BloodRayne: Betrayal

The BloodRayne series has quite the history with two slightly above average third-person action games, three films (unfortunately by Uwe Boll) with one of them seeing the big screen for maybe a week and the other two going straight to DVD and a one shot set of comics that hit in 2007.  Though, from a gaming perspective, little has been heard from BloodRayne since 2004. Until now.  Majesco and WayForward Technologies attempt to reboot the series in a unique way with BloodRayne: Betrayal.  WayForward is known for its beautiful 2D sprites and animation in games like Shantae and A Boy and his Blob. So when it was announced that they were making BloodRayne: Betrayal, the question was “Can WayForward reboot this series into a 2D masterpiece?”  The answer is “yes” … and “no.”

If there was something I knew WayForward would get right it was the presentation, and they nailed it.  Their first venture into the power house consoles is full of beautifully hand-drawn, well-animated sprites.  It really shows what lovers of the 2D action platformer have been missing without proper entries to their favorite 2D games.  Pssst… Konami, do this with Castlevania already would you?  With gorgeous animation, Rayne looks amazing.  Even her combat animations seem to have just the right amount of frames to create fluid motion while being very fast.  Enemies look great, too,  I just wish there were more variations.  Simple pallet swaps would have been acceptable.  That’s the only downside to the presentation in the foreground during gameplay.  There are only a handful of enemy types and you fight A TON of them, so the repetition hits pretty quickly.

There’s even more repetition when it comes to the backgrounds.  The game takes place on the way to and inside a castle.  Several of the stages take place within the castle, though you never really feel like you’re in different parts of it.  Even the original Castlevania has more environmental variation than this game does.  Sounds like an odd comparison, but BloodRayne: Betrayal definitely draws most of its influence from the old school, stage driven Castlevania games.  Traversing through the game certainly feels like it is, even down to the picture of the castle showing the path that Rayne is taking.

The gameplay obviously is far different from other iterations of the game.  Rayne has several options when it comes to combat.  Melee combat is done with one button, but pushing a direction on the d-pad (or analog stick) will change up the move she does.  Hitting up when attacking, for instance, will launch an enemy into the air where you can continue a combo and even kick enemies across the screen.  Rayne also has a very powerful gun attack in her arsenal which hits literally all enemies in its path when fired.  It’s pretty ridiculous how powerful it is, but they balance it out with limited ammo.  Finally, Rayne has a bite attack that will infect an enemy.  Infected enemies can then be detonated (yeah… they explode) to cause chains that build up score multipliers.  Holding down the bite button will cause Rayne to drain the life from her victim and replenish some of her life.  This is critical in many situations.  When it comes to combat, there are numerous options, especially for this type of game.  When the game is at its best, the combat is a lot of fun.  But, unfortunately,  there are equally as many problems.

First, and most noticeable, Rayne can’t duck. (WHAT?)  This realization hits pretty hard the first time an enemy pulls out a gun to shoot you. When you try to duck under it, you instead end up getting a bullet to the face.  Quite annoying.  In order to go under these types of attacks, you either have to hit down plus attack so she executes a sweep attack or do a perfectly timed dash.

Also, when an enemy is crawling close to Rayne, the normal melee button will stomp this enemy instead of actually swinging her swords.  This becomes quite annoying when a bite attack is necessary considering you have to stun most enemies first before you can bite them.  So you hit attack, accidentally stomp, then try to quickly bite  the enemy only to realize you haven’t actually swung your swords to stun them and they push you away.  This is a mechanic that is necessary to defeat the second boss in the game, and this problem especially evident during that fight.  It is what caused most of my deaths during that particular encounter.

Platforming gets even more frustrating at times considering the way that Rayne controls.  She has a quick direction change jump in lieu of a double jump.  I’m really not sure what else to call it.  If you’re moving Rayne in one direction, then hit the other direction and quickly press jump, she will do this elegantly beautiful back flip that looks great, but is functionally flawed when compared to standard double jumping.  The back flip wouldn’t be much of an issue if it wasn’t the focus of so many intricate platforming sequences.  There are sections in the game where you have to climb an area with platforms that will fall after standing on them for a second.  A double jump would have been much more inviting, whereas the back flip seems to be an artificial difficulty increase tactic.

The sheer lack of checkpoints, especially where they are really needed, also feels like a tactic to  artificially increase the difficulty.  There are several places, most noticeably in the late game, where they will throw you in a difficult combat situation and then throw you immediately into an equally difficult platforming situation before you get to a check point.  I understand wanting to make the game challenging, but come on, that’s not exactly the age of gaming we live in. The days of long difficult sequences between checkpoints are a thing of the past.

Don’t get me wrong, this game is legitimately difficult.  Many of the platforming sequences are very well designed and interesting.  There are a few minor issues with the controls that you might notice, but none that cause as many problems as what was mentioned above.  WayForward also pulled a card from Team Meat’s arsenal, whether they meant to or not, with the fact that, after you die, there is virtually no load time before you respawn and start again.  I never knew how important that was to easing the frustration of very difficult games until I played Super Meat Boy, and it’s a very welcome addition to a game like BloodRayne: Betrayal.

Something else that Betrayal lacks is a proper story.  I beat the game and couldn’t tell you what the heck was going on.  This is probably because the entirety of the story is told using speech bubbles that show up while you’re playing the game.  So the story is there, but it’s really hard to read speech bubbles that show up at the top of the screen while you’re busy fighting enemies at the bottom.  This game seriously would have benefited from full voice acting.  There’s really not that much dialog, so they could have done it.  If not that, making the speech bubbles more easily viewed would have been acceptable.

WayForward’s first venture onto the current generation consoles (excluding Wii of course) balances out to be not bad … but not good either.  I had an internal battle with myself on what score to actually give this game.  The score I gave it not only reflects the game itself, but I give WayForward credit for making a very good stepping stone for future games on these platforms.  The premise of the game is a good one and the engine and presentation are both fantastic.  They take some good steps in the right direction, but a lot of the gameplay suffers from lack of polish or an attempt to increase the difficulty artificially.  I just hope that they fix some of these gameplay issues with the next iteration of BloodRayne, assuming there is one.