Captain Blood | PS5 Review

Oh, the good old days of the Xbox 360 and PS3. An era where an entire video game could be beaten in the span of a single weekend rental. Where you would look at the shelf and you could see half a dozen games you’ve never heard of staring back at you. You might rent one and find a hidden gem, or you could blast through it in two days and never think about it again. Captain Blood would have been in the latter category.

But You Have Heard of Me

Captain Blood was originally announced in 2003, but trouble followed it soon after. Publisher woes, development restarts, and shifting teams plagued this action game from the start. In fact, it wasn’t until 2008 that the press even got their hands on the game. A couple years after that, the game was finally cancelled even though it was nearly complete. Thanks to publisher SNEG, we’re able to play it today. It’s one of the more fascinating development stories in history, and that’s where a lot of my intrigue from the title came.

At its core, Captain Blood is a pirate-themed take on the classic God of War titles. There’s simplistic upgrades, easy combos, fixed camera angles, and the classic right stick dodge. It’ll come easily to any fans of the early years of that kind of melee action game. I try to refrain from direct comparison in my reviews, so that games can better stand up to their own merits, but this is as close to a genuine “knockoff” as I’ve seen in my time as a critic.

I’m Disinclined to Acquiesce to Your Request

Unfortunately, combat isn’t exactly tight in our nautical adventure, and in fact it’s actually pretty dull. There’s a decent variety of enemy types for a six hour game, but almost every foe can be defeated with the same combo. Combined with encounters being a constant for the game’s entire duration, it’s easy to become bored quickly. Some ranged enemies can put up a decent fight, but it usually felt more frustrating than fair. They can sync up to where as soon as one knocks our good captain down, the other can shoot again as soon as he’s rising. Keeping you in a frustrating loop that only good fortune can free you from.

There are some nifty executions you can finish foes off with. There are four types, and they each give Captain Blood a different benefit. My favorite was the disarming execution, where you get the enemy’s weapon. These last for a short while before breaking, but they help alleviate the mundanity of combat. Considering endless combat is all you’ll get, I recommend unlocking this execution as soon as you’re able. There are no puzzles, narrative moments, or traversal challenges to break levels up, so it really is nonstop combat for the entire running time.

Now…Bring Me That Horizon

The only change of pace comes in the handful of naval battles, but don’t get too ahead of yourself there. You don’t actually pilot the ship itself. Instead, you control the cannons on board and shoot passing enemy vessels. The cannons overheat in a single shot, so you’re stuck running between them to keep the damage up, whilst dodging enemy cannonballs. If you do poorly, you’ll get boarded by enemy combatants. Which is a shame, because then you’re right back to that exact same combat you just hoped to get a break from. So while these are indeed a diversion, they’re certainly not a worthwhile one.

Bosses do fare a bit better, I’ll admit. These muscular foes usually have a unique gimmick attached and fun attack patterns to memorize. Too often they rely on sending in waves of enemies in between phases, but nonetheless I appreciated them as the highlight of the game. They’re even finished off in extended QTE segments, which should take any aged gamer right back to that 00’s era.

You Best Start Believe in Ghost Stories

If there’s nothing to break up the relentless action in Captain Blood, one could only hope the story is compelling or fun to help guide you on your quest. Not so, it would seem. Peter Blood is tasked with rescuing various British elites in exchange for a vast amount of gold, and that’s all there is to it. No plot twists, no character arcs, no compelling dialogue. After rolling credits, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about Captain Peter Blood outside of “is pirate.” This rings true for every character. Walt, Blood’s first mate, is deemed important enough to warrant a playable section, but I’m not sure he has more than ten lines total in the entire game. Six hours is more than enough time to create compelling characters and motivations, and you need only look as far as the PS2 era God of War games Captain Blood is so slavishly devoted to  see it.

It certainly doesn’t help that the cutscenes in Captain Blood have some of the most horribly mixed audio my ears have had to suffer through. Subtitles are a must, as the music and sound effects are routinely louder than the dialogue, which is muffled at the best of times. No amount of messing with audio sliders could fix this, no matter what I tried. You really have to see it to believe it, but I honestly couldn’t believe it shipped in as poor of a state as it did. Not even headphones could alleviate the issue.

So It Would Seem

All in all, I really am happy Captain Blood made it to release. Its development story and path to market is nothing short of remarkable, and everyone involved should be applauded. All art should be preserved, and vaporware seems the hardest of all to save. However, Captain Blood would’ve been a poor game even in the era it was originally conceived. I would know, as I was happily renting games of similar quality at that time. It’s repetitive, bereft of narrative intrigue, and overstays its brief runtime. It’s worth checking out for those obsessed with video game history like myself, but truthfully no one else needs to bother.

To hear me talk more about Captain Blood, be sure to listen to the May 15, 2025 episode of The Gaming Outsider podcast.

This review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy of Captain Blood provided by Evolve PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, and the Humble Store.