If you know me, you might be aware that two of my most reviewed genres are old school FPS games and bullet heaven shooters. What if we combined the glory days of games like Doom and Quake, with the addictive survivors-like structure of titles like Vampire Survivors? The answer is, needless to say, a game I absolutely needed to check out. Here’s our review of Bloodshed on Xbox Series X version!
First person bullet heaven – again
It doesn’t feel that long ago that Xbox barely even had any bullet heaven/survivors-like games at all. Just over two years ago, I was reviewing REMEDIUM: Sentinels, a solid, though relatively unremarkable title in the genre. Fast forward to late 2025, and this sub-genre of rogue-lite games is so crowded, that this month of October alone had multiple high profile releases – including the much awaited Halls of Torment. Even the concept of first person bullet heaven has been done on Xbox before – in the very fun Vampire Hunters, for one.
That game followed the multi-weapon approach of many such titles. In what felt like a first person version of Brotato, before long, the player had countless weapons in front of them, fired at the same time. Bloodshed takes a different approach. The player can choose one of many available classes, though most of them need to be unlocked first. Then, said character has a weapon arsenal, consisting of one or more starting weapons and then others they gain and upgrade. But it’s the player who has to swap them, so it’s not a mindless spam of everything we have at our disposal. Certainly adds a bit more strategic depth, to it all.
Megablood
Weapons range from quite predictable picks like pistols, shotguns, uzis, to increasingly wild ones. Shurikens, rocket launchers, magic staff – everything goes, when it’s time to murder waves of foes. Interestingly, while the player only wields one of those at a time, they can have various offensive skills at hand, too. Firing the weapon can be either manual or automatic, depending on your preferences, while these skills are all going off automatically on cooldown. These can be healing skills, offensive ones and so forth. But aside from the sheer firepower and aim, the true survival skill here in Bloodshed is movement itself.
While not as frantic as recent indie sensation Megabonk, with its skate-adjacent high-speed movement system, this is still a pretty fast and exhilarating game. You can outrun most enemies and their attacks. Yet, their sheer numbers means that you will need to walk back a lot while shooting. Keep your eyes on a way out, though, as it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Before long, the amount of enemies becomes truly staggering. And yet, the player does need to walk back and forth to collect XP, coins, treasure boxes and more. Risk versus reward at its purest form. The game’s 2.5D graphics, combined with the frantic gameplay, really evoke memories of classic Doom slaughter maps.
Exciting carnage
Needless to say, this is a really fun formula for Bloodshed. The movement is fast, players can jump and even bunny-hop, slightly. Enemies with ranged attacks shoot at our exact position, while melee ones tend to wait a fraction of a second before mauling us. This makes it so that moving around is extremely effective. Since the player has to keep aiming at enemies, it’s quite the exhilarating gameplay loop. Mini-bosses and unique encounters keep the variety high, as we need to survive long enough to wait out the timer on each level. From the short, 5-minute tutorial mission, to various 15-to-30 minute runs.
There is a surprising amount of stages, too. The campaign’s structure gets us through several levels throughout various biomes. Some areas can be replayed to do further missions and challenges. Stages are filled up with destructible towers that give health or coins. There’s even explosive barrels to take advantage of. Just be sure you’re not within range, before making it go boom! The levels feature various pathways, even some verticality with stairs and ramps. It’s all in service of crowd management, though a few areas make cheesing encounters a bit easy. Just find yourself an elevated spot with a single entrance, so you are unlikely to receive any attacks from behind. Can always bail if you’re overwhelmed!
Pew pew!
The final mainline level of the game has a few interesting quirks, leading to a bombastic boss fight. As mentioned, there’s various extra missions and optional content in the existing areas, which helps with the longevity. There’s not too many classes, weapons or permanent upgrades to aim for, making this less of an endless timesink than, say, the gargantuan list of unlockables of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor or the Diablo-like depth of Soulstone Survivors.
Sometimes, such an approach is more than enough. Bloodshed doesn’t pack a sensational amount of depth and variety. It does, however, offer lots of enemies to burn through in a very satisfying first person twist on the bullet heaven formula, rolling the credits before its repetitiveness could become a huge issue. Definitely one to check out, if you’re looking for your next survivors-like and you’re into boomer shooters.
Bloodshed
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Enjoyable fast-paced action
- Satisfying power creep
- Plenty of levels
CONS
- Limited depth and variety
- Lacks meaningful endgame, beside a few optional missions
