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BloodRayne Review
Nick 'Neil' Bradbury
06/05/2003
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 âAgent BloodRayneâ.
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, youâll learn of the Naziâs intention to bring Germany into a new age of domination and itâs up to you to stop them.
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.
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 thereâs something decidedly dubious about the controls; within no time at all youâll be cursing at the unresponsive and spongy controls, whilst the jumping system makes navigating some of the platform heavy levels extremely frustrating.
To make matters worse, BloodRayne features a camera that feels hideously outdated and once again a cause of extreme frustration. Youâll 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.
On a positive note, thereâs 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 âBloodLustâ and ultimately âBloodRageâ.
As part of the âstyle-over-substanceâ 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 âaura-visionâ that in any other game would be named nightvision. Although itâs 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 youâve slowed down time looks very cool and is one of the best implementations of âbullet timeâ that weâve seen in a long time.
Whilst we like the fact that BloodRayne doesnât 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 isnât enough to hold this title afloat.
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 âIs this all the Ps2 can do?â. Character models lack the detail weâve come to expect and display simplistic models with low polygon counts, whilst their animation is laughable at best â“ check out the characters running for classic comedy where it wasnât intended.
Frequently youâll 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, youâll also notice some worrying amounts of slow-down during these scenes.
And if you thought there wasnât anything else wrong with the game, wait until you hear the music and voice acting. Stereotypical accents are the order of the day, so Naziâs speak in English but with ze German accent accentuated on key phrases, whilst the âF-Wordâ is used excessively for no reason at all.
