BloodRayne 2 Member Review for the Xbox

The Good: Rayne is hot!, gore galore, lots of powers, fun death traps, decent story, cool cheats

The Bad: Button mashing, unbalanced difficulty, weak acrobatics, no skill when fighting bosses, lots of slow down throughout

I remember when the first BloodRayne came out I stared at the ad and drooled. I never knew vampires could be so sexy and right there she became on of my top 5 favorite female video game heroines ever made. Of course being younger I wasn't allowed to play such games, so in the end I never got the chance to play the first BloodRayne. When BloodRayne 2 came out I HAD to play it so I rented it for my PS2 and it was great...not amazing, but pretty solid, but now...well time ages things.

BloodRayne 2 has you playing as the half-human half-vampire Dampir Rayne who is trying to kill her father Kagan (who survived the first game) and kill all his children and demon spawns. Through this escapade Rayne runs into his new minions Kestrel, and Ferril, and Ephemera (who hate each other). While they are almost as sexy as Rayne their attitudes make up for it. BloodRayne 2 has pretty decent voice acting and Rayne's attitude is just something you have to love.

BR2 is very gruesome with lots of dismemberment, and gory death traps. There are two types of enemies in the game and they are unarmed weapons (that you can freely feed off of to get health) and armed enemies with melee weapons that will push you down if you try to feed. You just knock their weapons out of their hands before doing this. Yes I realize only two enemy types, but this is why the game could have been better. The designs for them are neat and they look cool, but seriously? You will run into sub-bosses an awful lot and most of these are just elite henchman, or giant minotaurs. This is where one of my biggest gripes come in and that's the fact that boss fights are all luck and no skill. It doesn't help that the game is a button masher and there's no skill involved what-so-ever. You just hit X for blade attacks and B for kicks and that's it. The blocking never seems effective and you are constantly relying on your powers.

Powers range from astral feeding, temporary invincibility, time freeze, and aura vision. These take up A LOT of power energy so you have to constantly kill to keep your meter up. You can level up to extend this, but it never seems enough. You also have your Dragon Pistols, but you can't level these up and you only get very little ammo then it feeds off your health. You have to kill to keep your ammo up, but these thing never seem effective until you get different ammo types.

You also have a harpoon that you use to throw enemies into deadly death traps to unlock different parts of levels, but the later on enemies in the Twisted Park can block this and you have to use your time freeze or super speed to get behind them, but some times THAT doesn't work...see what I mean? The game is so frustrating later on, so much in fact, I had to use God Mode through the last 25% because they threw way to many larger enemies at you and not enough people to feed on.

There are some acrobatics involved such as sliding down rails, swinging and climbing poles, but this is troublesome since the mechanics are so finicky and everything has to be aligned perfectly.

Now don't get me wrong, BR2 is worth a bargain bin purchase you just have to look past it's many flaws. When it comes to graphics the game is decent at best. The characters look good and so do the environments, but the pre-rendered scenes looks cheap and crappy. There is also a lot of slow-down through out the game when too much is going on on screen.

With button mashing, no skill involved fighting, unbalanced everything throughout, and weak acrobatics there is just something about this game that makes you want to keep playing and it's probably Rayne herself.