2.5/5 ★ – bokonon764's review of BloodRayne.

I’ve known this game existed for a long time, and I think I’ve fallen asleep to the film adaptation when it plays on like Syfy or AMC or whatever, but I’ve felt drawn to play it. For whatever reason, I bought all three Bloodrayne games about a year ago (maybe they were free?) and have just now gotten around to it. The first time I played it, I lasted like 10 minutes; I thought it was fucking terrible. I did eventually give it another shot, and I liked it…sort of. It’s a very dated action, hack and slash game, with some interesting design choices, and a unique style of gameplay that certainly scratched and itch. Bloodrayne is about a dhampir (human-vampire hybrid) called Rayne. She’s your typical femme fatale; crimson hair, skintight red and black leather suit with ample cleavage, sultry voice, sarcastic sense of humor….a relatively strong example of the hot vampire/occult type character. Laura Bailey, who went on to be a super famous games voice actor, really crushes the role. She drinks blood, kills Nazis, does rad spin kicks, she’s a pretty cool, I guess. There’s some very hilarious jiggle physics goin, she’s says stuff like “thanks for the ride, fucko”, flips people off after killing them…certainly a product of the earth 00’s. The control scheme is weird as fuck, or very foreign to me, at the very least. The way they explain said control scheme is confusing; the whole beginning of the game is just weird. They actually let you choose between three unique control schemes, and I’m not sure which one I ended going with, but once I got the hang of it, it ended up feelin pretty great. I played on hard mode, it wasn’t much of a challenge until what I think was the halfway point. I’d say once they start introducing Act 2’s supernatural enemies, the game becomes much more frustrating. I had a lot of deaths that left me screaming “WHAT!??!”, but I have anger problems, y’all will be fine. Rayne feels way overpowered in some respects: a very high jump, a sort of air dash, slowing time indefinitely, regaining health from any enemy by “feeding”…that being said, the way all of the these abilities are put to use throughout combat was really cool. I played through entire enemy encounters with the time slowed down, while dodging bullets and positioning myself for melee attacks; this doesn’t seem required for playing the game, but it was a strategy I found effective. There was a general progression of events that kept me moving through the game. On the other hand, the narrative itself is nothing to write home about. I’m content enough to know there’s a vampire lady killing occult nazis. It’s all very Indiana Jones. I was a fan of it. One other positive here, it’s a pretty simple game. It’s short, linear, not a lot of secrets, you just kind of mash melee and shoot buttons. These may sound like negatives, but it was a good pallet cleanser after playing games that asked so much more of me. Bloodrayne is a cool idea trapped inside a dated mess. If you play older games and can put up with some wonkiness, it’s a fun and quick playthrough, albeit frustrating. This game seems rife for some kind of reboot. I think a current gen version of Bloodrayne would sell well. Giving the weird combat a modern update sounds awesome, and I know I wouldn’t be alone in wanting to play another vampire vs. Nazis game.