BloodRayne 2

"Bloody beautiful brawler... any 'but's?"

First off, let me tell you I never played the first BloodRayne. The breadth of my knowledge regarding that game boils down to a very negative article I read, which bashed the designers for basically pixellating another perfectly proportioned protagonist, and creating a garbage heap of a game around her.

Of course these seemed like good reasons to bash – if there's anything I can't abide by, it's bad gameplay. So when BloodRayne 2 appeared on the horizon, I didn't care. A sequel to a crappy game – who gives a hoot?

Well, you should. It's solid.

ONE (1) STORY – 3/10

Stop me if you've heard this one: a human/vampire half-breed who happens to be excessively skilled in blades and ballistics, wages a one-man (in this case one-woman) war against the evil forces of the undead.

Woo! Someone put on their creativity hat to come up with that one!

It's unfortunate that Story is often the game feature that suffers most. We need to care about the hero in order to care about what we're doing in their game world (and whether or not we succeed) - without story or well-defined characters, we usually don't care – unless it's an action game.

Because in action games all you're doing is bashing a horde of baddies, you don't really need to know (or care to know) why. This is an action game, and as such story doesn't count nearly as much as character. And ooooooo-boy-o Rayne's got character comin' out the bustier.

Her neutral stance is totally, utterly Vogue - she gives snappy one-liners as she slices through enemies - her animations are all designed to be as stylish and sexy as possible, and the sum of all these little parts really let her shine through. Rayne's world may not be real – but we get a sense that she is.

TWO (2) SOUND – 6/10

Yeah yeah - there are games that sound better – I personally take Max Payne 2 as the pinnacle of current gaming sound technology – but there's one thing Max Payne 2 or Doom 3 or even GTA: San Andreas don't have:

“Mmmmm….mmmm… (slurp)…. Mmm… oh yeah…”

…while a sexy vampire woman straddles a guy, suckin' on his neck. That may not sound like much, but in all honesty - and by that I mean this is the absolute truth : this game can actually turn you on.

Wierd, but honest. Anyway, back to sound:

Explosions and enemies and gunfire all sound great – but it's Rayne herself who again takes the cake with her one-liners, above-par voice acting, and various sounds of action (her scream when she's close to death is blood-curdling).

The only downside of all this auditory pleasure is the music. While it is generally fine throughout (and only fine), during boss fights in particular the hard-driving-rock music tends to get old pretty fast. Luckily, you're spending most of your time looking, not listening.

THREE (3) GRAPHICS – 8/10

The graphics engine looks eerily similar to Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time – that is to say, very high-quality for the PS2.

The environments are huge and well-designed for the “spectacrobatics” Rayne performs. The game defines itself with sweeping gothic architecture, and succeeds in huge rooftop levels, sprawling mansions, and some things better left a surprise. Bosses and enemies all look great, and blend well into the fight mechanics (some moves can only be performed if an enemy is NOT holding a weapon, so being able to see what the enemy has in his hands is of utmost importance).

But, again, what truly stands out here is Rayne herself. While much hype has been made of certain bouncing aspects of her physique, that is merely the cherry on top of the whipped cream that is this character model.

Anyone who's played American McGee's Alice will find something familiar in Rayne's expressive face – she looks around apprehensively in what I have ab-so-lutely no trouble proclaiming the Best In-Game (non-cutscene) facial animations EVER.

Rayne's crimson hair sways beautifully as she walks (or runs), and all her animations are wonderful. From her perfect handsprings to those spectacular fatalities, this lady's got it goin' on, second only (in animation) to Techu: Wrath of Heaven's Ayame.

FOUR (4) GAMEPLAY – 10/10

This is where the game gets good enough to keep. All the graphics and bouncing in the world doesn't make a game fun. This is why I traded my copy of PoP: Sands of Time towards GTA: San Andreas – the fights in Price of Persia got old – real fast. I loved all that wall-running and time-manipulation and acrobatics, but when time came for the Prince to draw his blades… ew. Those crappy fights weren't worth the cool jumping/swinging/running sections.

It's easy to see how the game developers could have, in fact, sat down with PoP: Sands of Time for ideas while working on BloodRayne 2. The pole swinging and wall-jumping reaches perhaps 55% of the coolness Prince of Persia managed, but Rayne more than makes up for this with her Spectacrobatics and exemplary fighting.

There are so many mechanics in the fighting, it would be crass of me to list them all here and give explanations (plus the spoiler argument), so let me instead say this…

The fighting doesn't get old. A sense of urgency stays with you, and more than any other game that's tried (PoP, Enter the Matrix, Rise to Honor) this game allows you to create some spectacular movie-quality fights without becoming boring. The one particular fighting mechanic I absolutely adore (because it's high time SOMEONE got it right), I'll share with you here:

Doing evasive flips is always very cool – but often complete extraneous. What this game manages to do is make backflips/frontflips entirely necessary to the fighting. Rayne can feed on any enemy in the game (sans bosses), so long as they aren't holding a melee weapon. If they are, she cannot feed from the front – only the back. Watching Rayne do a 180 pike flip over an enemy, land behind him, and pounce on him to begin feeding is gorgeous – and it makes me wonder why THIS is the first game to manage to make evasive flips everything they should be: fun, beautiful, urgent, and totally functional (in more ways than I've suggested).

Remember though – that's a small, single aspect of the gameplay. This is an experience where you'll be facing let's say three enemies (an unusually small number in this game, but for example's sake...).

The first comes at you with his fists, so you pounce on him, drive your blood-fueled guns into his face and chest, and hold him high above your head as you drain him for ammo before tossing his corpse into the oncoming baddies.

There's still two left! Well the one farthest away is shooting at you – best whip Rayne's dagger into his chest. Luckily it's got a chain on it, and as you yank on the chain he goes flying through the air, impaling himself on the horn of a mounted Rhinoceros's head.

The third flunky is almost to you now, about to swipe at you with his blade. That's cool. Press square twice, then O twice, then triangle. Onscreen, you'll see Rayne slash with her arm-blades, only to have the enemy defend himself. She follows up seamlessly with two kicks – the first is blocked, but the second sends the weapon flying from her enemy's hands. As soon as the weapon is gone, Rayne leaps up and straddles her attacker, draining his life to feed her own…

ching - ching – wham – crack – ‘mmmmm….'

…only to draw her blades before the end, and remove the head of her prey. Awesome. And I haven't even touched on Rayne's supercool vampire abilities.

FIVE (5) OVERALL – 8/10

BloodRayne 2 manages to pull off what not many games can do nowadays – the relatively simple act of making fighting a bunch of enemies fun. After wasting my money on Enter the Matrix and Rise to Honor, I'm glad to have this one in my library. You can tell what the developers wanted to see – they wanted it to take all the cool visual style of recent vampire films and put that into a game – but they ACTUALLY DID IT SUCCESSFULLY.

Just watch Rayne jump up to a horizontal pole and perch there, looking down on the environment with those big green eyes, and you know the developers of BloodRayne 2 succeeded in what they wanted to do. It's stylish, it's fun, and hey – bouncing.

-Riv

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/15/04