BloodRayne 2

Vampiric Super Powers

Rayne has a few other tricks up her sleeve to help you through the game. Below your health bar is a rage meter that fills up when you kill enemies in particularly nasty ways such as tossing them into traps with the chain or performing fatalities. The rage meter governs your special powers. These powers include a special aura vision that allows you to see enemies in other rooms as well as other things that only vampires can see. There is also a time shifting ability that slows the enemies down but allows Rayne to continue on at full speed for some extreme slicing and dicing. You also have blood rage and blood fury abilities that make Rayne considerably stronger and gives you much stronger defense. Basically, if you can keep your rage meter filled by being particularly vicious, you can go through long sections of levels in the powered up blood rage and fury modes and you are pretty much unstoppable. This makes the game incredibly easy.

Prince of Persia + Tight Leather = Rayne

The BloodRayne 2 team also borrowed a few ideas from Prince of Persia and added in a lot of jumping and acrobatic puzzles. Just like in PoP, there are horizontal bars and vertial poles you can swing around on and jump from one to the next. In every level in the game there are a few sections where you have to reach some point high off the ground and the only way to get there is to flip around on a series of amazingly conveniently placed bars and poles. While you are going through these acrobatic puzzles, you can actually stop and shoot at enemies if they are harassing you, which is pretty cool. Rayne can also tightrope walk across powerlines and cables in order to reach different areas and she will slide on railings if the are going downhill. Think grinding a rail in THPS. While Rayne is sliding down a rail, you can use your blades to hit nearby enemies or you can simply shoot them with the Dragons. These jumping puzzles are meant to break up the repetitive action sequences, and they do a pretty good job. They have some of their own little annoyances, but it expands on the rest of the gameplay rather than being the only attraction like it was in Prince of Persia.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in BloodRayne 2 are fantastic and the game looks really great. The character models are very detailed and awesome looking. Don’t be fooled by the manly looking box art or the Playboy feature, Rayne looks pretty darn cute in the game. Especially in the school girl outfit you can unlock. The animation is also nicely done and makes the great looking characters look even better. The environments you explore have a suitably gothic feel to them and are filled with tons of destructible objects you can play around with.

The sound is also very well done. The music is nice and dark and fits the game perfectly. The slices, stabs, and shots in combat also sound really good. There is a ton of dialogue in BloodRayne 2 and most of the voice work sounds good. None of the main characters stand out as being bad, anyway. Rayne’s voice in particular sounds really good and it works just perfectly with all of the little quips and catchphrases Rayne says during combat.

Bottom Line

BloodRayne 2 is a fun action game that will take you about 10 hours to play through, but don’t expect anything new or innovative. The combat is fun and varied, but the shock value of all of the blood and gore wears off pretty quick and there isn’t quite enough depth in the gameplay underneath to keep the game from feeling repetitive. I think that the length of the game is just about perfect because it wraps up at about the same time you are getting tired of watching the same fatalities and combos over and over again, so it all works out in the end. If you are a fan of B-rate horror movies, you’ll have a lot to like in BloodRayne 2 because pretty much all of the same things are featured. If you liked the original BloodRayne, you’ll definitely like BloodRayne 2. And if you are just looking for a good action game, then BloodRayne 2 has a lot to offer you as well. I can’t recommend it for a purchase, but it would make a good rental because this is a game that deserves to be played through even if it isn’t quite solid enough to buy.