BloodRayne

"Cleavage, mini-skirts"

Briefing Room
''Bloodrayne is the story of a women. Half human, half vampire and 100% complete hot temptress. Her story begins as she is inducted into the secrete organization labeled, 'The Brimstone Society'. A top-secret organization that eliminates supernatural threats. In this gruesome story of death and carnage you will fight vampires, zombies, and nazi's. “Oh yes, theres more” Progressively slaying your foes as they come.

Game Play: (9.0)
What is it that makes Agent BloodRayne so fun to play? Well not including her inhuman strength, phenomenal leaping/acrobatic skills, night vision, zoom-in vision and slow motion awareness enabling one vampire chick to shim-sham in and out of bullet's shot her way. If by chance she has been under a bit of fire, it is the simple fact that you need
but grab that worthless human near by and drain the blood from his jugular, only to replenish your life. By the way, use your grapple if you’re a lazy vampire and just pull your prey to you. Now when it comes time to really throw down, BloodRayne is able to go into a mode dubbed, 'Bloodlust'. While in this 'vampire zone' she is even more deadly, and able to execute a new assortment of attacks, which deal a considerable, amount of damage. You will gain new attack techs. as you advance. These are just new simple attack animations. They really could have worked the tech advancement into the plot and gameplay much more.

Now there can be nothing better then watching a vampire chick complete with black latex outfit, redhair, and jiggle effects in 1st person. But perhaps First Person isn't your cup of blood? (Cup of tea, funny, eh? Well anyway.) You’re able to go into a 3rd Person perspective if you'd like. Though I found the first person view to create a better atmosphere and 'feel'. I am just glad to see the choice is given. It seemed to make lots of clipping errors. You could see through the walls in some parts, and it was just far from pretty. But being able to destroy practically every object you see makes up for this flaw. See that cabinet? Let’s 'modify' it with a couple rounds from are nazi prescribed handguns.

But as for the control setup, it sure doesn't get any better than this. (Perhaps a bit more customization would be nice.) You are able to choose inverted or not viewing controls, and that’s almost the extent of it. Ultimately, there is very little customization. But the setup is quite good in its own. Now as for reaction time, which is very crucial in these action/shootouts, (Even a few second delays could leave you getting whacked) everything responds like a Navy seals in boot camp. ''Yes sir/mam, No sir/mam.'' Whether your jumping, and going into your spin jump (executed by a double press of jump), or side jump and shooting (much like a strafe, but only you go in the air, and do a summersault), everything runs smoothly. I was happy I could do a spinning aerial blade attack and fire off my submachine guns at the same time. Also the, 'gun play' is very nice. (Gun Play dubbed by new game Fear Effect's II.) That is if there are two different targets on either of her side, an animation of her putting a gun in the direction of each foe, automatically target locks. It’s based on the enemies’ distance, and location (environment) relevant to Agent BloodRayne. For an example on this, i thought there should have been an auto target while executing areial attacks. But this is not so, you shoot at random areas. But, at least you can shoot! By the way; jigle jiggle.

From the beginning to the end this is one of them titles that leads you from one CG scene to another. Yet one of the very few shortcomings to Blood Rayne is the fact that you can only save at the beginning/end of each level. So it leaves you feeling like you have to get to the end at all costs, or you will be left to redo everything you had done previously on the current, 'stage'. Nothing makes me more mad then putting all this time into making sure that i clean a level out thoroughly, only to die and have to restart. Even more devilish yet, when you go to the menu, selecting save game, it will be enabled. Once you have saved there will be a tiny font that says, 'the game will be saved at the start of the level'.

Graphics: (6.5)
While Blood Rayne came far from utilizing the true hardware power of the X-Box(Most likely the fact that it was multi platform. That is fit, for every next-gen. console) it did have nice textures, and objects that you could destroy. Literally everything you see could be meddled with in some fashion. Even the walls, they would retain your slash marks until you were to advance to the next level. Best of all was the jiggle factor. It was like the vampire ladies were under the moons gravitational influence. Talk about some nice tides! Every turn and crouch set the jiggle factor up to an off the scale level. But i can't say that this hindered game play in anyway at all. (Good job!) :)

But the character models were ''Soooo, PS-one''. Not only were they very grim and low grade, they seemed like shadows until you were standing right in front of them. Then you could make out a little bit of the colors that were weaves in their design. Naturally all gore. Another nifty perk was being able to slice off arms, heads, and every other part of the bad guy. All an all, the character's were made to fit the gothic, and dark atmosphere, not being able to see them detailed sure drowned out their attempts.

Sound : (6.0)
Even though the music, which i will explain in a moment is nothing grand. The voice covers, and random enemy sayings sure bailed out the music composers. The Germans have a bunch of lines of there own. Complete with the German accent. Even the simple zombies have multiple lines they say, and Agent BloodRayne will say different lines back. Naturally she says something different to the Nazis then she would to say the zombies, or to any other life form she encounters for that matter. The sound effects alone set the tone for are ever evil vampire lady to get dirty. Not only does she have some of the most arrogant saying, she also taunts the enemies while she kills them. I'd have to say overall, the vampress sounds best when she is in one of them ever-so-famous CG animations talking in a seductive manor with another vampire girl.

I know for a fact you won’t be seeing a soundtrack for sale, because the music was down right lame in most parts. If there was any music at all while going from bayou to Nazi base, it was right in the 'blah area'. But at the same time when you fought a boss the music left 'blah land' and came to 'sweet land'. The adrenaline rush music was a nice touch. Once that drum-roll, fight or die music came on you knew it was going down. That is, a most appropriate time to hack, slash, and shoot. Look damn 'fyne' while doing it.

Replay Value: (5.5)
Unless the insane jiggle effect is become your only outlet to this world, the replay value is non-existant. I do like to load certain areas up to show off certain attacks obtained, and even specific CG scenes where the jiggle effect is worst then a Jenna Jameson flick. But to go through the whole game once more with no rewards and absolutely no incentive? I think not.

I wouldn't have minded seeing this and X-Box Live title. Maybe a little bit more time was needed for this release. I really think Blood Rayne was rushed. But I’m sure the sequel will rock. So that it may support online play. But nothing in the way of multiple player support and replay is as dry as a grapefruit in the California sun to dry.

Final Coments
I really think the sequel will be great. But unless you just can't wait to get your hands on the game, you really might want to think of this one as a rental first.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/15/03, Updated 02/15/03