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Women in spandex. Lots of violence. Nazis. Combine these and you get the basic concept behind Bloodrayne. Set during World War 2, you play Bloodrayne, a half-human, half-vampire female recruited by a dark society to seek out and destroy a group of Nazis trying to resurrect the mother of all demons. Your weapons include any guns you can find and 2 retractable blades from your forearms. Needless to say, this game is not short of blood and guts.
Sound/Music
There is no gamer around that would disagree that hearing flesh or a limb being sliced off a body doesn’t sound great when it’s done right. It’s the one sound that you better get used to during Bloodrayne. About a third of the game consists of you using your blades, which even has the sound of snapping back into place. Footsteps also play a large part in the gameplay. The music doesn’t really interest much, and only comes on before you enter battle and fades out when you’re done. The music itself consists of the usual instrumental orchestra-type chorus and it’s basically the same one each time it plays. The voices are pretty robust, with Bloodrayne herself sounding too much like some chick from one of those 1-900 numbers.
Graphics
Red. Blood red. That is the one description that best suits the visual effects for Bloodrayne. Blood had to have been the main theme in mind when this game was designed. Whether you shoot someone, bite them, or slice them to pieces, the entire area is covered with blood afterwards. The maps themselves are all made with a “Dracula movie” style, and of course, all missions take place at night, indoors, or underground. One of the sweetest parts is when you go Matrix-style the screen gains a red tint and everything blurs, complete with bullet tracers. Also, you have the option of playing in a heat-vision type mode, but I found this to be at best, useless. When you think of slicing limbs, you can literally slice all limbs. From feet and hands to just digging your blades in and taking the whole body apart, there really is no limit to the amount of body parts that can be found after a fight.
Gameplay
Bloodrayne can be labeled as a perfect console port to the PC. No drastic changes, no special features, just third-person bloody carnage with some hot chick in tight leather at the center of it all. All I can say is this game gets old fast after the first hour or two. Running around, killing off Nazi leaders on your target list and everyone else who gets in your way; it just seems like no effort was put into this game. There are no puzzles to do, nothing that keeps you interested and to finish the game will take you less than a days worth of trying. Bloodrayne is aimed for the target audience of those who drool over Lara Croft but hate to think while making her bounce. Of course the hand-to-hand combat does add some nice play value after you’re tired of shooting every gun you can think of from that era. After completing each area, namely beat the next boss; you gain one more fighting move to use, for both regular and blood rage fighting modes. After 5 'enhancements’ that’s all she got. To make up for the lack of fighting combos, you get to use every gun you can find. Nazis drop them all over the place and you start pulling a “Neo” and shoot until they are empty and grab new ones.
Overall
Bloodrayne had the right idea but wasn’t executed to the fullest extent of making a worthwhile game. This is the kind of game you toss the kids as a babysitter for the night and go for dinner. The replay value is literally non-existent and not worth anyone’s money. If you utterly need to see some chick in tight leather killing Nazis, rent it for your Xbox or your friends Xbox next time you visit them.
