We discover being a half-vampire isn't as much fun as we thought it would be...

Arrrghhhhhh!!!!!! Let me just get that out of my system before I can even begin commenting on the mediocrity of BloodRayne; a third-person action/adventure title, which pitches players as the half-vampire ‘Agent BloodRayne’.<br><br>Set between the two World Wars, Agent BloodRayne finds herself under the employment of a mysterious secret society as she sets out to hunt down and kill the supernatural threat that has been emerging. As the game unfolds, you’ll learn of the Nazi’s intention to bring Germany into a new age of domination and it’s up to you to stop them.<br><br>Taking control of BloodRayne, players have access to an impressive arsenal of weapons and a variety of melee attacks using your twin blades - perfect for decapitating the odd mutate hear and there.<br><br>Despite being firmly rooted as a third-person title, BloodRayne bizarrely offers the player with a wide range of control methods including first-person, third-person and in a nice touch being able to swap them over for left-handed gamers. Unforgivably there’s something decidedly dubious about the controls; within no time at all you’ll be cursing at the unresponsive and spongy controls, whilst the jumping system makes navigating some of the platform heavy levels extremely frustrating.<br><br>To make matters worse, BloodRayne features a camera that feels hideously outdated and once again a cause of extreme frustration. You’ll find yourself fighting with the camera because of its over-twitchy nature and never-ending ability to get stuck in crevices and make combat next to impossible.<br><br>On a positive note, there’s a lot of depth to the combat system; Rayne has standard melee attacks with her twin blades, whilst she can carry a variety of weapons that would make most small countries blush. Being a half-vampire, Rayne must suck the blood from her opponents to rejuvenate her health levels; simply by tapping a face button, Rayne will jump onto the opponent and suck their blood with repeated presses of the corresponding button. Drinking enough blood will open up further vampire abilities, as Rayne engages into ‘BloodLust’ and ultimately ‘BloodRage’. <br><br>As part of the ‘style-over-substance’ methodology that appears to have governed the development of BloodRayne, you can activate a variety of vampire special attacks when Rayne has generated sufficient energy from killing enough opponents. Essentially this boils down to Matrix styled slow-motion and the ability to see the enemy with an ‘aura-vision’ that in any other game would be named nightvision. Although it’s easy to knock the lack of originality, BloodRayne implements these abilities with enough style and effectiveness to warrant acclaim. Pulling off a range of melee attacks when you’ve slowed down time looks very cool and is one of the best implementations of ‘bullet time’ that we’ve seen in a long time. <br><br>Whilst we like the fact that BloodRayne doesn’t try to include needless puzzle in order to increase the life-span, the lack of variety begins to hurt BloodRayne after a short time; unfortunately the combat just isn’t enough to hold this title afloat.<br><br>On the Playstation2, BloodRayne is a messy title; textures have that dirty look to them, sporting low detail and repetitively using that grey/brown colour scheme that makes you ask ‘Is this all the Ps2 can do?’. Character models lack the detail we’ve come to expect and display simplistic models with low polygon counts, whilst their animation is laughable at best – check out the characters running for classic comedy where it wasn’t intended. <br><br>Frequently you’ll find yourself surrounded by enemy characters; naturally this becomes a mess of limbs, blood and organs as you decorate the screen with the entrails of your opponents. Despite the visual mess that this causes, you’ll also notice some worrying amounts of slow-down during these scenes.<br><br>And if you thought there wasn’t anything else wrong with the game, wait until you hear the music and voice acting. Stereotypical accents are the order of the day, so Nazi’s speak in English but with ze German accent accentuated on key phrases, whilst the ‘F-Word’ is used excessively for no reason at all.