Review by: Tony Mitera

Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood is a relatively tiny game in almost every sense of the word. It has scarcely seven levels to call its own, and the whole of them can easily be beaten in an hour and a half. What gameplay it does have in its comical mix of shooting rebels and chickens alike is quirky fun, letting you gun down foes and turn them into the titular buckets of blood. Developed by a small indie team, the game is a lot of fun to be had on the cheap.

In the game you play as a nameless and almost faceless member of the Foreign Legion, armed with your trusty Colt pistol and M16 rifle and tasked with defending either yourself or some point of interest against an equally anonymous band of rebels. At the stock settings you must hold out for either ten minutes or in most cases until the final wave of enemies has been killed. The waves spawn increasingly large numbers of enemies with a new wave starting between one and 15 or so seconds after the last remaining enemy of the prior wave is killed.

The maps themselves are all based on desert climates, and usually in some sort of village filled with buildings, walkways, and alleys. There are three enemy types in the game, regular soldiers that generally try and attack you, suicide soldiers that try to make it to the objective you are defending and detonate to deal massive damage to it, and rocket soldiers who can do either. Generally speaking the AI is very basic; they will pretty much both run straight for the objective or straight for you and deviate only for basic path-finding around something in their way. Thus, the goal is to sweep around the map and deal with the closest or most dangerous rebel types first, then maybe leave one regular soldier alive to keep the next wave at bay as you grab a repair pickup to replenish the objectives strength or call for an ammunition drop.

The gameplay does have a couple basic nuances, such as weak points on the enemies and its combo system to keep the combat rolling. Head shots are usually a one-shot kill on enemies, as is shooting the detonation pack on a suicide soldier to kill him and everyone around him. Scoring kills, headshots, and blowing enemies up in quick succession nets you a combo bonus, which in turn yields you more buckets of blood. Of course shooting enemies normally adds to your bucket total as well, and at the end of a map your buckets get converted into cash to spend on purchasing all manners of goodies.

As you gain buckets you not only gain cash but also experience, which in turn levels your character up to unlock new weapons, outfits, and accessories. The latter two are purely aesthetic purchases, but weapons and ammo are certainly increasingly powerful tools to lay waste to the rebel numbers. As you gain cash you will be spending most of it on unlocking new weapons spread across your three different equipment types, and range from your unlimited ammo Colts to the Legion bread and butter FAMAS rifle. Special weapons such as the rocket launcher and sniper rifle can also be hauled into battle, but all of which seem to suffer from either being underpowered or simply having too low of a maximum ammo count to be worthwhile.