BloodRayne is a third-person hack-and-slash game where you play as Rayne, a Dhampir (half-vampire, half-human) working for the mysterious Brimstone Society. Your job is to prevent supernatural creatures from taking over the world, while seemingly keeping it a secret from the general public.
Presentation
The graphics are pretty bad by today’s standards, even with the additional polish from the Terminal Cut, but it’s passable for such an old game. Most environments are barren and levels can start to run together after a while. Granted, the three major chapters are fairly distinct in visual style, but I would have liked some more variety between levels within the same chapter. It’s tough to stay interested in the environment when it’s your tenth time running through a swamp.
Sound
Nothing about the soundtrack stood out to me while playing, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This isn’t the type of game where players expect a unique score full of interesting tracks; straightforward background tracks will do the job just fine. Surprisingly, the most memorable sounds come from the horribly mixed effects. When Rayne jumps on someone’s back to suck their blood, you can’t hear anything over the sound of her slurping. On the other hand, sometimes characters speak so quietly that you have to strain to hear them. This brings up the other major audio issue, the voice acting.
No offense intended towards the voice actors, but there are some dismal performances. It could be due to inexperienced actors, rushed production, or bad direction, but regardless of the reason, it’s impossible to take any character seriously. Rayne speaks with no emotion, yet her lines are full of quips and one-liners. Some villains go in the opposite direction and have cartoonish voices that clash with Rayne’s during cutscenes.
Story
BloodRayne‘s story is split into three parts that take place at different times and in unique settings. There’s an overarching narrative, but each piece still has a self-contained storyline. None of these mini-stories appealed to me because they tended to drag on. You could sum up the entire plot in only a few scenes, but there’s a bunch of combat sections breaking it up. The overall story is equally weak, but I don’t expect many people to be playing it for the plot. I tend to expect a good story if the gameplay is lacking, but here all I got was some nonsensical narrative full of bizarre twists and reveals. Still, I actually started to appreciate how bad the story was, so it can still be a satisfying experience if you don’t take it too seriously.
Dialogue
Awkward cutscenes abound, adding a whole new level of terrible to the game’s attempts at quality storytelling. Rayne is the epitome of edgy protagonists from the 2000s. Regardless of the situation, she’s always ready with a quip to let you know she’s a badass with a devil-may-care attitude.
Gameplay – Combat
If my critiques stopped here, I would probably enjoy BloodRayne. The story is charmingly bad and if the gameplay was decent, this might actually be a strong recommendation. Instead, the combat is a frustrating mess that almost singlehandedly ruins the game.
It sounds cool to jump around stabbing and shooting enemies, but in practice, it feels like you are always fighting with the controls. Even switching to a controller, which shouldn’t be necessary, didn’t help much. Guns lock on to enemies, which can be annoying when you are stuck shooting an enemy you don’t want to. Melee combat is stiff and doesn’t work well with the movement system. Draining someone’s blood seems to be the most polished part of combat, but it’s nothing special.
Gameplay – Enemy Design
There’s some visual variety in enemies, but ultimately, they are all generic humanoids. The main distinction is that some have guns and others don’t, but neither of them makes for an interesting fight.
Bosses are a little different, in that they have more thought put into their designs and they all have specific gimmicks that change up how you fight them. Unfortunately, many of these fights are made trivial by using Blood Rage, a move that boosts your damage to insane levels, allowing you to kill most bosses before the buff ends. The main exception is the final boss. You have to kill it in a specific way, preventing you from using Blood Rage. It’s easily the worst fight in the game and almost made me leave it unfinished. The only reason I didn’t quit was that I encountered a bug that killed the boss in a few seconds, after dozens of unsuccessful attempts.
Performance and Bugs
Performance-wise, it runs how you would expect a mediocre port of an old game to run; passable, but generally unimpressive. On the other hand, bugs and glitches are everywhere. It’s unclear whether all these issues were present on release, or if some were introduced by the new port, but whatever the case, they are clearly noticeable. They range from minor glitches, like getting stuck on the edge of an object’s hitbox, to game-changing bugs, such as the one that kills the final boss for you. Some people might play the whole game without facing a major issue, but it’s all up to blind luck.
Verdict
There are some fantastic elements in BloodRayne, but not enough to carry it through its weaker moments. I loved the cheesy, ridiculous dialogue, yet I could never look past the combat. It always felt like I was suffering through boring gameplay just to get to the next cutscene. Because of that, I can’t recommend this game unless you know you won’t mind the gameplay. For the average player, I suspect it’ll be too much of a slog to enjoy.
