Reviewed: September 19, 2005
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Majesco

Developer
Terminal Reality

Released: August 2, 2005
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Mature

6
7
7
7
6.9

System Requirements

BloodRayne 2 wisely adopts the traditional gothic stylings that make vampire lore so cool, taking us well beyond the 1935 WWII setting of the original game. Set in current times or perhaps a near-future, Bloodrayne, being a dhampir (half human, half vampire), is still going strong in a more modern setting.

Born of a vampire and a human’s “unholy union”, BloodRayne declared war on her evil father Kagan, a Nazi collaborator. With his death, her siblings maintained Kagan’s legacy, keeping evil in the family business, which culminates in their greatest scheme of world domination; The Shroud, a massive shield made up of millions of gallons of blood harvested from the homeless.

The console version of BloodRayne 2 had some of the best and most intuitive controls of any action game to date. It took less than an hour to master the controls and you were killing with maximum grace and style. While the PC version offers support for a gamepad, the camera control sucks (that’s a vampire joke) with only vertical movement.

Using a keyboard and mouse restores full camera control and you are free to map the limited controls to any keys you wish, but something just doesn’t feel right when playing with a mouse and keyboard, and it certainly doesn’t feel right with the gamepad.

While not an RPG in any traditional sense, players do get to “upgrade” their character by finding different weapons like the Carpathian Dragons, which apparently focus vampiric energy into actual deadly projectiles. Unfortunately, these guns don’t seem to have much of an affect whatsoever against enemies, so you’ll most likely rely on your trusty blades and harpoon for a majority of the fighting.

Take a look at the in-game move list and you will see dozens of different combos and moves available to our sexy little Dhampir. But while the list is long, and sports exciting names like Rising Thorn and Sinistral Bloom, in the heat of combat they all sort of look the same after a while, especially when your main tactic against bosses becomes dodge-and-attack, dodge-and-attack, blah-blah-blah. This takes the wind out of the sails of the whole “experience system” that rewards players with bonuses for especially fancy moves and attacks.

Although where you really get some sense of satisfaction is in the finishing moves and fatalities that Rayne dishes out like a heavily armed, psychotic gymnast. And I mean fatalities. There’s so much dismemberment happening on a regular basis you start to crave it, which is as disturbing as it is satisfying. Especially when you harpoon an enemy, yank them towards you, and watch them get Benihana’d like they’ve tripped into a Cuisinart.

As if the hand-to-hand combat weren’t interesting enough, Rayne also obtains various dark gifts that give her even more of an edge against her enemies. There’s (deep breath) the Blood Fury mode that increases both offensive and defensive powers, a time affecting mode that slows everyone else down while you whip around them like a tweaker with a set of Ginsu knives, a Ghost Feed mode that lets you suck blood from a distance, and a revamped Aura Vision that reveals important hidden portals, even from other rooms and floors. While these modes could’ve been left out, they do add a nice visual flair that’s hard to ignore.

Character designs are excellent with some amazing animation that is fluid and lifelike. Even in death, the rag doll physics are eerily realistic. Special effects are in full use with rich lighting and shadows, reflections, volumetric fogging and plenty of particle effects. Shadows are particularly important since Rayne must avoid direct sunlight on some of the outdoor levels.

BloodRayne 2 looks pretty good, but even at its best it just looks like the Xbox version running at higher resolutions. Sure, a decent PC can crank this game out at 1600x1200, which will get you some crisp graphics, and the textures show some moderate improvement, but the game still looks like a port and there is nothing visually here that outweighs the control issues which were flawless on the console.

Sound effects kick ass even though most of the time you will hear the metallic whine of your harpoon followed immediately by the sickly wet crunch of an impaled target or the splatter noise of a dismembered body and the splash of a few gallons of blood as it paints the walls and floors.

Speech is phenomenal with great performance by all the leads and most of the supporting cast. There were a few bosses with some B-grade readings, but the banter between Rayne and her “handler” set the perfect tone for the game.

The difficulty is pretty easy for the most part with the only real challenges coming from the sub-bosses and end-level bosses. The game has a tendency to give away a lot of the solutions to the environmental puzzles through cutscenes, so you know you are supposed to toss bad guys into the garbage masher or drop a chunk of wall on them.

BloodRayne 2 could have been great if the gamepad support wasn’t so quirky, but the PC version is just too clunky to recommend unless this is your only alternative. Even so, there are better action games out there, and if you are just looking for a good vampire game then Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines should satiate your bloodlust.