BloodRayne (2002): Half-Human. Half-Vampire. Badass Heroine

After seeing and liking the movie I thought BloodRayne would be an excellent choice for my next horror adventure game to play. Unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations. The character you play is a vampire/human but that's as far as the horror part of it goes. The movie takes place in what seemed like medieval times whereas the game takes place during the 1940s in Louisiana, Germany, and Argentina. There you are a vampire turned secret agent hunting down Nazi Generals to assassinate. There's not a whole lot to the story anyways but I just couldn't get past the lack of horror in the game. It's just your basic shoot'em up game.

The gameplay and fighting style are really repetitive. They give the character a cool blade attached to each arm and all you can do with them is press one button over and over cycling through the same three hits unless it's during a blood rage and then they add a few more. However like I said earlier, the game is very repetitive. The controls are pretty simple to master. One button for hand-to-hand and one button for shooting. With limited fighting abilities I had to redo some of the Germany stages several times leading up to the final stage which got to be really frustrating. Although you can't use her Blades that much the one thing you do get to use is plenty of guns. You get to use everything from handguns to machine guns and rocket launchers. Targets are auto locked on so it's pretty easy to hit what ever is in front of you. If not for that I probably never would have been able to finish the game.

The best part of the game is the graphics. Which isn't saying a whole lot because the graphics are not over-the-top spectacular but you do get see a lot of limbs getting chopped off and if I was Mario or Luigi I would definitely think Rayne was hot.

All that being said Blood Rayne had a lot of potential and just didn't manage to live up to it. I think a fighting style similar to Blade 2 would've been more suited and more fun for the game player. That being said Blood Rayne is only a slightly above average video game in my opinion. Upon finishing the game it is left open ended for a sequel and I probably would be willing to try it but if it hadn't been improved on I doubt I would finish it.