Blood Waves (Xbox Series S/X) Review

Blood Waves is a mindless third-person tower defense shooter where you need to survive wave after wave of endless undead enemies. Our heroine can run, jump, roll and attack (obviously!) to survive the brain-dead army. There’s no story here. Boot it up, turn your brain off and shoot or knife your way to survival.

To make the gameplay interesting of just mindless shooting, every time you complete a wave you’re rewarded with an upgrade kill point that can be applied to a weapon and a Perk point that can be used to upgrade the character such as more damage or more health. Killing zombies also reward you with money in order to purchase defensive items such as a stationary flamethrower or a mini chainsaw tower.

Ok, so where do I begin? The controls and aiming were clearly designed for PC with a keyboard and mouse combo. Aiming feels wobbly and even adjusting the sensitivity doesn’t help. An auto-aim feature would’ve been a great way to alleviate the weird aiming. And yes, while you can dodge and roll away to avoid enemies, the rolling movement takes so long to execute that enemies will be able to easily catch up. And also for whatever reason, on certain occasions, if I got hit while shooting, the character wouldn’t shoot their weapon anymore even though I still had bullets. Also, the game has auto-saves, but if you die you’re back to square one with any upgrades taken away. So what’s the point?

The game looks fine, there’s nothing special here as it looks incredibly dated. The protagonist looks ok; she has a few similar traits to Lara Croft and could’ve easily been a character model of a protagonist from the original Xbox era. There’s also only one level to play within which feels a bit lazy. Also the zombies look off in the sense that they look like a 3D background instead of actually being in the same level. Sound-wise, nothing special here. Mindless noise and score to accompany the equally mindless and boring gameplay.

Another example of a game clearly developed for PC in mind and not properly adapted for consoles. Aiming is clearly tailored for mouse and keyboard setup; even adjusting the aiming sensibility doesn’t help much. While the defense possibilities are interesting given the unique weaponry, this system has been done so much better in so many other games. While this may only be 10$ (US), save that money to buy yourself Gears of War 3 for example (or hell even Killing Floor 2); not only is the survival mode (Horde) so much better, but you get a solid campaign to boot. Unless you have a keyboard/mouse set up for your Xbox Serie S/X, Blood Waves is an easy pass.