Bloodrayne (GC)

Written by Dan Clarke on 10/24/2002 for GC  

When you receive press releases touting the amazing action of the lead character’s bouncing breasts…you know this game is going all out on sex appeal and action seems to be a close second. Majesco Games and Terminal Reality have put together a decent action game that just happens to have sex in it. Did we mention the scantily clad women? Read on…

So, you heard the word Blood and immediately thought vampire, right? Well you aren’t off here – you know this game is rated “M” from the first paragraph of the backstory: “That girl is a Dhampir; a product of her human mother’s rape by her vampire father.” Uhh, talk about a show just crying out for Oprah or Dr Phil, huh?

Anyway, Agent BloodRayne is this “Dhampir” that works as a ‘killing machine’ trying to rid the world of Nazis prior to World War 2 – 1932 to be exact. Rather interesting backstory, don’t you think?

Like most women, this game doesn’t play around – your option is to play the game or not. Once you start, you have a quick tutorial on how to knock down doors and suck blood (more on that later). At that point you’re good to go knee deep in some hack and slash action.

You’ll usually have a specific quest to complete in game across three different areas: Louisiana, Argentina and of course, Germany. Each environment has period specific weapons which is a nice touch. Basically you’re killing most everything here and retrieving various items. There is a guide on the compass telling you where the next objective is, however, there are usually a few obstacles and the map doesn’t show you ways around those obstacles – it’s up to you. It’s your standard action title – nothing to shake a stick at but nothing revolutionary.

There are some pretty neat features in the game, especially in BloodRayne’s abilities. In order to recharge your health, you’ll need to ‘feed’ ie – jump zombies literally and take a bite out of their neck and suck like you’ve never sucked before. You think I’m making this up, but I’m serious – the biting and sucking of these zombies necks sounds straight out of an X-Rated movie – I mean, uhh, Charlie tells me it’s a lot like that because you know I’m married and never watch those awful things.
Once you suck enough (come on, humor me, this is fun to write), BloodRayne can enter Blood Rage which gives her more power to kill and/or behead zombies if need be, which is always fun. BloodRayne also has “aura sense”, “extruded view” and “dilated perception” which some people may think is similar to bullet time from Max Payne. The way Majesco/Terminal Reality have implemented it is interesting – there’s no ‘time meter’ for it and it really seems like you’re slowing down time. It’s pretty neat.

Getting back to the gameplay, there are a few puzzles here and there (how do I get from point A to point B without losing strength in the poison swamp for example) but this is a blow up everything action game at the core, which isn’t a bad thing.

Graphics are fine—I think they could be better in a long range view – the close up animations are very good – including of course the anatomically correct women where just a little too much time seems to have been spent by the developers.

The background music sets the creepy stage but the F-bombs seem to be thrown into the game just to say “hey look we can swear in this game huh huh huh” and don’t seem to be actually releveant.

Like teenage sex (again, I have to defer to Charlie on this one, as I’m over 30), the game is over quick and gives you a cheap thrill. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, especially if that’s what you’re looking for. It seems odd that such an adult oriented game is on a kid friendly system, but kudos to Nintendo for allowing it on their system. It seems as if they’ve grown up as well. I think I would try this game before I bought it – it may have some limited appeal. It’s a quick and fun diversion from Animal Crossing, especially if you just want to slash some creatures.