BloodRayne Review

The best way of describing it is if Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Jedi Outcast and Max Payne ever had a baby, you'd get this game. It's about as early 00s of an action game as early 00s action games can get. I think what I find so fascinating about it is that despite it having many, many rough edges is that I like how it seemlessly combines platforming, gunplay and melee combat. It's never once thing in isolation, all of it is happening at once. The levels involving lots of jumping and have lot of verticality to them much like action games in the late 90s and early 00s. I was getting Jedi Outcast vibes with the amount of jumping I was doing with my super jump.

Might as well describe more of my experience with this game. I'll start with the negatives melee combat while works as a good support to the jumping and shooting doesn't have great feedback, while I can forgive the lack of a lock on mechanic since the seemlessness would be gone of it were there, I can't deny that I really wished my hits felt like they connected whenever I pressed the melee attack button, due to this it feels like I am failing around like a madman hoping that I actually hit something, the health bars for the boss fights come in handy because of this since it would be hard to tell if I am doing damage if they weren't there, same can be said for normal enemies, but enemies getting disembered is pretty solid feedback even though moment to melee combat feels like I am failing around like a crazy person. While I did compare this game to Jedi Outcast, the melee combat in that game this is not. Another issue I have is that while I like the shooting and feedback for it is solid when hitting enemies, I can't help but feel like they could feel more powerful in large part is due to how quickly ammo can run out for all your guns. As a result, I kept using Rayne's blood sucking grab move a lot, get the ammo and occasionally fire weapons. The bullet time you have access to at all times if also pretty useless since all it does is slow down time and make moment to moment combat a lot slower unlike Blood Rage where it goes into slo mo and your attacks hit harder. Sometimes the levels can occasionally be confusing and while the game telling you were to go does help 95% of the time, it can occasionally lead to confusion like how one door was locked but I dive kicked into it and it opened. The final boss is also really bad, it heavily requires you to use firearms in a game where firearms where used as a support to the melee combat and you have to hope the auto aim hits him because if you miss any shots, you will eventually play a game of looking for guns while the boss gets more powerful and eventually getting powerful enough to kill you easily. The only good thing I can say is that mid boss checkpoint after killing Wulf does help mitigate frustration.

The final negative is that and while I don't make a big deal about it, the story is not very good, Rayne is a decent protagonist in that sexy bad girl kind of way, everything surronding her story is a mess. The game kind of has a loose plot thread involving an ancient artifact, nazis and the occult but most of the game is basically killing nazi commanders and that's about it, not a lot really happens despite the over the top and wacky premise the game has. Most of the villains get killed off the moment you meet them, and the ones that survive more than once encounter eventually die very quickly too like Hedrox and Wulf. Myne had 2 deaths that were basically red herrings, and the ending was also terrible and anti climatic.

Now, the good, I already described it before but this game has that charm of where platforming, gunplay and melee combat combine together for a seemless if rather rough experience. You will attack people with your blades, shooting your guns on occasion, while also blood sucking your enemies and using them as human shields, as a result while the combat can occasionally get frustrating, the blood sucking ability already prevents it from leading into frustrating. The level design is also pretty open and big where you will be doing lots of high jumps while fighting enemies along the way. It's never, "here's a shooting bit, then a platforming bit, then here is a melee combat bit" where everything feels sectioned off, in this game everything works as one. You will be making high jumps, then fight enemies with your blades, then shooting them if you have the ammo, the grabbing them with your vampirism while also make super high jumps while also doing the Goldenye style objective system of finding explosives, or needing items to progress much like late 90s and early 00s action games. You will also be killing nazi commanders and killing a variety of occult and nazi soldiers much like the before mentioned Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The enemy line up while not overly complex is varied enough to keep the moment to moment combat interesting.

Overall, good game but expect rough spots.