BloodNet – WON!

 by Will Moczarski

Whatever the case: I’m back. Those are the words I ended my previous BloodNet post with, and they are just as suitable for picking up on it again. That was on May 19, 2023, so it almost took me a year to be “back” this time, hopefully for good. Now I could bore you with long explanations why it took me so long but I think it doesn’t matter at this point. Whatever the case: I’m back.

Last time, I finally jumped over the huge stumbling block that was the fight inside Grant’s Tomb. The spike in difficulty had been unprecedented at that point and the remainder of the game was comparatively easy. I finished BloodNet on May 22, 2023 riding high on my previous success, clocking in at 28 hours. Fortunately, I recorded my playthrough. Also, I wrote much of this post back then but because I had to get back into the plot (as is probably the case with you) I decided to rewrite most of it (you'll notice by the shift from past to present tense when the new introduction ends).

So, where were we? I won the fight at Grant’s Tomb, killing Abraham Van Helsing in the process. Also, I freed Alexander Tennant only to see him die on me. To make things worse, he told me that Van Helsing was not really dead. I’d have to stab his heart to make sure. From looking at my notes I figured that was fair game since I hadn’t managed to find Deirdre yet (my main objective once upon a time). It was time to shape up and tie up with some loose ends.

Now going back out into the streets felt strangely satisfying having spent so many hours inside that damn tomb (although the in-game time hardly advanced, naturally). I stocked up on ammo at Vince’s and only then did I notice (or remember, really) that my proud party of six had shrunk to only three members. Rymma Fizz and Monique St. Clair had stuck it out but the others would never come back from the tomb. 

I decided not to repeat the fight hoping for a better result as I still had some potential party members waiting for me out in the streets. Also, I had been stuck in cyberspace, not being able to continue with the “lost kids” plot. Going over my notes I figured that Chuck was likely the right person to talk to, so I went out to add him to my party. (I had tried that in some of my earlier save states but he didn’t seem like a good fighter to me. Maybe he’s of more use to me in the cyberspace.)

Now especially during the endgame I was quite happy that I had been really thorough at keeping notes. I could quickly look up where to find other party members such as Garrick Fizz who’d finally be reunited with his wife Rymma now. He was on the same street corner as Chuck, too, which was kind of convenient...

As before, Chuck trusts me when I show him that my name is on the list of Deirdre Tackett’s associates. He confirms that he’s the only one of the lost kids left out on the streets while the others – Sally, Lou, Pat, and Violet – have gone into the net to protect “Incubus”, the intelligent program that Van Helsing is after. Obtaining it would make him all powerful so we can’t let that happen. Also, he points me towards investigating Deirdre’s emerald pendant, telling me that Deirdre never wore this kind of jewelry. With the right equipment (jury rig tools), Chuck (or someone else) can disassemble the pendant and find an emerald looker chip. I’d found out about this the last time I recruited Chuck but remember to disassemble the pendant again now and add the chip to my deck. The two plots finally converge at this point although I could have made that happen much earlier. 

[Side Note: I apologise for the low quality of the screenshots both in terms of resolution and in terms of cropping size. Due to the long break between posts I had to use an old video recording of my playthrough for the screenshots and was unable to use old save states to browse through the endgame.]

You mean you're not in Kansas anymore?

Chuck claims that he can’t remember the access code to the Lost Kids’ well but that’s very unlikely given the heavy-handed Wizard of Oz connection. He tells me to get my hands on Deirdre’s pendant but I’m well ahead of him. With Garrick and Chuck as my new party members I return to Deirdre’s lab and enter the cyberspace again. Before getting to the well I meet up with a dragon called “Tackett Cybervision” who ignores me and starts talking to Chuck right away, channeling Deirdre Tackett. The dragon commends Chuck for his bravery and explains that he was unable to remember the password because Deirdre had installed a neural microimplant in his brain. At the same time the dragon claims that the password is “something [Chuck] could never forget.” Could they make up their mind already? Rather unsurprisingly, it’s “Kansas”. (I had actually figured that out before but without Chuck the ICE security system guarding the well just tells me to back off.)

Now that’s rich. Is the “Tackett Cybervision” proof that Deirdre is still alive in the net, or should I consider it to be sort of a hologram? After all, it only appears when I insert Deirdre’s essence into my deck. 

I just click my heels and I'm there.

The Lost Kids now let us enter the well and Rymma is suitably impressed with me. Shouldn’t she be impressed with Chuck? Well, never mind. Most of the kids are just chatting when I talk to them but Sally gives me the backstory about how and why they chose to remain online forever. Some of them aren’t exactly happy with that decision, it seems, but Incubus, the “Omnipotence Code” that turns the decker who uses it into the “master of the matrix” is more important than a few young lives, she claims. Sally tells me to use it to cast the final blow against Van Helsing. She also tells me to save Deirdre “before time runs out.” To be honest, I wasn’t aware that it was possible to actually save her anymore at this point in the game? So what about the Lost Kids? They just tell me to go away now that I’ve got the Incubus, effectively pushing me further towards the endgame. And who am I to disagree with them, right? The game was mostly enjoyable so far but right now it feels like it’s overstaying its welcome.

I follow up on a couple of loose ends from my notes and discover by accident that Mother Mary will join my party after I’ve done her the favour of getting an overzealous TransTech executive who wanted to bring down the church off her back. A nun must be badass against vampires, right? Well, let’s hope she is.

I rest at Renfield’s for the last time and equip my party with weaponry to be equally prepared to deal with vampires and mere mortals. Also, because my bloodlust is acting up again and I’m out of bottles of blood I bite poor Renfield. Usually my party is shocked by this behaviour and in some cases one or two members even quit on the spot when I did that. BloodNet seems to have an invisible alignment marker, however, and not even Mother Mary tells me to let it be.

The next stop is TransTechnicals HQ since Alexander Tennant used up all of his dying words to tell me about a secret room there I hadn’t previously been aware of. This room 1122 pits me against Van Helsing again, as well as three security guards. Van Helsing’s heart is bang in the middle of the room, hanging from the ceiling, or so it seems. It’s actually a decoy and his heart is on a low pedestal to the right. I still wonder why he’d expose his most vulnerable spot like that but hey, it’s video game logic. I can dig that.

Two hearts beat as one.

Van Helsing (as usual) has some trash talk for me before the slaughterfest begins. He tells me he will make me pay for having hurt him, namely rip my arteries out one at a time and slurp my blood from my gutted torso. How quaint! I’ll have to kick his ass in earnest, I think.

Fortunately, this battle is much easier than Grant’s Tomb, otherwise it would possibly take me until 2025 to finish this post. I use Ransom as a distraction for Van Helsing and drop him right next to the vampire overlord. Monique and Rymma take on two of the technicians from a semi-safe distance while the weaker Garrick and Chuck deal with the third one together. Finally, I place Mother Mary as close to Van Helsing’s heart as possible because she may well be the most effective vampire slayer this side of Buffy. However, I do fall for the decoy the first time around and attempt to attack the big juicy heart instead of the small and puny one. Also, I don’t realise that the big heart is not even a target and that Mother Mary just switches to free combat mode instead. When I realise my mistake it’s already too late. The security guards manage to kill Garrick and Chuck and finally Ransom which ends the battle right away. I take a break and a breather before having another go. 

However, I just can’t make it work because Garrick and Chuck just die too quickly. I decide to bite the bullet and play through Grant’s Tomb again to save my best fighters for the battle in room 1122. This enables me to use Lash Givens as well as Max Bax but I lose Rymma Fizz this time. With my newly-formed party I am successful on my first attempt.  

I place Ransom next to Abraham again. Monique takes on the two security guards on the right, Lash Givens fires at the one on the left. Max Bax joins him there because the guard on the left is the most likely to attack Ransom next. I take Chuck out of the line of fire and do the same with Mother Mary. Then I have Ransom exert his will over the left security guard while Lash, Chuck, Mother Mary, and Max all shoot at his torso. Meanwhile, Monique aims at the torso of one of the other security guards. 

The security guard on the left goes down with Lash’s first shot so I have to regroup quickly. I make my “gunfire team” aim at the security guard at the bottom of the room instead, again shooting at his torso. It works, and after two rounds two of the security guards are down while Abraham is coming after Ransom but doesn’t catch up with him, rendering him ineffective. Then I let them gun down the third security guard while Chuck is going after Van Helsing’s heart. The heart can be attacked in separate areas of its body, just like enemies who are actual, entire people so it’s necessary to aim for its torso (for example) which is, of course, a bit ridiculous. It even has its own attack, using a (I assume) tiny fist to hit you, and that’s kind of cute, innit?

An achy-breaky heart if ever I saw one.

After only one shot from the Laser Rifle the Heart is “dead”. Abraham drops to the ground, as does the last security guard, two rounds later. The guards drop a whole lot of stuff but at this point in the game that’s kind of useless. Also, some guy called Dr. John Harker has been watching this whole bloodshed from the corner of the room. I can now talk to him, and he’s more than enthusiastic about my performance: “You killed him! You did it!” He offers to help me exorcise the vampire curse from cyberspace. Wait, what? The good doctor also tells me that I’ll be able to deck safely from room 1122 because no one “ever enters this room excepts those beasts you killed and me, to monitor that heart.” Deck safely, huh? Where have I heard that before? Right, from Sampson, seconds before he double-crossed me. And why does the good doctor monitor that heart? And which heart are we talking about, anyway?

John’s infodump is not over yet, though: He tells me that I will need Mother Mary to exorcise the vampiric evil from my soul. Also, I must have the ultimate icebreaker for “the exorcism in the net”. I’m confused. Didn’t Van Helsing just plan to overthrow the net by obtaining Incubus? Is my data angel infected, too? The most important fact, though, is that John tells me the name of the final well: “Elizabeth”. 

This is where BloodNet gets more than a little silly but I’m getting ahead of myself. Before doing anything else I stock up at Vince’s one more time because you never know. Then I enter the cyberspace at the Houston Matrix Rovers’ hideout (and not from room 1122 because I don’t trust that guy) where I am greeted by the Tackett Cybervision entity once again. Also, I meet a new entity called “Harley Shakespeare” who wants me to check out a Kenyan friend of his who didn’t come back from Cyberspace, uttering the word “Incubus” before his brain got fried. Moreover, I’m to hand a fake incubus to the Kenyans to get them off his back. Sounds like a trap, right? 

Placing the bait?

Now I don’t really know what’s supposed to happen next but I decide to take that little detour before going to see “Elizabeth”. There’s a new location on my map after talking with Harley – the Winter Garden Theatre – also, she gave me a fake incubus. I check out the colourful theatre and there are a couple of guys hanging out there with looks just shy of having the word “thug” tattooed across their foreheads. 

Which one of you is Skladanowsky?

One of the guys is Harley Shakespeare. He tells me not to mess up the deal and says that my skin colour is making him nervous. Shall I bite him, just because? Mother Mary wouldn’t like that, would she? Another kid called Jamba tells me to keep my hands where he can see them. The big cheese, however, is a Kenyan called Jonathon Nobotu. He asks how I didn’t get fried by the program that killed his friend and Ransom replies that he’s simply the best. Nobotu doesn’t care for this kind of talk but he takes the Fake Incubus from me anyway. 

That’s all there is to it, at least for the moment (I now notice that I never followed up on that deal). I check in at Auntie Personnel’s because I lost my patch cord when Rymma died and neglected to pick it up after the battle. At this point I need to sell some of my stuff to get by but much of it won’t be necessary for the endgame anyway, I assume. It’s nice to see that the economy is still working near the end of the game. I’m looking forward to reading Chet’s take on this. 

I rest for one last time at poor late Renfield’s and then enter the cyberspace to check out the well “elizabeth”. However, the security ICE won’t let me in because my identification scan comes up negative. What am I missing? 

I think about it long and hard and then try again, entering the cyberspace from TransTechnicals HQ this time. Sadly, that doesn’t change anything. I go over my deck and see that I still have the Level 4 Security Cloak inserted. Maybe I’ll need to use the TransTechnical Security Cloak? I also drop Tackett’s essence just to be sure but alas, no dice. Then I try the Emerald looker chip and I don’t know why but it works. This puzzle (if you can call it that) doesn’t make much sense to me and was a simple case of trial and error but now, as promised, the game becomes truly tacky. Enter Dracula!

Yes, I’m quite sure I’ve won – haven’t you read the title?

It probably makes sense for you to read the whole thing, so I just refer you to the images above. I then enter some kind of cheesy 1980’s mansion and Ransom tells Incubus to assist him in the final battle. Incubus, surprisingly, replies but tells me that it is not allowed “interdiction” into sentient entities such as “Dracula.mf”. You know what? I’ll hand out 5 CAPs for the best explanation for the full name of the file type “.mf”! Incubus can help me by providing me with powers comparable to Dracula’s. It then goes on to explain the rules of the endgame to me: “[Dracula] is extracting from your mind images of people you know and is turning them into your enemies. As he creates enemies, I can enable you to create virtual weapons to fight him by drawing upon the information about weapons that you store in your memory files.” In other words: Incubus gives me a convoluted and ultimately nonsensical explanation why the battle will work like any other battle in the game or, as Joe Pranevich would say: like this, but in Cyberspace.

So who would have thought so, BloodNet ends with a good old mirror cabinet battle. I fight people from my party and need to pick the right weapon so it’s more of a puzzle than an actual battle (tieing together its two genres quite nicely in a weird, dysfunctional sort of way). It doesn’t really work (like coming up with the correct parameters to enter “elizabeth”, incidentally) because it’s hard to discern any kind of logic behind most of the decisions. The endgame is largely a series of trial and error, or brute force. The only remedying factor for me personally is that I get quite lucky with most of my decisions. 

I’m gonna go get lucky!

I first have to face off with Lash Givens who tells me he’s come to “send ya to hell, old buddy.” My first weapon of choice is the flame thrower but it doesn’t hurt Lash a bit. The same holds true for the white noise blaster. Getting bored already? Stick with me for a bit longer because the sawed-off shotgun kills Lash in two blasts. Next up is Melissa Van Helsing who tells me she loves me and she wants me badly but also, and I don’t know about you but I found that slightly confusing, isn’t it, wants my broken body at her feet and a stake driven through my chest. Do you feel the love? So do I. Melissa doesn’t feel my soul blade, though, because of her superb agility skill. I’ll have to try something else. Before I get to find the right weapon Melissa kills me and I have to start over.

This time I manage to gun down Lash with only one shot and save some of my hit points for later. With Melissa, I try the Blessed Soul Blade this time (isn’t she a vampire?!) but she still dodges my attacks easily. I try aiming at different parts of her body but Melissa kills me again. Then I try the stake which seems like another reasonable choice. She just mentioned the stake when she was taunting me, after all. Alas, Incubus doesn’t agree, and Melissa still manages to avoid me. I can’t even get one single hit in while she is slowly chipping away at my force field with her White Noise Blaster. I die again, and try again. And again. 

Now why did it take me so long to try out a different weapon, you ask me? Because the .mf game taught me over and over that I can not kill vampires with traditional weaponry. But now, in Dracula’s fantasy land, that doesn’t hold true anymore. I try the sawed-off shotgun and it deals some damage, at least. Too little damage, still. Melissa kills me again. Then I remember something: Didn’t I have to shoot the vampires first before dealing the final blow with the soul blade later? I cursed the game but this one’s really on me! This time, I try reducing Melissa’s hit points with the shotgun first, and then finish her off with the blessed soul blade. It works, and I am faced with Nimrod 7 who tells me that my crimes “will not go unpunished”. What is this, RoboCop?

I'd buy that line for a dollar!

Nimrod 7 seems an odd choice for the endgame. I did encounter him but only hired him briefly to find out how skilled he was (yes, yes, I had blank spaces in my spreadsheet to fill). He doesn’t (necessarily) play a major role in the game. Granted, you can also ignore Lash Givens for the entirety of the game but it is less likely because he’s your best friend and he will join your party for free. 

With Nimrod, I try some futuristic weapon. If the endgame “puzzle” is meant to work this way, that seems like a reasonable choice. The EMP Focaliser works fine and reduces Nimrod to a pile of nuts and bolts in only three rounds. Also, he doesn’t deal any damage to me because my armor absorbs the shots from his laser rifle all but completely. 

Well, “Nimrod” is a nice homage to early computer history so maybe they wanted that in the endgame. Better than “New Klee R Wynter”, I’d say. Having killed Nimrod, I am allowed to progress to the second room of Dracula’s lair where there are more opponents waiting for me. 

Into the Surreal

The first enemy to approach me is Sir Anias from the Cloisters. “Unholy beast. You die now”, he tells me (try saying that in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice!). Joke’s on you, Sir Anias: My shotgun kills him in one go. Blind luck, I’d say. Next up is a TransTech security captain. I have no idea what to pick and go with the shotgun again. One shot, and he’s history. Who’s next? Sabaccatus St. Aubens, the purification maniac. He manages to dodge my shotgun repeatedly and deals a lot of damage to me with his flame thrower. I try some other weapons before getting this one right and manage to kill him in four rounds with the Assault Rifle in the end.  

The next room is even more confusing than the previous one (shades of the Mystery Vortex in Sam & Max Hit the Road), and there is only one opponent left:

Note how Dracula will “fry my brain” just like certain programs in the Cyberspace will. It seems like uploading yourself – and thus ensuring your own (potential) immortality – has its price, too. The final battle is ridiculously easy. I use a cross for armor and kill Dracula in one hit with my Blessed Soul Blade. 

After deleting Dracula (and all of its spawns) in an MS-DOS terminal (!), Ransom is able to return from Cyberspace and free Deirdre Tackett...but where was she? I’m not really sure. A joint exorcism by Mother Mary and Incubus saves Ransom’s soul but Incubus is out for revenge: 

Err...pleased to meet you?

A surprise comeback for organised religion!

What do we make of this? I’m not sure. I’ll try to gather my thoughts on the game and be back in time for the final rating (before 2025, I promise).

Session time: 4 hours
Total time: 28 hours