Bloodrayne 2 review

That vampiric vixen Bloodrayne is back, after a couple of years absence she is gracing our screens once again But things have changed this time round, it looks like the guys over at developer have been spending more time with the prince of Persia than their own undead progeny. This wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if THQ had managed to get the game on shelves in Europe at the same time as they did in the US.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with Bloodrayne 2 as a game, and it does everything a sequel should, but the main problem is games have come a long way since the US release of Bloodrayne 2. With the current generation of consoles coming to an end developers have been squeezing more and more out of the hardware, and with the European release being delayed so long Bloodrayne 2 just doesn‘t make the same impact in today’s competitive.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy…

The game does do all the right things a sequel should, new gameplay mechanics, all new environments and storyline, and a slight graphical update. The games new gameplay mechanics work pretty well, and well they should, a good portion of them being borrowed from a certain Persian prince. Agent Rayne is now a lot more acrobatic than in her prequel doing her fair share of wall jumping and pole climbing and swinging. Another way of getting around she has borrowed is the ability grind on rails, looks the developer has been playing some Tony Hawks too, fortunately though there’s no need to worry about balancing here.

Another ability she seems to have borrowed is the manipulation of time, no rewinding time here unfortunately, but you do have the ability to slow down and freeze time giving you an important edge when it comes to the games boss battles. Other abilities you have returning from the original game are ‘Aura vision’ and ‘Blood Rage’. As before your ‘Aura Vision’ is there to point you in the right direction when things get a little confusing, and the ‘Blood Rage’ gives you extra strength and agility in combat. ‘Blood Rage’ is also upgradeable as you progress through the game, as are your time manipulation powers, which helps no end as the game does get extremely tough as you progress.

When it comes to combat, apart from your standard blades and long legs to kick out with you also get guns, which are fully upgradeable, and what is possibly the games best addition, the harpoon. Using the games lock-on function you can then use the harpoon to spear both bad guys and pieces of scenery and then fling them around the place, once in motion objects can be used as weapons, and bad guys can either be just disarmed or if you’re close enough to a particularly spiky bit of scenery you can impale them.

This adds a bit to the variety of the games combat, but is also an important gameplay mechanic. At times you come to an impasse in the action and the only way to progress is to destroy a large part of the scenery, be it a garbage truck, newspaper press or crashed helicopter and the only way to do it is to throw the bad guys into the machinery. This is about as close as you get to puzzles here, this isn’t an adventure game, just your standard third person platformer/beat‘em up, so it’s not too taxing on the old grey matter.

It’s Been a Long Time…

It’s not just been a long time for us waiting for the games release, but it’s also been a long time for Rayne in the game too. It’s been 70 years in Rayne’s world from the originals pre World War 2 settings bringing us up to this games setting of today (or thereabouts). In that time Rayne has been feeling bitter that she never got to extract her vengeance on her father and arch enemy Lord Kagan, but her latest mission for Brimstone has brought her into contact with some more of her fathers offspring..

This has renewed her thirst for vengeance, she may have been cheated of the main object of her blood lust, but she now has the chance to take it out on some of his family and underlings. This pursuit of vengeance leads her into a major plot by the remains of Kagan’s organization to allow vampires to walk in daylight, and after her initial attempt to put a stop to it, the realization that Kagan’s reported demise was greatly exaggerated. This gives her the drive to continue the fight, against the wishes of her partner’s desire for self preservation and put an end to her father once and for all.

… But Still Looking Good

Considering the games 18 month delay and the fact that it’s a multi platform release Bloodrayne 2 doesn’t do too bad a job on the visual front. Character models are nicely done and well detailed, at least for the main characters; this means Rayne looks better than she’s ever looked. The minions though are less impressive, being somewhat simplistic, and seeing as they make up the major part of your cannon fodder detract a little from the games overall visual appeal. Scenery is reasonably detailed, but nicely atmospheric with some good lighting effects.

The storyline takes you through a series of quite varied locales too, so there’s plenty of variation in the backgrounds if not the gameplay. But where the game really shines visually is its FMV sequences, not the short ones you get using the games graphic engine, but the ones you get at major points in the story. They are a joy to behold, but unfortunately very few and far between. All in all the best way to describe Bloodrayne 2 visually would be adequate, which is about the same as on the audio side. You get the odd good tune, and the voice acting is pretty reasonable but these are let down by some pretty average sound effects. So, there we have it, nothing that’s going to wow your senses, but certainly not painful to them either.

Something to Get Your Teeth Into

While the game doesn’t do anything particularly secularly everything meshes together quite nicely to make a reasonable game. At around ten to twelve hours playtime it’s not the longest game around, but not too short either, but what will keep you coming back is the ever increasing difficulty. Things start off nice and easy, but it’s not too long before you’re presented with a real challenge and you have to make full use of all Rayne’s special powers and abilities if you want to get anywhere.

Even with all these powers at your disposal it will be too tough for some people, but for the less gifted amongst us the game provides an extensive selection of cheat modes, from basic things like unlimited rage or ammunition, to the all conquering ‘god’ mode. These will be a godsend for some people as the difficulty levels do border on the insane at points, which may mean unless you’re a dedicated gamer with a particular interest in the franchise you may lose interest quickly. At the end of the day, what we have here is an above average game which will present a decent challenge to even the most seasoned gamer. If you liked the original, or love games like Prince of Persia or Ninja Gaiden then it is definitely worth a look at.