
• Sound: DX 8.1 Compatible Audio

Recommended:

• OS: Windows 2000, XP, Vista
• Processor: 2.4 GHz CPU or higher
• Memory: 1 GB
• Graphics: DirectX 9 video card and 128 MB VRAM
• DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c or higher
• Hard Drive: 150 MB
• Sound: EAX Compatible,