Rayne in 4K
When I reviewed the side-scroller BloodRayne Betrayal: Fresh Bites; it made me crave a 4K remaster or even a new entry into the BloodRayne series. And lo’ and behold sometimes you CAN get what you want, because Ziggurat Interactive has blessed us with BloodRayne Revamped 1 and 2! If you don’t know Rayne is a dhampir who hunts down the monsters in the night. Think a sexier version of Marvel’s bad ass vampire hunter, Blade. After seemingly vanquishing her father Kagan in the first BloodRayne, the denizens of the night had been quiet for 60 years. But Kagan’s other vampire children have banded together and formed a Cult dedicated to their father who as it turns out has just been laying low these past 60 years. Once Rayne gets wind of her father surviving an explosion that she thought had killed him, she is spurned to pick up her blades and hunt him down to ensure he is defeated once and for all.
BloodRayne 2 is definitely a product of its time, and this is both a good thing and a bad thing. The story really has no depth to speak of and is really only in place to guide the action. Which was very common back in the PS2/Xbox days when it came to action-adventure type games. And while BloodRayne 2 has some fantastic action, it didn’t quite stick the landing of a fantastic story and great combat unlike Devil May Cry.
MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $19.99
BloodRayne 2: Revamped is a game from the 2000’s full of the all of the things that were popular then like skin-tight leather, gothic fetishism, short skirts and lots of skin. Rayne’s various outfits are all made to accentuate her sex appeal and none of them are really made for combat. But that’s alright, not everything has to be historically accurate, the goal with Rayne seemed to be to create a bad ass woman fighter who could rival Dante from DMC. I’d like to think that she paved the way for Bayonetta, Aloy, and even the android 2B among others that we have seen over the years.
Graphically speaking, the team has done a great job adding some new visual effects as well as improve the framerate and resolution to 4K. Things like reflections on shiny surfaces and real time lighting help to add a depth to Rayne’s adventure that simply wasn’t possible in the 2000’s And while I applaud the approach taken by the developers at Big Boat Interactive to improve the visuals to BloodRayne 2 without making them look like the hit or miss look of the Grand Theft Auto: Trilogy Remaster; oh how I wish and wish that they had taken the time to improve the extremely clunky controls.
While Rayne moves quite fluidly through the world, combat is a bit of a mess. Many of her advanced abilities like ‘Dilated Perception’ which will slow things down in the world while Rayne moves at normal speed just feel very cumbersome trying to activate in the middle of a fight. A lot of this is just due to legacy issues with the controls, and the feel of combat; that is to say it is pretty clunky. Rayne’s main weapons are her arm blades and kicks and every attack just doesn’t feel very visceral. This is more noticeable because players have the ability to slice limbs off of enemies, and when it happens the corresponding effects just fall flat. It just never felt like I was doing that kind of damage, even when stringing together some of the more expansive combos.
BloodRayne 2: Revamped is a guilty pleasure game, it’s a lot of fun to toss enemies into death traps around the levels with her chain, or even go full on blender mode and dice up everything that moves. While I think that Big Boat Interactive did a fantastic job of making the game prettier, alas they did nothing for the controls which is a crying shame. While I am beyond excited that a new generation can finally experience Rayne’s journey on the new systems; I remain extremely hopeful that this means we will see a proper sequel made from the ground up sooner rather than later.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
