The Haunted Hoard: BloodRayne: ReVamped (PS4)
When the action game BloodRayne was being advertised for its initial release on PS2, Xbox, and GameCube back in 2002, I remember plenty of ads playing up the sex appeal of its half vampire heroine Rayne. What was depicted as a rather edgy in-your-face experience though is perhaps a bit tamer than some players would expect based on the often raunchy ads. Rayne does carve a bloody path through Nazis and almost all female characters of note will have their chests jiggle when they appear on screen even if they’re standing still, but the game doesn’t seem to emphasize it as much as you’d think. In fact, between regular play and the few high quality full-motion video scenes, Rayne can seem a bit like a different person, her usual line delivery rather dry and expression plain but then in the FMV scenes she’ll be giving people the middle finger after killing them.
It would still be incorrect to say BloodRayne lacks moments that are meant to be titillating outside of those scenes, but perhaps the fact that BloodRayne: ReVamped only elected to give the game a minor graphical boost for a game that was nearly 20 years old makes the game’s idea of “blood and babes” seems quaint. BloodRayne: ReVamped is a way to play Rayne’s first adventure on newer consoles, the half vampire recruited into the Brimstone Society that aims to suppress supernatural happenings around the world. Kicking off first with an initiation mission of sorts in the swamps of Louisiana, the game eventually moves on from Rayne clearing out zombies and insectoid monsters to trying to foil Nazis in both Argentina and Germany as they try to tap into the power of various artifacts tied to a powerful demon known as Beliar. Rayne is initially interested in finding her vampire father although this plot doesn’t concern that motivation much, her goal mostly shifting to revenge against a Nazi named Jürgen Wulf.
While Argentina and Germany end up feeling rather similar since both of them take place in interior areas with similar enemies, one interesting bit of structure added to them is that Rayne is given a list of targets she’ll need to take out and there are times you can pick the order you take on targets in the area. There is, more often than not, still a pretty strong focus on heading forward into new areas rather than finding your own way, but making your way to different assassination targets feels like a cleaner way to guide your progress than just plunging forward to find Jürgen Wulf. Most of the targets in BloodRayne: ReVamped are only a slight upgrade to the usual soldiers and foes you face, but there are some boss fights that will strain your resources or require a bit more thought, a fortunate truth since otherwise combat in this hack-and-slash action game can often feel a bit too heavily tipped in your favor.
Rayne has two main methods for hurting whatever stands in her way. The first is her pair of wrist-mounted blades, and while you do slowly get more attacks added to your basic combo, for the most part you just hammer the attack button away when you want to kill something and you’ll eventually see their body parts fly off so long as Rayne isn’t executing one of her kick moves. After attacking enemies for a while you’ll even build up power for a Blood Rage mode which changes your moves and lets you attack more quickly, making it easy to wear down tough opponents if you have time and space to generate energy for it. Most opposition, be it regular soldiers, floating spinal cords, or other monstrous sorts can all be carved up, but you do at least need to move Rayne around a bit to ensure she isn’t hit back during your blade flurries and when enemies start getting guns or other special attacks, you will need to pay attention a bit more so you aren’t killed yourself. This is where your second attack type will come into play, as Rayne can pick up plenty of guns and hold quite a few in reserve to boot. Aiming really isn’t much of a concern, the weapons pointing towards the enemy you’re looking towards and fairly accurate when fired. You can find yourself chewing through all your ammo quickly if you rely on them too much though, but they are a good option for when the enemy has greater numbers or unique advantages like the jetpack troopers you likely won’t be able to hit with your blades. Guns end up in a funny spot where they can sometimes take a lot of ammunition to kill something but they are also incredibly effective at taking down durable targets in a hurry, basically feeling like a way to speed up a skirmish but with a pretty high resource cost unless you know there are more guns to grab nearby.
One of the more interesting elements of BloodRayne: ReVamped’s combat though is how Rayne heals. Being half vampire, she needs blood to replenish her health, and while certain monsters aren’t safe to drink, you do run into a lot of humans and zombies you can sink your teeth into. Most standard foes can instantly be bitten into with a press of the square button provided you’re close enough, and if you aren’t you can hold square to launch a hook on a rope to pull them in close and feed on them then. Rayne is vulnerable while drinking blood but can even use her victim as a shield, but picking the right moment to heal up does strengthen some battles as the game can afford to hurt you more while you need to make sure you find the safe moments to bite a foe or two.
BloodRayne: ReVamped is accommodating in a few other ways than healing often technically being on hand. When you pass between areas, BloodRayne: ReVamped will ask you if you wish to save. There are definitely some larger spaces to explore like a castle exterior or a certain section fighting through a science lab, but you also don’t necessarily need to stop and fight everything to make progress. If you die you will have to restart from your last save, but with as many area transitions as there are, you won’t often be set back much. This does make one of the most unfortunate things about BloodRayne: ReVamped a bit more bearable: game crashes. Four times over the course of this game that takes around 7 hours to beat I had the game completely freeze up. It seems they were all either during a cutscene or when Rayne was drinking someone’s blood, but they don’t seem preventable and other people online report even greater amounts of crashes. If the save system wasn’t so kind this could have really dragged down the experience, but it wasn’t too hard to reset and continue on. Part of this likely also comes from the game’s different vision modes for Rayne. At any time you can activate a mode that will highlight where you should be heading in blue and conveniently show how close enemies are to death, but since it blurs out some nearby details it’s not something you’ll spend all your time in. Something that is perhaps a bit too helpful though is the mode where time will slow down, this seeming to have no limit so you can make any fight easier and even dodge bullets so long as you can tolerate the snail’s pace it sets things to.
Even though the fights can often feel a little too weighed in your favor thanks to your wide range of skills and the limited intelligence of enemies, BloodRayne: ReVamped still puts up a fight at times and area designs can funnel you into danger or give you room to poke around to find the way forward. It definitely looks and feels like a game from 2002 despite the small touch-ups, but that also means in some areas it can be a little more interesting since it’s not using too many tricks to guide your navigation. You can pull off a mid-air forward jump to sometimes cross areas in your own way or bypass an expected route, and while you’ll have a general direction on where to go if you utilize your helpful enhanced vision, you still sometimes need to find the winding path there or figure out the actual action expected of you when you do arrive. The simplistic combat never evolves into something truly compelling, but it’s still a suitable bit of action to engage in as it carries you through the brisk uncomplicated story.
THE VERDICT: BloodRayne: ReVamped doesn’t change too much about the original game, but looking like a mid-budget PS2 game feels like it matches the specific kind of mild appeal it pulls off well. You’re carving and blasting through soldiers and monsters without too much trouble but do need to account for areas where things are more crowded or you might not be able to drink some blood without getting filled with lead. A bit of exploration and moments where the game allows you to figure things out on your own takes some pressure off the combat’s mechanical stagnation, and while the game freezes nearly push it over the edge into a lower rating, BloodRayne: ReVamped is kind enough to offer you many chances to save so you can still press forward without much interruption.
And so, I give BloodRayne: ReVamped for PlayStation 4…
An OKAY rating. While the battle system could have used more depth, it often felt like the only time the game actually was letting me down was when it would freeze. If it had done so a few more times, perhaps this game would be marked as Bad, but popping back in wasn’t often too much of an interruption to the game’s flow, especially once you start to realize you can pass by a fair deal of foes and sprint back to where you were once you know the lay of the land. BloodRayne: ReVamped holds off the sting of repetitive play with its moments where you are asked to look around an area more to find your targets and little shake-ups here or there like a boss fight with a puzzle element can help things feel a bit more diverse. Some bosses though can easily be killed without even understanding what gimmick was at play, especially if you abuse Blood Rage or things like your slow motion vision, but even with the tools given to you to make battles easy, BloodRayne: ReVamped isn’t without ways to crank up the heat. You can’t underestimate the opposition since a soldier might have a gun that will wreck you if you play things too casually, and grenade throwing troops can definitely be a mean surprise. A few attempts at shaking things up like piloting a mech feel too rough to really get into, but some stronger enemy diversity would probably be the route to asking more out of you in combat. Necessitating some strategic play more often could break the player away from just mindless blade swinging and gun firing at parts, but one nice thing about the game’s short length is you won’t often linger on a specific situation long, meaning things never settle down enough to become dull.
BloodRayne: ReVamped should have greater quality control and maybe go a bit deeper in how it rejuvenates this simplistic action game, but it is nice to have a game’s original feel preserved even if it is sometimes corny with Rayne’s attempts at one-liners. It definitely wasn’t trying to be quaint in its time, but looking at something with a future perspective can make its edges seem less bold as standards shift. As for standards on what constitutes a good game though, BloodRayne: ReVamped still feels like it misses those marks but it’s still acceptable enough in most areas that it can be a decent low commitment bit of mindless monster-slashing fun.