Hot Blood (Nintendo Switch) Review

Hot Blood can be described as an ultra-low budget attempt to mix Chainsaw Lollipop and Dead Rising. The protagonist, a cute low-poly girl, must save her low-poly boyfriend, who got kidnaped from a horde of zombies that have intruded the shopping mall where she was buying her latest batch of sexy bras and skimpy outfits. In essence, she will have to kick, punch, and every now and then gun down, chainsaw-slash, and baseball bat-smack undead for an hour or so, while walking like a floozy, shaking her tail whenever she completes a level, and spewing out stupid one-liners. Occasionally she will be able to buy new outfits by gathering enough money and slightly spice things up.

It's silly fun, obviously. This knows it and expects you to enjoy the cheese. Seeing a sexy cartoon gal karate chop goofy looking monsters looks relatively good, the concept of changing outfits makes it easier to accept the monotony of it all, and the protagonist's out of place cheery behaviour gives Hot Blood the right, light-hearted tone. All these things get boring way too soon, however. You are hearing the same things again and again, walk through a shopping mall that essentially looks the same from start to finish, and the action, the core aspect where everything revolves around, is frankly not that good.

The quest is divided into thirty stages, but they are all just shops in the mall, along with a handful of open areas. You defeat all enemies in a room, which can range from two or three, to figures close to 10, and move on to the next "stage." Press one button to kick, another one to punch. One can also pick up temporary weapons like in the beat 'em ups of old, which can be quite powerful. The zombies mostly wait, posing little threat while this cute lass runs around, and it's only the few elites that will have her use more of her moves, like her dodge-roll or sweeping kick. At the end of the day, though, there's little challenge here beyond the camera and a general lack of polish. Lost some health? Drink some soda. You'll finish the whole ordeal with like 20 spare bottles…

Once you are done… it's not really done, as you are thrown into a subterranean section, for a few more minutes of the same thing, again with nothing new added. Yes, you'll fight a knight variation of the zombie, but you'll also use the same techniques you were using for the past 40-60 minutes… and that's Hot Blood's main issue. Everything feels (and kind of is) the same from start to finish. The look, the sound, the action - nothing every truly changes. It's not even fun in that super-low budget kind of way that plenty of other bargain bin games tend to be. Hell, it's not even as silly as expected, which is probably the biggest sin such a title can commit.