BloodRayne

BloodRayne - just a little more bite!

I can smell their fear. Even though the group of Wermacht soldiers behind the door are armed to their teeth with machineguns and grenades, they know that they do not stand a chance against me. I let my tongue caress my sharp teeth, and I can already taste their warm, delicious blood. I smash the door open and with my super-human speed and my ultra-sharp blades I cut the head of the first soldier, before they even realise that I’ve attacked. The next soldier loses his arm to my blades as he tries to fire his machinegun. Then I take the prize: I jump onto the officer, sink my teeth in his neck and milk him dry of blood. They met their fate in me. In BloodRayne.

Sometimes you can take old game-clichés and mix them together with a good result. Thus a female lead character (a sexy half-vampire with the one of the best cleavages in gaming history I may add), Nazis obsessed with awaking the devil through ancient relics and well-known special effects like bullet-time actually form a good basis for a lot of fun in Terminal Reality’s Bloodrayne for the PS2.

Miss, is that your underwear?

Lara... go home.

Agent BloodRayne reminds a lot of another half-vampire: Blade. She’s got superhuman strength, -speed, -fighting skills and -senses and she can drink blood in order to restore energy. Additionally she’s twenty times as hot, walking about scantily dressed with perfect body attributes. Agent BloodRayne is hired by a secret society fighting black magic in the 1930s, and is soon inserted into Louisiana, where giant spider-like creatures and zombies kill the population faster than a Formula 1 car accelerates from 0-60 Mph.

The first maps aren’t really interesting, and the main problem is avoiding the water in the swamps, which can easily be done by jumping onto roofs, cables and other things that’ll keep your leather boots dry. This is a tough start with the enemies and the maps being quite dull and repetitive.

Going loco down in…

Sucking your enemies' blood is the fastest way to kill them

However, it becomes apparent that Nazis are up to something, and the game skips five years in time to a point, where Agent BloodRayne has travelled to South America. Here she fights Wermacht and SS soldiers as well as their officers (who serve as boss-monsters), and to be frank that’s much more fun than the zombies and spiders. The most gratifying moments are when Rayne jumps onto a soldier and sucks his blood out. The soldier struggles in vain and sometimes mutters stuff, while Rayne clearly is enjoying her meal. This not only refills your energy bar, this is also by far the easiest way to kill your enemies.

The level design varies between strictly linear maps to more free-roaming areas, where you can run back and forth and choose your own way ahead. This works quite well and the game offers you amble saving possibilities, although some of the maps degenerate into tiresome jumping exercises.

They call me Max Rayne

Good luck stopping her, soldier

It soon becomes apparant that Agent BloodRayne is nearly unstoppable and that common soldiers and monsters have no chance of standing up to her. This is in part due to the mentioned blood-sucking attack, but also due to her many other abilities. Most important of all is her ability to activate a feature “bullet-time” like in Max Payne. It works exactly the same way, and you can now dodge bullets and see your attacks in slow-motion, but in BloodRayne our half-vampire can use this feature for as long as she likes. You can in fact complete the game in “bullet-time” if you want to (but it would take ages).

Although the action gets repetitive, BloodRayne is still good fun

Agent BloodRayne gains new abilities throughout the game, and among those are also a sniper vision mode and several new attacks (punch, kicks and wielding of the blades) both for the normal attack mode and for the blood rage attack mode. Blood rage is a limited time period, where Rayne gets even more powerful and deals out much greater damage than normally. Count to all this the ability to pick up any gun, machinegun, bazooka and grenade that her poor enemies drop, and you’ve got a fighting machine that is more hardcore than a cross-breed of Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Jet Li. However, with the number of enemies at hand, the near-cheat feeling seldom bothered me. Actually it’s quite fascinating to control such a powerful being, and there’s plenty of excitement.

Guess who’s coming to cut you up

Agent BloodRayne is superbly animated with great care to details like her hair moving realistically. The character models are likewise very realistic and generally Agent BloodRayne is a real pleasure to look at. Surroundings have been done well, with good textures and light effects, although the grey-green look that most of the levels share can become a bit dull. Sound effects are solid, and I liked the voice actor for Agent BloodRayne, which gave Rayne’s many small remarks a cool tough. My favorite remark was “I promise I’ll bite”… Music-wise the game does very well, too.

Bloodrayne

What will annoy some people is the level of violence. I haven’t played such a violent game as BloodRayne for quite a while, and arms, legs and heads (sometimes just have of the head) fly around as Rayne wields her blades. The amount of blood splatter would make any Slasher movie director proud, so BloodRayne is not for the timid.

The game, however, is a lot of fun. It’s not revolutionizing and the action doesn’t vary a lot during the cause of the game, but still you’ll keep going for quite some time. Agent BloodRayne is a fascinating character so powerful that few enemies can hurt her. The background story with occultist Nazis isn’t new, but once again works. Definitely better than an average bite.