Techtite Game Reviews ---

Bloodrayne

Click picture to order this game (PC/windows version)

Bloodrayne may borrow its game formulae from many sources, yet it chose its sources well. There's a "good vampire" in the title role, a la the popular TV series, Angel. Add a slice of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, with Nazi opponents to defeat. Add a super-charged Tomb Raider style interface, where you are still jumping a lot, and yet Rayne can jump really far, making these jumping puzzles actually cool. Best of all; add "bullet time," a la Max Payne, without a time limit. Put this all together and you may not have an original game, yet it's still pretty fun.

The story here is far better summarized in the user manual than the game, so if you're the sort who never picks up the manual, I suggest reading at least the prologue, so you know the back story here. This is the story of Rayne; daughter of a mortal mother, and a father who was a vampire. This has given her an intriguing hybrid of both human and vampire assets; she has super strength, yet she's invulnerable to any holy artifact. These unique traits have caught the eye of a secret society, whose job is to protect the world from the evil forces that regular humankind is too blind to see around them. Rayne agrees to help...and so the story begins.

You may be asking: what type of enemy would be put up against a female vampire, without a gamer feeling sort of, well, "evil," to be feeding on human blood to survive? The answer is sheer brilliance in game design:

World War 2 Nazis are your enemy, in a game set sometime after 1938. While your enemies are monsters on some occasions, human opponents are all Nazi's, so when you must feed on blood to regain health, it is no big loss of human life, is it...? Much like Wolfenstein, place a Nazi uniform on a human enemy, and suddenly all sympathy for his fate begins to wane. This is a good thing, because Rayne cannot heal her wounds with a mere health pack; she needs to feed on human blood to survive. With an enemy's prefix like "Nazi" I doubt anyone will care that such an attack slowly kills the jerks.

It's not like Rayne is invulnerable, however. Water, for example, will slowly kill if you stand in it for too long. I never heard of standing water killing a vampire, though I guess this is the game designers' way of saying "we couldn't find a way for Rayne to swim." You can also be killed by bullets, which makes more sense because Rayne is still half-human. However, as I said already, Rayne is not completely human because she must feed on blood, to regain her strength. So each level has the strategic challenge: surviving an attack of multiple enemies, yet keeping the last one alive to "recharge" by, well...by doing what vampires do. However, the humans you feed on are all Nazis, so...

The challenge is: all Nazis within eyeshot attack Rayne at once! Fortunately she has a whole arsenal to assist her. Her default weapons are a pair of wrist blades, which she gradually learns to use better and better, allowing for added acrobatics later in the game (and less redundancy in the hand-to-hand fights!). In addition, she can use any weapon dropped by her attackers; an arsenal so large, she must eventually drop weapons to carry new ones (she can carry 8 different weapons at once). Last though not least is a "blood rage" that activates when Rayne has engaged in hand-to-hand combat for extended periods. When activated, this is like a "super-charge" of sorts, which makes her attacks far nastier (and in the game, far easier). If it wasn't for a tough difficulty curve (more on that later), these Nazis wouldn't stand a chance...

The best trait of this game is how all of Rayne's powers (except "blood rage") are unlimited, without a single "stamina meter" to slow you down. Press 2 (when she learns this skill) and you can enter super-sight mode, zooming in on any target...even if your weapon has no real scope! Press 3 and you enter a sort of "vampire vision," where all enemies glow red, all key areas (places you need to go) are brightly lit, and even weak spots in the walls are apparent. Press 4 and you enter the game's "bullet time" mode, where all the action is slowed down as bullets slowly whiz by. Add to this a chain-whip skill, that can grab enemies to feed on, even when far away (even if they're flying in mid air!). Mix all this into the game, and you have a truly nice array of super-powers, all unlimited!

Now, it must be said that this PC game came out the prior year, for multiple game systems. It must also be said that most of these game systems' game rags weren't too kind in their ratings of it. However, in this game's PC version, the game designers realized that the best part of this game are its visuals --bullet time, "blood rage", etc.-- and that's where a PC translation shines. People with more powerful graphics cards can enjoy the game with far higher resolutions than video gamers ever could, and with as many (or as few) graphic bells and whistles turned on as you'd like. From reflections in the water to fog and realistic lighting; it's all here and it's such visual eye candy that makes this game all the more enjoyable, to this PC gamer. If the video gamers didn't like it, well...

Perhaps they just weren't too impressed with the levels. While one or two are in well-decorated German castles, the majority are in drab caves or gray building hallways. What's more; levels are built a la the "Tomb Raider School of Level Design," in that they are actually quite linear in nature, and yet they are so large, it is easy to get lost. Yes, your super-sight can spot where to go next in a mission, and yet this won't tell you how to get there. Sometimes you must bend over backwards to get to a location that, as far as your "super sight" can see, is right behind the adjacent wall. Add to this the typical video-game-port flaw of "console-itis"; in order to appease low-space memory cards on some game systems, this game was made so that your progress is only saved after a whole game level (you die; you start at the beginning of that level). I can see how video gamers got frustrated with this game...and some PC gamers, I'd imagine.

The difficulty arc is another concern. The game starts off easy enough though it presumes you have "mastered" Rayne's various acrobatic skills too soon in the game, making fights very hard, very soon. You must have a good understanding of Rayne's jumping and dodging and strafing and fight styles, to survive later fights, of as many as 10 enemies at once. Please note: a game like this doesn't just offer "unlimited" bullet time as a lark; use slow-motion bullet time unsparingly, and often! You must also learn Rayne's other vampire skills, fast. Or, you can just use a cheat code (see sidebar). Take your pick. The point is; this is a difficult game. Even more than a similar vampire game, Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption. That was a really tough game. This is even tougher.

Regardless, there is still a lot to like about this game. The unlimited powers of Rayne, for example (unlimited "bullet time," in particular). There's also how cool the jumping puzzles are. Seriously! Rayne is a vampire who can jump whole stories in a single bound, so feel free to try and jump wherever you can. Some levels are also very inspired; I liked the mission involving a sort of Robotech-like tank Rayne could control, plus another level, where an enemy clones itself with every kill, forcing you to find another way to defeat it. That was one imaginative "boss."

Is this enough, to make this a good game...? That's up to you. Fans of Angel and/or Tomb Raider should give this female vampire a try. Likewise for anyone with a high-end PC. I used a powerful (as of 2003, anyway!) Geforce Nvidia FX 5900 Ultra video chipset in my PC for this review, making all the graphics very high-tech, and very smooth...and for this game, very cool! Anyone with a similar system, and a love for Tomb Raider and Angel, should give this game a look. The ending even implies that Rayne may return someday. If they add "quicksave," and improve the difficulty arc, I'm all for it.

	Final Rating : Small Crater. The typical "Halloween season" release, which this year turns out to be pretty good. However, much like all horror yarns, the visuals are half the fun.
For more on this site's ratings system, click here.

Click picture to order this game (PC/windows version)

All text, Title graphics, and pix not of reviewed product, are created by Techtite, copyright 1999-2003; all rights reserved. Screen captures of program reviewed are discrete thumbnails, used only for the purpose of review, and by no means represent any affiliation with Techtite and the distributors of that product. For further "legalese" & disclaimers, click here...

Techtite's PC Game Reviews!

Bloodrayne

A Techtite Review