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Review: BloodRayneReviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Computer: 867MHz G4, 640MB RAM, ATI RADEON 8500, Mac OS X v10.2.6 Review Date: June 9, 2003
"Sexy" is a subjective term, but we'll get back to that in a minute. I may have explained this before, but I'll do it again. When it comes to the ability to willingly suspend one's disbelief, I'd like to think I place in the 98th percentile. In movies, books and games, I'll buy into just anything if it'll improve the entertainment value. Even in real life, I'll believe in anything until some can prove to me it doesn't exist. Bigfoot, Elvis, pterodactyls flying around Alaska? Sure, why not? What I can't buy into are elements that are the result of the creators' sheer stupidity, not their imagination. For instance, take that Wrong Turn movie that just came out. I can believe that a group of teenagers would abandon their disabled cars in the middle of the West Virginian forest to find help, I can believe they'd leave the road in an effort to get a better vantage point of where they are, and I guess I can even believe they'd wander into a dilapidated shack in hopes of finding a phone even though there are no phone lines running to it. What I can't believe is that one of the females would rather seek a restroom in said shack—despite its overall creepiness and chunks of odd meet and growths laying about the tables and floors—instead of just urinating in the woods. It takes my wife fifteen minutes to work up the courage to use the restroom in the local mall; ain't no way she's risking it in a strange cabin in West Virginia.
And yet we still have The Real Cancun and sentences that end in prepositions. Someone tell The Brimstone Society they need to get their butts in gear. What I can't believe about BloodRayne is that anyone in the 1930s—Dhampir or not—would dress like someone rejected from a Christina Aguilliendiaraba video because she looked too, for lack of a better term, whorish. The tight leather, bare midriff, low neckline...ain't no way she can fight in this get-up. I also can't believe that The Brimstone Society would've dubbed her Agent BloodRayne, with the words "blood" and "Rayne" smashed together like modern technology companies do. I can't say for sure when that annoying habit became popular (probably around the same time as corporate logos with swooshes in them), but I'm willing to bet it wasn't in the 1930s.
Perhaps its the unoriginality of it. In how many games will I have to fight Nazi occult monsters and demons? Isn't that kind of redundant, anyway? Nazis are monsters and demons. Just let them be themselves, you know? You don't have to give a Nazi six arms and a mouth the size of a basketball to make him evil. On the other hand, if you want the game to have a monster with six arms and a mouth the size of a basketball, just do it. No reason to pin a swastika to its chest. And wasn't there a time when vampires were about horror? I guess they were always about vague eroticism, but these days they carry the subtlety of a hard core porn flick...or at least an MTV reality program. When Blood Rayne (I'm sorry, I just can't bring myself to make that one word) sucks the blood from her victims, she either mounts them or jumps up to wrap her legs around them (depending upon their position) and cries out in ecstasy as she drains their life away. I guess this is supposed to be sexy, but that whole puncture wound/death thing ruins the moment for me. Call me old fashioned.
There's also this whole vision thing. Her view on life can be changed to Aura Sense, Extruded View and Dilated Perception. Aura sense tells Ms. Rayne how strong her opponents are and in what state of agitation they currently are. It can also be used as a compass, as it highlights the destination of her next objective with a blue glow. Extruded view is what most games like to call binoculars. Dilated perception is that bullet-time trick that worked so well in Max Payne, the one where everything slows down and makes it easier to get good screen captures. All of these effects are pretty cool, and a couple are actually pretty useful, too. I'll let you decide which ones. Blood Rayne has access to a couple dozen different weapons, none of which are as cool as those blades, so why even mention them? Seriously, why do gamers care so much about the number and types of weapons a character can have? Does a vampire or vampire hunter really need a rocket launcher and ten types of machine guns? Hmmm...I wonder how Bela Lugosi would've looked with a Granatewurf grenade launcher. Although the fighting controls in Blood Rayne are fairly simple, moving her about is not. Well executed jumps and landings are essential in this game, yet they're extremely difficult to pull off. Hopping from tombstone to tombstone is often more difficult than fighting the monsters awaiting you at the end.
You know, it's a sad state of affairs when a plot like that described above can be called overdone. If it was done in parody, this game could work. If Blood Rayne wasn't taking itself so seriously—or at least gave some indication it's in on the joke that it is—it could have been quite fun. As it stands, it seems like nothing more than a poor attempt to launch the next Lara Croft or Cate Archer. Oh, but there's something else going for this game; at least it has a strong female protagonist who doesn't have a British accent. Unfortunately, she also doesn't have the sex appeal, no matter what the back of the box says. Well...unless you're really willing to suspend your disbelief.  [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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I have many such problems with BloodRayne. Okay, so there's a human/vampire hybrid running around in the 1930s, the result of a human's rape by a vampire. That's kind of harsh, but hey...whatever makes our protagonist bitter and gives her that take-no-crap attitude that's so popular with the children these days. I can believe she uses her Dhampir (that half human/half vampire thing) powers to exact revenge against vampires in a quest to kill her father. And I can even believe there's this group called The Brimstone Society (I think my dad is a member...it's either that or the Lions Club) who apparently recruit Dhampirs into a kind of Justice League of Vamperica who's mission is to, according to the manual, "...protect humanity from things that ordinary people shouldn't have to deal with."
Am I being ridiculous? Am I missing the point of the game? If so, then the developers are to blame for that. I've played and enjoyed other games that were equally ridiculous (
All of this aside, the game does have its high points. The action sequences are pretty cool, with Blood Rayne pulling off some interesting moves. She can carry weapons, sure, but she has these giant blades on her arms that she uses to dismember her enemies. With a name like Blood Rayne, would expect anything less? She has five standard attacks that are chained together in combos, but the higher levels in the chain are acquired only after playing through the game a while. She also has Blood Rage Attacks and just normal Rage Attacks, I guess, that are accessible at different times through different methods and are both quite a bit bloodier than the normal hand-to-hand attacks. Depending upon the difficulty level at which you're playing, the combo attacks can be either automatic or can only be executed through proper timing. The difficulty level also determines how Blood Rayne's health is restored after dying or restarting a level. In easy mode, she gets full health. In medium mode, her health is restored proportionate to the amount of time played in the level before continuing or restarting. In other words, if you know you're going to restart a level, place Blood Rayne somewhere safe and take a restroom break or read your latest issue of Boys Life. In hard mode, Blood Rayne's health stays where it was before you restarted.
Even worse, the game doesn't look that good. The colors are washed out (these screen caputres from Aspyr's website look better than the actual game), like an ink jet print that's been sitting in the sun for a few months. Everything just seems grey. I guess this matches the story, though, which seems pretty grey as well. No high points, no low points, just your run-of-the-mill story about an embittered woman out to kill her rapist, vampire father along with a legion of other undead creatures and Nazis.